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Moving to France - A close thing
Now all that happened as I said about 4 years ago. Mark has worked very hard, visiting France when he can and making the house a beautiful place to live or rent out. But this has been at a cost. I’m not just talking about the cost of the ferry crossings, or the work being done, but the cost of owning the house in France. Even though no one is living in the property and it is in the process of being renovated, you still have to pay all the normal bills associated with owning a house. You have the Taxe Fonciere, the Taxe D’habitation, the water rates, the rubbish collection rates, the electric bills, plus property insurances. This can put quite a strain on anyone who has not budgeted for these accounts. So I would say that when you are deciding whether you can afford to buy a property in France make sure you make allowances for all of the above as well as renovating costs. I know that once the property is finished and we can start renting it out all our costs will be re-imbursed but until then it can be tough.
Buying a house to rent abroad is an exciting adventure. But Mark then decided that he would like us all to move lock, stock and barrel and start a whole new life. This to a lot of people would be a fantastic idea, but to me, it terrified me. My main worry was my daughters. I know Rosie, the now 3 year old would be fine settling into a French school and learning the language, but Holly and Robyn were now nearly 10 and 12 years old, and settling into a French school would be much harder for them. I have heard of success stories of children of this age settling well, but I have also heard that the older the child the more difficult it can be. My other worry was myself. I am a real home girl, with lots of friends and family that I would find it very difficult to leave. I also have several commitments, both through my daughters and to my friends. Mark struggled to understand this at the time and thought I was just being difficult and sceptical, but I really wasn’t.
Anyway after some serious soul searching I made the decision to tell Mark that we would give it a go, because I saw him suffering at the thought of losing his dream. This was the hardest decision I had ever made. We set about finding out about letting our house in England out, as a compromise so that we could return to England if things didn’t work out. I told my family and friends, and the children told their friends. There were a lot of tears and begging us to stay, but apart from a few near change of minds, we carried on making the necessary enquiries about what we needed to do next.
I think one of the things that worried me more than anything else was that once we were out there Mark was going to continue working in London and commuting from a nearby airport. It meant he would be travelling and in England for 5 days out of 7, and be with us in France for only 2 days.
Anyway time went on and things were looking as if they were really going to happen. I was struggling with coping with what we were about to do, and Mark, in his own way was trying to reassure me that things would be ok.
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