Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

This seems to be my week for marketing the blog!

Most of the time, I’m incredibly lazy about doing it and it’s just gotten to where it is today by chance for the most part. In fact, I didn’t really do any promotion of it worth talking about ’til this week when it was something of a blitz that I’ve not yet recovered from. I started the week with the blogsite submission service at DirectoryVault which at $23 seems something of a bargain. To be fair, there was some duplication with the dribble of promotion that I’d done on a now and again basis over the last six months or so. Things like the obvious of Technorati and Feedburner mainly but it did turn up a considerable number of seemingly good places that I’ve never heard of before.

Even if you are intending to live the rest of your life in France, you should resist the temptation to close any UK bank accounts or credit cards. The only exception to this is, possibly, for those accounts/cards which have an annual fee.

In addition to the accounts which you already have, you may find it useful to open others as the international dimension changes how you use accounts. For instance, if you have a holiday home in France you’ll obviously be transferring money from pounds into euros much more than you were previously.

The range of accounts in the UK is massive and therefore we can only give an indication of those that you might find useful here; the reference version of this guide will be more comprehensive.

The Nationwide Building Society Flexaccount (cheque account) is a must. It gives you entirely free transfers from pounds to euro and, at the moment, is the only truly free currency exchange service. Their credit card comes close behind with free exchange on purchases.

Beyond that, if you are going to live in France, it’s useful to open credit cards with a number of card issuers. In general, you will not be able to do this if you are living in France and neither can you easily get credit facilities in France so it’s useful to have a number of UK cards as a fallback should you need it. The main issuers are Capital One, the Co-Operative, GE, Halifax, HSBC, LloydsTSB, MBNA, Nationwide and Royal Bank of Scotland (most other cards are rebranded versions of these eg Sainsbury is really Halifax). It’s worth getting an American Express credit card too as you can transfer the account to France, although as the charges in France are considerably higher you may not want to do that right away.

Cheque accounts are also useful to have. If you qualify for the HSBC Premier service, they’ll open an equivalent account with HSBC France for you which has the additional advantage that you get free transfers between your UK and French accounts with them. Barclays and LloydsTSB offer a similar (but more expensive) service though their branches are largely confined to Paris and the Cote d’Azur. The Barclays account offers withdrawals with no transaction charge at BNP-Paribas machines in France (you are still charged 2.75% on the exchange rate). I used to recommend Citibank a lot but they have increased their charges substantially and it’s not as clearly a useful account for expats as it once was.

The Nationwide account is excellent if you are in France and need to transfer relatively small amounts of money from the UK but the £500 per day (about 750‚€) limit means that it’s not practical for large amounts such as for your house purchase. You can use your own bank for this but the charges are generally quite high and the exchange rate isn’t particularly good either in most cases. To transfer more than a few thousand euros you are best to open an account with one of the specialist companies such as moneybookers; if you are going to be making regular transfers (eg paying for a French mortgage from a UK account) then HIFX offers a facility for this.

If you are retaining your house in the UK as we recommend, then you will probably need to change the mortgage to a buy to let one. It’s best to do this before you leave the UK as there are a relatively small number of brokers who deal with overseas clients.

The field of investments in the UK is even wider than the range of banks. However, most seem prepared to change your address to an overseas one. However, if you don’t yet have a UK broker or similar it’s worthwhile opening an account with one before you leave as few will open accounts for overseas clients. We’ll cover it in more detail later but at this point it’s worth mentioning that having a SIPP (Self-invested personal pension) account open is also useful.

If you’ve not yet ventured into this arena, a few useful accounts to have are the Halifax sharebuilder (which lets you buy shares monthly), Fidelity’s Funds Marketplace (which lets you buy numerous unit trusts) and TD Waterhouse brokerage. All are free to open.

As always, you can find links to sites we have mentioned in the Foreign Perspectives directory along with other similar outfits which we haven’t had the space to mention here and the reference version of this entry on our Living in France pages is more complete.

Although you can open offshore bank accounts after you leave, it’s best to open your choice from the above before you leave the UK as it can be difficult or even impossible to do it after you leave.

