Barcelona - Day 29
37 weeks - officially classed as full term today, although not expecting any appearances for a few weeks yet
We've been in Spain for almost a month. The transition from the UK has been a fairly expensive one (husband, please don't read on as you will again accuse me of being obsessed with money which is neither true nor fair).
Major move costs included:
Preparing our flat in London for rental - just shy of £4,000 for the year: (safety certificates - £150, boiler repairs due to shoddy installation - £300, decorating - £1,000, deep cleaning - £300, key cutting - £50, professional inventory - £120, estate agent costs for the year - £1,750).
Perhaps it's not fair to include this as a move cost as we would have had to move anyway - a one bedroom flat on the third floor with no lift would have surely scored highly on the impracticability index. Most of the costs should be (hopefully) one-off costs not to be seen again, but we'll see. The good news is that the monthly mortgage payments have reduced by almost £250 so the rental income now more than covers the mortgage and running costs. One less thing to worry about.
Storing items that we didn't ship - £80 per month
Shipping items that we didn't store - £400
New luggage to maxmise our baggage allowance - £200
Excess baggage costs to cover the additional weight we managed to cram into our extra large suitcases - £100
One-way flights from UK to Spain - £150
Equipping our new flat in Barcelona from Ikea with basic living items - £350
Spanish estate agent costs - £550
I'm fast discovering, that other than property rental and public transport; and it is well known that the cost of public transport in London is obscene; that living here in Spain is really no cheaper than living in London. On many counts it certainly feels as expensive if not more so. Our timing as far as the £/Euro rate is concerned has been pretty poor, but even if we were living in the heady times of a couple of years ago when a British pound bought about 1.4 euros, I still think that my conclusion would be the same. Perhaps I need to adjust my buying to buy the same as the locals, which is largely what I've been trying to do, but there are some things that really do feel like daylight robbery.
A bottle of Listerine mouthwash, 6 euros (in the UK, £2.50)
A bottle of baby lotion, 18 euros (in the UK, £2 for a well known brand)
A babygrow, 30 euros (in the UK, £10 for 6 and they would be "not just any babygrows")
5 bananas, 4 apples and 2 custard apples from the market, 6 euros
I have already started compiling my list of things to bring back from my first trip home.
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I moved back from spain to the uk in sep 2009 I don"t live in london were you will pay £3.00 for a can of coke from a street vender but I do live in st wales were you can buy a pint of carlin or srongbow for £1.79 any main meal on the menu for £3.50 if you go to any tesco asda etc
ReplyDeleteyou can buy 1 tin of beans for £0.29/1 larg loaf £0.47/1 ltr of milk £0.49 / marsbar £0.35/twix £0.35 the list goes on and on and the last time I was in spain 3 months ago a small loaf was 2 euros\1 tin of beans 90 cents 1 ltr of milk 85 cents /1 marsbar 1.20 euros /1 twix 1.20 euros thay say in spain the british pound is a worthless currency now most of the EU is using the euro I disagree here in the uk it will buy allot more than any euro will buy you in the EU.