Christmas Markets Limousin 2013

http://www.tourismelimousin.com/en/do-not-miss/limousin-live.php#bloc

Cheap SIM card for visitors to France

A French pay-as-you-go SIM card to save big on your calls and internet connection!
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Since beginning of November 2010, the mobile operator Transatel has launched a service called LeFrenchMobile. This French pay-as-you-go SIM card is entirely in English and dedicated to...

© 2013 - Lost-in-France.com

Renovate or Renovated?

When we first started looking for property in France we had all sorts of ideas about what we should buy with the budget we had.
Once we narrowed down the area we wanted to live in, we started viewing in earnest.
We viewed everything from new builds to ruins and most things in between.
There was a romantic notion that we would buy something and renovate it. We looked at houses with hectares of land, lakes that were complete ruins. Conversely we checked out recently renovated properties with much less land, but in turn, much less work needed.

Ultimately we were hit by a moment of clarity. I still pinch myself to this day and thank who or whatever's up there that we realised that:

a) We can't build
b) Our motivation is poor (we are the king & queen of procrastination)
c) We struggle to get the grass cut at home - how on earth would we manage a renovation remotely?
d) Were we to buy a run down house, we would probably end up resenting it as it turned into a money pit - in the same process shattering our French dream

So we started searching for recently renovated properties.

We were lucky to find our home and bought in the first week of it going onto the market.

The house had been renovated by a Dutchman who remains a close friend of ours. What an awesome job he did too. Yes he bought cheap and sold high, but in between he added massive value saving us a job we would probably never complete and a lot of heartache.

I know that everyone moves to France for different reasons and challenges. We're just pleased that we had the foresight to recognise our weaknesses and didn't embark on a journey that could have ended in disaster for us.

Tick Tock...

It is February 2013. Still no offer on the house but we have again had quite a few viewings of the house and are keeping our fingers crossed.

I have joined a great Website called the Survive France Network, it has thousands of members and offers a wealth of information on living in France.

We’ve started thinking about our living costs when we are over there permanently and the impact they will have on our savings. We are a number of years away from retirement age and want to be confident that our savings will last.

I posted the question on the network and received over 60 replies in only a couple of days. Awesome! 

Here is the question I posted followed by a link to the continually updating responses: 

“Hi everyone!

Well our house is on the market in England with a view to permanently moving down to our lovely home in Limousin as soon as everything is sold.

This might seem a strange question but I was hoping to get a feel for “typical living costs” to help us budget / work out how long our savings will last and at what stage I’ll need to think about finding some small part - time job possibly (far easier said than done I know)!

Our house in France is paid for, we know how much our residential taxes are (do these change if we live there permanently as opposed to having a holiday home?).

The house has no central heating (something we will address at some stage - I stay close to the discussions regarding this on SFN), but we do have 2 wood burners.

Currently we have a low standing charge on our electricity with EDF, but I have read some horror stories of 3000 euros a year for electricity! We do have an electric water tank on a timer.

Our oven is gas (bottled).

The house is fully furnished and we will be bringing duplicate everything in terms of white goods with a view to storing them in the barn and replacing the items when the eventually fail..so I don’t envisage costs in that department for a few years.

Our home is appx 20 mins from the nearest decent town (Bourganeuf / Gueret), so we recognise we will need to plan carefully to minimise journeys thus saving on fuel.

It is our intention to live frugally and simply - a far cry from our lives currently! 

Sadly, the house doesn’t have much land but I hope to rent a small piece of land locally at some stage so we can have a bash at growing veg etc but in the short to medium term we will be buying the bulk our food.

There are 2 of us plus 2 cats, and the humans are veggie..

We probably have enough books to last us a lifetime and I think the only real luxury will be access to t’interweb..and a TV.

Perhaps this a bit “finger in the air” and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people saying that we should have done this exercise first - but hey ho that’s part of life’s excitement!!

I’m sure that there are many contributors to this site who will have done similar exercises / are living similar lifestyles and I would love to hear some experiences.

We are exceptionally excited about the next chapter in our lives and can’t wait to hand over our keys to the lucky people who buy our English home whenever that may be.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I look forward to getting some feedback.”

http://bit.ly/WbZIHY

An amazing array of responses from all perspectives. I am now in the process of thanking all contributors and drilling down the detail.

This has reinforced our decision and we know we are doing the right thing!

Ou sont les arbres?

We can't help but notice the large scale deforestation that is taking place in Limousin currently.
Each time we visit we see even greater swathes of trees being chopped and stacked by the roadsides.
Our French farmer neighbour has advised me that much of this woodland is privately owned and that a lot of the wood is for the paper industry. At times of economic difficulty the trees get cut more as times are hard. How true this is I don't know.
I always imagined that the French have a common sense, resilient and sustainable approach towards forestry management. Indeed when Iook around me I feel that this is the case.
I hope that this is just part of a managed forestry plan and that there are regulations in place to protect the beautiful countryside.
Can anyone set me straight? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Countdown has begun. 10, 9, 8....

When we first bought our beautiful second home in La Creuse 4 years ago, the plan was to holiday there as often as possible for a few years with a view to eventually retiring there.
A lot can happen in 4 years. Work has got harder and harder, our work life balance has got wore and worse, and we have fallen in love with the French way of life more and more with every visit.

This blog will catalogue our journey from today to when we ultimately move across to France - and beyond. It will share learnings to date, but most importantly will hopefully become a sounding board for us and others to share their views and experiences.
Yes we have doubts and fears but they pale when compared to our current situation.

Sprinkled throughout will some observations on life generally from both sides of the water.

The reason I have started to write this blog now is that things are starting to gain momentum. We are getting solid plans in place and are starting to act!

We hope that this blog will be of use to o considering a similar move. Also I feel the need to diarise in some way this key chapter in our lives.

When we look back at key moments in our lives (buying our French home, getting married) we struggle to remember how we got it together: what went well? What were our thought processes? How did we stay on course? What could we have done differently that would make our current challenge easier?

By recording our thoughts, activities, successes and inevitable failures via this blog, we will have something to look back on, refer to in the future should we wish to carry out a similar exercise again.

Anyway, that's the rationale behind the blog, all that remains is to get sharing!