Archive for the ‘Relocating’ Category
Posted in 
Strawberry, honey, truffles, you name it, they’ve got a festival for it!
April 17th, 2007 | 
Author: 
With start of April starts the onslaught of the festivals for just about every fruit, vegetable or drink you could name.The one problem with them is that you’ve really no idea in advance whether or not a given festival will be a popular one or just a few stalls trying to sell some obscure vegetable.
One of the best we’ve been to lately was the strawberry festival at Bellesta which is a village quite close to us but one we’d not been to before. They were lucky enough to hold the festival on a particularly sunny day following some of the last of the Winter rain. Combine that with the Vide Grenier (car boot sale or flea market) and the village was seriously struggling under the weight of traffic and people looking for parking spots on the day.
In fact, there were only two small stalls selling strawberries but the other stalls gave a very good representation of the local produce ranging from excellent honey as you can see, through the spicy sausages that you find everywhere here, and olives. Strangely, the wine makers didn’t have a big presence but then there are numerous wine festivals from now through to harvest time.
The majority of the festivals are only publicised locally so it’s potluck as to whether or not you’ll see the sign for one as you travel along the road. Larger villages are generally a better bet than small ones but really you can get a wonderful experience from even the tiniest village which is, of course, as happens in what we’d call church fetes.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.buying a house in France: part 16: banking & finance: the UK
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.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Why are there no wetbacks in Europe?
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.
Legal immigrants to America fall broadly into one of four categories:
- Employment-based preference, essentially those who have skills that are in demand;
- Family preference, which allows people to sponsor close relatives;
- Diversity, which aims to increase the numbers of under-represented groups; and
- Refugees
There aren’t any Canadian wetbacks for the simple reason that it’s relatively easy for a Canadian to live and work in America quite legally therefore the number of Canadian illegal immigrants to America is much smaller than it would be otherwise. Aside from that, the Canadian economy is on a par with that in America so there are very few economic migrants whereas this is by far the largest category of immigrants from Mexico.
However, those reasons don’t apply in Europe. With the fall of the Eastern Bloc we have neither the fences nor the border guards so it’s clearly much easier for people to just walk over the borders than it has been in the past. Yet, still we appear to have neither the number of illegals nor the complex about them that exists in America. How come?
It seems to me that it’s largely down to the difference between the economic geography of America compared to Europe.
America borders with two countries. Canada is relatively rich and there seem to be no worries about illegal immigration from Canada. Mexico is relatively poor and the Americans are talking about building a wall to keep out the flood of illegal immigrants.
Europe on the other hand has a group of relatively rich countries in the centre, slightly poorer ones surrounding it and poorer still a little further out. Therefore, by and large, there isn’t the massive jump in relative economic prosperity when you move from one country to its immediate neighbours as there exists between Mexico and America. Move from Romania to Bulgaria and there is little difference. Move from Romania to France and there’s a big difference but then there are several countries between Romania and France whereas Romania and Bulgaria share a border.
Of course there are illegal immigrants in Europe but their numbers are a good deal smaller than they would be were there the sharp difference in prosperity in neighbouring countries as exists between Mexico and America.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
The first grape shoot of Spring
The landscape around us has remained stark since the last of the grape bushes were prunned at the end of the year but it’s all about to change.
As you can see the first shoots have started to appear on the grape bushes just beside us but already the landscape has taken a greener appearance. The various types of grape start growing at different times so we’ve been watching as the greenery has been sweeping towards us over the last week or so and we noticed the first signs of growth in the plants beside us just a few days ago.
What’s very surprising is the sheer speed at which the plants grow. Once they get started, you can find a small bush appearing within just a few days of rain. The climate locally is pretty dry so most of the growth happens in very short bursts after each day that we get rain.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
buying a house in France: part 15: banking & finance: introduction
International banking raises issues that rarely arise when you confine your transactions to one country and we’ll be covering these over the next couple of weeks.If you are moving to France to live, you might think that you may as well either close or at least tidy up your finances in the UK before you leave. Resist this temptation! It can be much more difficult to open UK accounts when you are living in France and if you have closed everything you may find it virtually impossible to open any account in the UK.
The banking scene in France is completely different from that in the UK. Whereas there are the “big four” in the UK, France doesn’t really have any truly big banks and the majority of French “banks” are what would be considered relatively small regional building societies in the UK. As with small building societies, the range of products is quite limited.
Next week we’ll begin with what you might think is the simplest part of this topic: UK banking & finance.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
