Life in Culebrón

There seems to be a bit of a conspiracy to keep me on my toes as I reach the end of my working life. Most of it is positive enough. Pension paper mostly. Having found forgotten private pensions I've had to make phone call after phone call and fill in myriad forms. Because I live here and not where the pensions are I've had to talk with the tax people in the UK and fill in more forms to get myself exempted from UK tax. That Spanish tax process, for the calendar year 2018, starts in a few days time and has to be done before the end of June. I hope that having got the UK exemption means it will be easier, if more expensive, to sort out. Then there's the state pension. I did a blog about that . I hoped, I was told, it would be paid through the Spanish Social Security people in Euros but, disappointingly, it now looks as though it's going to be paid in the UK in Pounds. And what about Brexit. Now, to be honest what happens in the UK isn't very important to me. I ce...

I got up early this morning to check the result and, rather as I'd feared, the UK had voted to leave the Union. I wasn't in the least surprised but I was shocked. To me, on a day to day basis, at the moment it means very little. My only real concern is about the exchange rate. I get a pension paid in sterling. As the pound loses ground against the euro I get fewer euros to spend for the same number of pounds. Of course, when the two years and three months are up, then I suppose I'll have to relearn Fahrenheit and furlongs but at least I will be able to recover my blue passport, rest assured that a cucumber is a vegetable and eat curved bananas till the cows come home. The concerns of  expats of my age are mainly around health care and pensions. Reciprocal arrangements within the EU mean that pensioners get free medical care in Spain and there is no problem with the UK state pension being paid here with all its rights intact. In all likelihood something reasonable...

For years and years I've had a bit of a deal going with some friends who have a holiday home here in Spain. They pay money in sterling into my UK account and I pay Euros into their Spanish account using the FT exchange rate. They get money to pay their direct debit bills and I got enough to service my Amazon habit. The more usual methods of transferring money can be quite costly. There are all sorts of schemes and methods but most of them make their money by giving below the "money market" exchange rates (the ones that say no commission) or by charging a fee. To give an example for small amounts, say £300, my normal method is to use an account I have with the Nationwide. They charge me £1 per transaction plus 2% of the amount. So that's £7. Actually that's as cash so it's a bit different but the figures are illustrative. Recently Cliff told me about a scheme that he had heard described as peer to peer. It's what my friends and I have been doing ...