Foreign Perspectives

Up until recent times the typical Gypsy image was of the cute caravan going along a country road in Ireland or perhaps of one of them coming round offering to tell your fortune.

However that changed towards the end of the 20th century with the cute caravans being replaced by ordinary ones and the images of the rubbish strewn wastelands created by roaming bands of these gypsies. Add to that the increase in petty crimes that always seemed to be associated with the arrival of a new band of these caravans and you can see why everyone else became less and less enchanted with them going from camp to camp.

So they were given housing.

Remembering that these people have a long tradition of being a travelling people dating back to their probable origin in India around a thousand years ago. I say “probable” because it’s next to impossible to truly trace the origins of a group of people who are nomadic as they don’t generally leave much evidence of their passing. You obviously can’t look for the typical archaeological remains that you would find with a settled group and are left with considering written accounts of their passing (of which there seems to be very little) or looking at less tangible things such as the structure of their language.

The snag is that giving them a fixed location without considering the substantial changes that would be necessary in their culture seems to have created major issues with their new neighbours. What seems to have happened is that some of the things deeply ingrained in their culture as a travelling people just doesn’t sit too well when they’re doing them constantly in a fixed location. For example, you’ll run out of people who want to get their fortune told after a few months which is fine if you’re moving on but not so good if you’re not. Thus, the fortune telling degrades into begging which itself isn’t well received and becomes more and more pushy over time too.

That life of travelling also had the problem that the children didn’t get educated as well as they might so there’s a tendency for the Gypsies to be pretty much totally unskilled. It’s not that they weren’t educated at all but that the education that they received was generally from within their families. Even when they did attend normal schools, a life of moving from school to school throughout a year obviously isn’t ideal for learning.

So in the end their name becomes “Gypsy scum”, the tolerance goes, they’re actively disliked and finally the local scum do something about it as happened recently in Belfast.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that it’s almost certainly going to at least a generation to get this fixed. Their culture needs to adjust to living in a fixed spot but to do that they’ll need to drop some of the customs that they’ve carried out for centuries as otherwise they’ll remain despised by the locals. Without that their children won’t get enough of an education to get out of the “unskilled trap” that they’re currently in and moreover their children will grow to hate the non-gypsies which will only cause them more trouble. Already their holocaust history has caused some of them to accuse any anti-gypsy feeling as coming from Nazi tendencies which definitely isn’t helping their integration.

Wouldn’t you like to have a personalised tour of the holiday destination that you’re going to rather than being herded around by some impersonal tour?

I’m sure that many people would but figure that it’s bound to be too expensive to do something like that so never give it another thought but there’s growing assembly of what are called “greeter networks” around the world which offer you the opportunity of just a personalised tour yet for no charge at all. How come? Well, it’s made up of a network of volunteers in each of the spots offering this service which is supported by a very small full-time administration to match up tourists and the local volunteers.

For example, if you’d like to see New York then the Big Apple Greeter Network can connect you with one of their volunteers who’ll give you a local’s view of the city. What you can’t do is to book them for days at a time (not yet anyway) but this is one way to see the city as a local does and you can always go to the big tourist draws on another day.

Sadly this service isn’t available everywhere yet but it’s currently available in Adelaide, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Houston, Lyon, Melbourne, Nantes, New York, Paris, Kent, The Hague and Toronto. You can check out the up to date list on the Global Greeter Network.

A very worthwhile endeavour and one way to actually connect with at least one person in the country you’re visiting.

Since the insurance needs of companies tend to be more sophisticated than those of individuals you generally don’t find the equivalent of online price comparison sites in the company insurance market that you expect in the personal insurance market.

So to get corporate insurance you will almost always need to go to a specialist insurance broker which obviously means looking at firms relatively close by your business premises.

However, it’s worse than that in that, for example, to shop insurance Glasgow, if you’re in a relatively specialised market niche you’d need to look for, say, insurance for contractors Glasgow. Well, “worse” in the sense that you may need to be more specific in your requirements of an insurance broker but if that broker is more familiar in dealing with your type of business you’ll generally save a lot of hassle in explaining what you do and won’t miss out on essential insurance that’s specific to your industry group. Not only that but the specialists will know more about the types of policy available to your industry niche too which can save quite substantial amounts of money.

