Time to emigrate. But where?

[Paddy]

CZ might be interesting. But I don't think that New Prague, Minnesota would help

Sorry...

http://prague.tv/realestate/detail.p...-2240/R-N17742

About the same price

[Tarquin Farquhar]

http://www.praguerealestate.cz/beaut...ilid-25349507/

£500k or thereabouts.

If you get a job in Vienna, you can live across the border in Bratislava where a similar house to the one above would be much cheaper...

I'm happy for you guys that you are in the kind of league where you can look at stuff like that. I'm not.

I bring virtually no capital.
I am old, so I would take a mortgage of 10 years absolute max (the payments on which would probably shock you if you're used to a 25-year mortgage). If anyone will give me that much. If I ever buy again.
I also have debts mostly from disastrous last year, wich I would also like to pay off before I retire.
I also have to save for retirement.

So I guess I am looking at not paying more than about a thousand a month. Less, quite a lot less, would be better. So it doesn't matter to me how "cheap" a large luxury house might be, it's not for me.

[sasguru]

Germany is attractive. Formerly high-tax, ISTM not so much to have cut its tax as to have been overtaken by the rest of Western Europe, especially the UK.

In your position Germany would be my choice.
Only bummer is that you will probably have to learn German, which I know from personal experience, is nigh on impossible to become fluent in after a certain age.

[Tarquin Farquhar]

In your position Germany would be my choice.
Only bummer is that you will probably have to learn German, which I know from personal experience, is nigh on impossible to become fluent in after a certain age.

I'm tending to agree, it seems not bad to me. The discussion need not, should not centre on tax rates anyway. And Germany scores highly in every other other respect.

Happily I am fluent in German, and so is my partner. Rubbish accent (me: she gets mistaken for a native) but fluent enough.

Actually I start in Germany a week on Monday

[Moscow Mule]

I'm happy for you guys that you are in the kind of league where you can look at stuff like that. I'm not.

I bring virtually no capital.
I am old, so I would take a mortgage of 10 years absolute max (the payments on which would probably shock you if you're used to a 25-year mortgage). If anyone will give me that much. If I ever buy again.
I also have debts mostly from disastrous last year, wich I would also like to pay off before I retire.
I also have to save for retirement.

So I guess I am looking at not paying more than about a thousand a month. Less, quite a lot less, would be better. So it doesn't matter to me how "cheap" a large luxury house might be, it's not for me.

I which case, I would be inclined to stick where you are, renting as small a place as you can bear until retirement. Take as much income from your Ltd into a company pension as you can stand and take it out in ten years.

Then buy a boat and retire.

Sorry to say, I don't think you've got the resources to be heading off anywhere and starting afresh.

[sasguru]

Sorry to say, I don't think you've got the resources to be heading off anywhere and starting afresh.

You don't need any extra resources to work anywhere in the EC. In Germany you probably need rather less than here, as the cost of living is cheaper.

[milanbenes]

I'm in CZ,

none of you would like here, terrible place, just terrible

think .Net, think France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland

you know it makes sense

All the best,

Milan.

[Tarquin Farquhar]

I which case, I would be inclined to stick where you are, renting as small a place as you can bear until retirement. Take as much income from your Ltd into a company pension as you can stand and take it out in ten years.

Then buy a boat and retire.

Sorry to say, I don't think you've got the resources to be heading off anywhere and starting afresh.

I don't like it here. I left the UK in 1979, and essentially have only come back twice, staying in order to be with a woman both times.

I haven't worked in the UK for 20 years (the first marriage), haven't been able to find work here. The weekly commute to another European country is an awful drag on the income, so I want to stop that.

Don't know about the boat, most people I have known who have had one have described it as a hole in the water into which you pour money.

Otherwise, what you describe is the idea, but in the same place as I work, not in another country. We would sell up and rent anyway (last year didn't seem to be a good time to sell). My partner did say once, if I have to go away to work, does it matter where in the UK we live? So she ran a global Rightmove and came up with Sunderland as the cheapest place to buy a house..... Until recently we have had strong ties to this area, where a brick-built dorm estate 3-bed cost over 200k, which is 1900 a month on a 10-year mortgage (SVR of course: other poss for a contractor out of work??). Now we don't hence the idea of a move.

[Tarquin Farquhar]

I'm in CZ,

none of you would like here, terrible place, just terrible

think .Net, think France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland

you know it makes sense

All the best,

Milan.

Thanks Milan, that tells me what I need to know.

Any good CZ property sites in English, then?

[Tarquin Farquhar]

You don't need any extra resources to work anywhere in the EC. In Germany you probably need rather less than here, as the cost of living is cheaper.

My point, well put. I need more resources to stay.