One of the blog marketing sites, DoshDosh recently suggested that it may be possible to get into the top 100 favourites on Technorati relatively easily.

Whilst we’ve all been beavering away in building up links back to our blogs, it will take a “while” to get to the top 100 linked to blogs as number 100 is currently sitting at over 3000 links. On the other hand, it would only require just over 100 200 people to favorite us to get into the top 100 favorited blogs which certainly seems in the realms of possibility.

Why bother though? Well, being in a top 100 list of anything is almost certain to increase the traffic on the blog and indeed quite likely to increase the number of blogs linking to us for that matter.

Anyway, if you’re interested in exchanging favourites in this way you can start the ball rolling by clicking

and letting me know that you’ve done it in a comment to this post (quote your Technorati username so I can confirm the link).

A link back in a post would also be appreciated and reciprocated.

Those also offering link exchange are listed below:

List of blogs offering Technorati Favorites’ Exchange programmes:

1. NiaTrading Signals – Alex 3071
2. Domestic Divapalooza – Angela Llewellyn Stevens
3. Anitokid by Anitokid –
4. AskaX World – Andika Kusuma
5. Tech Lock Rahul – Rahul
6. Bigfoot Sightings – Linda Martin
7. Azazil.net – Gary V. Vaughan
8. Nukilan Jejari Azhad by Shaz Azhad –
9. Fyais by fyais –
10. BlogOp – Chris Lodge
11. Design Adaptations – Charity Ondriezek
12. Spyware, Adware and Security News
13. Digital Information Technology – Atul Dogra
14. How to Earn Money Blogging – Daryl Lau
15. Make Money Online: Quick n’ Easy Way – EJ Cooksey
16. Genius Type – Brian Lee
17. Keeping Fit is a Daily Battle
18. India PR Blog by India PR Blogspot –
19. The Rojak Blog – Ap0gEE
20. Lifecruiser – Lifecruiser
21. Me and My Net – Anoop Kumar Singh
22. Manila Mom – Maia Jose
23. MLM Gossip
24. Panda Cube – Aki Jinn
25. Quasi Fictional – Diogenes
26. Shankar’s Tech Blog 2.0 – Shankar
27. ShanKri-La – Karthik Ramadoss
28. Share Everything in Life
29. Dox – Rahul
30. My Online Collections by star500k –
31. Table4Five – Elizabeth
32. TechChee.com
33. Ordinary Folk – Mike
34. (weeding done to here)
35. T Jantunen.com by T Jantunen –
36. Vinod Live! by Vinod Ponmanadiyil –
37. Online Business News – Tammy Ames
38. Wampago – Chris
39. Webtools@Desinet1
40. Show Me The Money by Gerri –
41. Armen’s Blog – Fave it
42. Article Discovery Politics by David Greene –
43. Philippine Home Design and Improvement Blog
44. Home Based Business by Brian Pratt –
45. Shakeroo’s Gold – Shakeroo
46. Blue Sky Brothers – Greg Meares
47. Brown Thoughts by Brown Baron –
48. Business Sanity – Susan Martin
49. CalvinWarr.com by Calvin Warr –
50. Can’t Coach That by Coach McGee –
51. Career Ramblings – Fave the Site
52. The Pond – Karen
53. ContentPays.info by Yogesh –
54. Creative Design – David Airey
55. Random Expressions – Deepak Jeswal
56. Digital Phocus – Brendan Monaghan
57. Dosh Dosh – Fave it
58. Eat Drink & Be Merry – Fave it
59. Ed Lau – Fave it
60. eJabs.com by Matthew Jabs –
61. Everyday Weekender – Fave it
62. (exceptional) work.com – Jon
63. Life in the Fast Lane by Deborah –
64. Foreign Perspectives by Arnold –
65. Gauravonomics by Gaurav –
66. Hannes Johnson – Fave it
67. Ramblings from the Marginalized – Fave the Site
68. Homemaker Diary – MQ
69. Internet Serious Business by The Troll –
70. iReview – iReview
71. JesterTunes – Jester
72. Jimi Morrisons Head – Fave it
73. Jon Lee – Fave it
74. Julies Journal – Fave it
75. Kabatology – Kabatology
76. Klamath Design by Linda –
77. Sleeping Princess
78. MLM Forums online marketing blog by Jens P. Berge –
79. MrGaryLee.com by Gary Lee –
80. Msdanielle.com by Danielle –
81. My Dandelion Patch – Fave it
82. Nate Whitehill – Fave it
83. Nathan Drach – Fave it
84. Net Business Blog – Fave the Site
85. Life Rocks! 2.0 by Nirmal T V –
86. Real Amber – Real Amber
87. Reality Wired – James
88. Revvi::blog – Revvi Sudirnoputra
89. Riskiraj by Rishiraj –
90. Romance Tracker by Phil Van Treuren –
91. Samanathon – Fave it
92. Scribble on the Wall – Fave it
93. Serendipity by Sharique–
94. Shadow Scope by Richard –
95. SiteLogic – Fave it
96. Sizlopedia – Sizlopedia
97. SMO Blog – Mark Blair
98. SMS Today by Foxtucker–
99. Square Cookies – Square Cookies
100. SquareCookies
101. Stephen Fung – Fave it
102. Syaf the Geek by Syafrizal Abu Mansor –
103. TechLivez.com – Tech Livez
104. Technacular by Vikas Sah –
105. TechnoDiary – Sahil Gupta
106. Technospot.net by Ashish Mohta –
107. TeknoBites by Ram –
108. The Blog Columnist – The Blog Columnist
109. Filipino Entrepreneur by Filipino Entrepreneur –
110. The Thinking Blog by ilker yoldas –
111. Untwisted Vortex – RT Cunningham
112. UrgentClick by Andy –
113. Vacilamos! – Ari
114. Online Diary – Venu
115. VersaCreations by Vivienne Quek –
116. My Affiliate Journey
117. Inklings: The Copywriter’s Blog by Walter Burek –
118. My Life My Story –My Passion – Yong Kai Loon
119. Zath by Simon Barker –
120. Digital Art World Blog –
121. Blogtology –
122. The Outsider’s View – Javier Altman
123. Making Money through Internet – MarriedMelody
124. Earn Money on the Web – Kent
125. Blogs et IE – T@Blogoshere
126. Spark Minute – David Spark
127. Uncleboob – Uncleboob *
128. IT Experts Central – IT Experts Central *
129. Tech Freak – Kanak *
130. sophistishe – Sheena *

