Paphos Life

We have always set our sights on Cyp for retirement I'm 48 want to go at 55. But my cousin owns a farm on Snowdonia and said why not buy in LLanberis and do 6 months in each. He is Welsh I am not but talk welsh well. My story is I spent all my childhood in LLanber and love the place. I know Snowdon like the back of my hand. His Mum and Dad moved from Liverpool 50 years ago and have an established Welsh family Mine moved to Salford after my Dad married a Liverpool girl AND THAT IS WHY I SUPPORT BOLTON My thing is I want the best of both but Mrs wants Cyp full time. Can I have a poll on what you all would do.

One thing which I have realised is that if you have property in both the UK and Cyprus it can be quite expensive maintaining 2 properties and travelling between them! But as HIC has said the tax regime in Cyprus is more favourable!
You will need to check all this out for yourself.

Dee

We have been to'ing and fro'ing between the UK and Cyprus for about 18 months now as we have a growing family back home. One young grandchild, and two more on their way. It is far from satisfactory in many ways, not least the upkeep of two properties and the associated services, plus the costs of flying backwards and forwards. One of the more annoying aspects is that, unless you are prepared to pay high premiums, the insurance cover on our UK property only allows us to leave the property unoccupied for 60 days at a stretch. Another costly example is our internet/TV costs in the UK are very high and, to be honest, our expensive 200 Mbps internet and TV package at home does not give us a great deal more than our 10Mbps connection and TV package that we have here, so when we next return we will be looking at ways of slashing that cost as it is wasted for half of the year. Sadly, unlike here, we can't effectively turn it off and on as needed. As we spend half the year in the UK we don't want to drop down to a basic Freeview set-up, but there are ways of emulating the kind of TV package we have here in Cyprus, that will save us a lot of money. We haven't changed over to the Cyprus tax and health regime yet, but that is something that we will be looking at next, but as we are not getting any younger (a familiar theme on the forum) we have to weigh up the benefits of becoming "more Cypriot" against staying fully British in all respects. I hope that makes sense!

Feel free to PM me with any specific questions that I may be able to help you with.

Only you and your other half can decide, every ones story is unique to themselves.

Happy in Cyprus wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 3:45 am A lot may depend on whether you have children and the likelihood of having grandchildren in the future. Having lots of close family in the UK and none in Cyprus might be a disincentive to living here full-time. We are extremely fortunate having a daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren living in Cyprus; my wife particularly might find things difficult if this weren't the case. We no longer have elderly parents in the UK to fret about. And aside from quality of life issues - which Cyprus has in abundance - the tax regime here is very favourable; I believe you can earn around €19,000 a year tax-free. The weather in the UK also did it for me: I need sunshine and cannot abide the vagaries of the British climate, even in mid-summer. The long, grey, cold, wet and windy winters there were a big no-no for me.

At the end of the day, what suits one person about living in a country might not suit another...and we are all very different. Only you and Mrs Stelios can make that decision in the light of your circumstances on retirement and aspirations for the future.

Thanks HIC for very good feed back. Have a nice day mate.

We gave up our teaching jobs at 54, selling our home in Rochdale and fully intending to move to Cyprus permanently. We had a holiday property in Penrhyn Bay, which again, we intended to sell. However, certain circumstances have made us remain swallows.

One was health care. When Rosemary and I retired from full time teaching, Rosemary was due her pension at 60. Soon after it went to 62.5 then 64 and finally 66. If she had got her pension even at 62.5, we would be in Cyprus full time as we would be covered for health care at the General. Unfortunately, no Cypriot Insurance Company would touch me regarding health insurance. Also, when I was ill at New Year, I had a response ambulance at our house in Penrhyn Bay within three minutes and the main ambulance about two minutes later.Also I had my operation at one of the leading heart hospitals in the UK, Broadgreen. Even if you live in a remote part of the UK you can rely on the ambulance service. A lady on the same ward as me had been travelling from Towyn, in mid Wales, by train to Birmingham and she had been airlifted off the train and brought to Glan Clwyd hospital.

We enjoy living in Wales. We now avoid July and August in Cyprus and I have enjoyed the summer in the UK. I have walked the Wales Coast Path from Chester to Anglesey and my next venture is the Anglesey Coast Path. I have also cycled Route 5 of the National Cycleway from Chester to Anglesey.

We book our flights to Cyprus soon as they are released by easyjet and as we are regular fliers to Cyprus, we can now change them for no extra cost. This was useful when we could not fly out in February.

As we were running two houses, and having to pay other expenses In Cyprus through no fault of our own, we carried on doing supply teaching in Rochdale at our old school. Where we live in Wales is commutable to Rochdale for the odd days work.