Incidently, don’t be tempted to try to do the cheapo route of just using one of the personal insurance comparison sites as they usually don’t list essential items of business insurance and you could find yourself with an expensive problem should it turn out that you don’t have some legally required insurance or there’s an exemption in the insurance that you bought which means that you’re not covered for doing something that you do quite regularly. These things usually only become apparent after you need to claim on a policy which is obviously a little late in the day.

Although not too many people are doing it at the moment, this is probably one of the best times to consider buying an overseas property as prices are generally rather more depressed than they normally would be. Having said that there are lots more people selling or at least trying to these days which in itself brings up similar issues.

For a start there’s the different legal system to consider. Even if you’re European and buying or selling in another European country you can still find that, although illegal, the local authorities will retain some of the proceeds of a sale in case it turns out that you owe them any taxes. It’s worth pointing out to the legal person dealing with your sale that they are legally required to treat you as though you were a national of the country and that applied even if you fully intend to take the proceeds abroad afterwards so long as it’s to another European country.

Obviously with a property investment you can be talking in terms of quite substantial amounts of money and if you’re going to be changing currencies then it’s worthwhile looking into your options to reduce the costs of exchanging the money to the other currency and also of reducing the risk to you of there being a substantial move in the exchange rate. For example, this year the pound/euro rate has moved from around 1.10 to around 1.20. Ten cents doesn’t sound like much but if you’re looking at a typical property of around the EUR 300,000 mark that’s EUR 30,000 of a difference which is enough to cover legal fees with change or think of it as the swimming pool that you quite fancied.

How do you reduce these charges and risk? If you go to your bank as most people do you are likely to be hit with the maximum charge possible although the charge can be even higher if you just use the local legal people to send you the proceeds as they’ll add charges on top of that. The best way is to go to one of the specialist money brokers who can shave 5% or more off the charges that the banks apply and can also arrange to fix the rate you’ll get months in advance which eliminates the uncertainty in the amount that you will ultimately receive. Aside from the charges from the rate fix, there are no downsides as if the exchange rate moves in your favour you can let the fix lapse and exchange the money at the current rate.

On non-financial matters don’t neglect the time delays inherent in overseas moves generally. Not only does the money take longer to arrive (unless you just take it as a suitcase full of cash which is quite legal though may raise a few eyebrows), but it’s obviously going to take longer for the removal truck to move your stuff from A to B. There aren’t any formalities required in moving your own stuff around Europe although expect checks for illegal immigrants at the ports and be sure that the lorry doors are secured with a padlock (most aren’t) to avoid a few questions along the lines of the “have you packed the case yourself” familiar to air travellers.

It’s best to plan the move more carefully than you would for a normal domestic move as you’ll appreciate from the above that there are a lot more places that complications can arise.

When people think of moving to France their first thought as to how to generate an income is to buy a gite complex and rent it out to people from back home.

It sounds like an idyllic lifestyle, doesn’t it? You work one day a week and the rest of the week you can be sunbathing by the pool.

The snag is that you need to wash all the sheets and towels and carry out maintenance work during the week. OK, so two days work and five at the pool? In theory, you might get away with that though, of course, the guests will be using the pool too and, usually, expect you to do things for them like organise tours or the area, tell them all the best places to go and so on.

What’s frequently forgotten about in all this is the financials that go along with this lifestyle. From a typical six or seven person gite you can probably get around 700€ a week in the peak season. That size of gite equates to a small three bedroom house in size and, of course, amount of work to look after. In reality most people aim for a gite complex of around four or five gites. On the whole, you’ll eventually reach an occupancy of around ten weeks per year for the gites which translates into around 35,000€ a year of an income.

However, there’s the matter of expenses to consider. Bearing in mind that you only have four or five hours to reset the gite between guests you’ll end up hiring a cleaner to help you which eats into the income somewhat and you may need someone to look after the pool. There’s also the business of maintenance: unlike a normal house rental you’re getting a new set of tenants virtually every week and that tends to be quite hard on the furnishings so you’ll need to renew at least some items pretty much every year.

Oh, and don’t forget the taxes!