Money Matters
We have rented out our house in the Vale, Guernsey , we have employed an estate agent to manage the house, and we are lucky to have found some very good tenants, which again was done through our agents.
This pays the mortage, reduced to the lowest level, and leaves us with some money every month, which we add to with our savings to pay for living expenses on our trip.
After all costs – mortgage, life assurance, insurance for house, boat and medical – we have set ourselves an arbitrary figure to spend every month of £1000. This was based on what we have read, and estimates of what we thought our costs might be.
In fact we have averaged slightly over this figure, which is bad news for our savings. In addition Nigel has paid for several large items of equipment which we found were necessary – new ship’s batteries the first month, a solar panel the next month, a visit to Decathlon where we both bought some expensive items (I bought rollerblades, Nigel mainly fishing equipment), and the air conditioning unit. In August because of the route we took we had to fill up with fuel twice – at over 200 Euros a shot.
We will see what happens in the winter. We are not yet sure where we will be so cannot work on any costs yet, but the fuel costs will be likely be replaced by full-time wintering marina costs. We cannot yet estimate our spending as we are not sure of prices in France yet, and we do not know what the possibilities for finding work are at this stage. More to follow!
Although we planned our finances very carefully – mortgage, savings, and current accounts – I have now decided to make some changes. I had opened a high interest online current account and associated savings account with Smile for our living expenses, and we used our original Natwest account and then the new current account to pay for shopping and ATM withdrawals abroad. But I didn’t realise or take into account properly the amount of fees that would be charged for withdrawals in Euros. It turns out we are losing about 5% of all we spend in bank fees – which is shocking, and worth several hundred pounds a year.
So now back in Guernsey in September I have done some more research, and am opening two accounts at Lloyds TSB. The first is a Euro instant access savings account with a Visa debit card, for which no fees are charged for withdrawals or payments in Eurozone countries. Although a 50 Euro charge is made per year, they do provide free card cover from Sentinel. The second is a current account, because if we make sterling payments into the Euro account from another bank, we will be penalised! With both accounts at Lloyds TSB like this I believe we have a solution which will work for us in France , Italy and Greece . The only drawback is that the interest awarded on these two accounts is pitiful, but I think the advantages are worth much more.