Our rates in Wales are nowhere near what they were in Rochdale. In fact, when we had a caravan in Wales we were paying much more in rates and ground rent. We no longer subscribe to Sky but have Bts tv package which includes free sport, as we have tinternet with them. It is annoying that you cannot switch it off when you are not there, but I do watch some bt sport here in Cyprus, using a vpn.

Can I politely ask that people (like me) who have two locations in their profile, refrain from using the word 'here' as it's a bit confusing.

Just packing up now and leaving here to go there again ......

Have just edited my post. Here, for me means Cyprus but I have now got rid of all the heres.

I will be following this, as we are having the same dilemma. We will start by selling our house in the South of the UK, and moving into a rental to the south of Chester, as my sister and one of her children roost around there. We will then come over to Cyprus, where we already have a rental villa, and try to get a feel for how long we are likely to want to stay. If we feel we want to be in Cyprus for say around 4-6 months a year, we will buy a house near my family around the Wales/England border. If we feel we will be mostly in Cyprus, an apartment near Chester would be more suitable. We don't have parents now, and no children, so we are able to be fairly free. I don't see the day when I will not want to own something in the UK, it just depends what. I agree about the extra expense though, it is difficult.

Hopefully this plan will commence either in December this year, or early next year.

I would be interested in hearing about how to emulate the Cypriot TV package in the UK, if you have a minute D&PG?

We have a neighbour in the UK who uses a combination of Freeview, Amazon Prime and Netflix and we are going to assess that when we go home. If that isn't really what we are looking for, our next consideration will be to buy another Mag Box here and take it to the UK. We have asked about the viability of that from our supplier here and it is something that some folks already do. Then, depending which country we are in at any particular time, we will have one activated and one dormant. We did think about just carrying our existing Mag Box to and fro but, realistically, I don't think that they are physically robust enough for that to be a long term solution.

There is a lot of good advice here but as many have said everyone is different. My only advice would be to not burn your bridges,come over for possibly 6 months so hopefully you will then be out of holiday mode and then see how you feel. I would also assume that much more inf re Brexit and how it may affect your plans should be available soon which may help you. We lived in Cyprus for 10 years,only recently returning to the UK.We do have some regrets but at least we can say we did it rather than always wondering what if.

It’s a very personal decision........friends had lived in Cyprus for years and years before they decided to sell their UK property and build their own home instead of renting......it was a dream come true .......then unfortunately she was diagnosed with breast cancer received great treatment here in Cyprus ....... ....all was well until she became terminally ill and her daughter wished her back in the UK to nurse her ....... it put enormous pressure on everybody due to the lack of space and the impact it had on her grandchildren seeing their grandmother pass away in their home
I would always keep some type of property in the UK

D&PG wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:35 pm We have a neighbour in the UK who uses a combination of Freeview, Amazon Prime and Netflix and we are going to assess that when we go home. If that isn't really what we are looking for, our next consideration will be to buy another Mag Box here and take it to the UK. We have asked about the viability of that from our supplier here and it is something that some folks already do. Then, depending which country we are in at any particular time, we will have one activated and one dormant. We did think about just carrying our existing Mag Box to and fro but, realistically, I don't think that they are physically robust enough for that to be a long term solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAUie7c-sU8

I would just take the Mag Box with you to whichever country you are living in at the time. Don't forget the remote

I am baffled by your little movie clip.

Me too

trevnhil wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2017 7:27 amMe too

Sarcastic comments Trev trying to take the p1ss so I REPLIED WITH A COCK

STELIOSBWFC wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2017 9:14 pm

trevnhil wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2017 7:27 amMe too

Sarcastic comments Trev trying to take the p1ss so I REPLIED WITH A COCK

Comment not aim at you Trev it was aimed at D&PG. He was taking the p1ss. and yeah he was trying to be clever. I wont post for a while because there is to many who rip post apart and judge.

STELIOSBWFC wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2017 9:14 pm

trevnhil wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2017 7:27 amMe too

Sarcastic comments Trev trying to take the p1ss so I REPLIED WITH A COCK

Where was the sarcasm?

STELIOSBWFC wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2017 6:18 am

D&PG wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:35 pm We have a neighbour in the UK who uses a combination of Freeview, Amazon Prime and Netflix and we are going to assess that when we go home. If that isn't really what we are looking for, our next consideration will be to buy another Mag Box here and take it to the UK. We have asked about the viability of that from our supplier here and it is something that some folks already do. Then, depending which country we are in at any particular time, we will have one activated and one dormant. We did think about just carrying our existing Mag Box to and fro but, realistically, I don't think that they are physically robust enough for that to be a long term solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAUie7c-sU8

It was not aimed at trev. This muppet was trying to be clever. It was a post from my heart but he took the piss