SUGGESTION: once you’ve gone through and faved everyone on this list, add a comment saying you’ve done that and subscribe to the comments. That’ll pick up anyone new appearing here. ‘Tis also worthwhile to run up a favourites exchange page of your own; if you do, mention that here and I’ll add you on which get’s both of us a link. 

IMPORTANT: I’m running various separate blog promotions at the moment so you need to put a comment here to say that you’ve favourited me as I can’t tell from the Technorati info whether or not new favourites are arriving because of this post.

TRAVEL/EXPAT/IMMIGRATION/EMMIGRATION RELATED SITES: let me know if your blog covers topics in the areas of travel, expat or immigration/emmigration matters as I will consider blogroll exchanges with sites in those areas.

WEEDING: a number of those listed here are no longer participating in the exchange; I’m in the process of weeding out those that aren’t so this list will be shrinking drastically over the next few days weeks months.

LINK BACK: As I have dofollow for comments, you should automatically get a linkback to your blog when I approve any comments written here. I’d appreciate it if you’d return the favour 🙂

I recently came across Immigration Orange which covers immigration issues primarily in America but increasingly worldwide.When I thought about the things that they cover, it struck me that there don’t seem to be any Canadian wetbacks nor do there seem to be any in Europe. For those that don’t know “wetback” is the (derogratory) term used to describe illegal immigrants in America, essentially because the border is marked by the Rio Grande and therefore in times past they could be picked out by having wet-backs from crossing the river.