We are firmly in ‘countdown territory’ now we’ve flipped into the New Year. As I’m writing this it’s 37 weeks to go (or 9 more payslips as my son-in-law pointed out).
Key change this month is Rachel having finished work after taking voluntary redundancy from Dorset Council. Plans are for her to get an agency job for a fixed term contract to help keep the money coming in, but first an enforced (under LGPS rules) break from work through January.
As a result many lovely things have emerged from the kitchen lately (long may that continue) plus a great focus on exercise and learning French (see below). It’s almost a mini-retirement and I love watching from ‘inside’ work to imagine how it will be for me.
My side of work plods on, with changes happening all around. We lost two lovely colleagues to redundancy (their choice, so they went with smiles, pleased to be leaving the new regime they were working under) which sucks. Although it feels like a bit of a slog, it’s amazing to see the weeks actually go quickly, so I look forward to each Friday when I realise that countdown has reduced by another digit.
A switch of AI app in December meant I’ve started using Gemini instead of ChatGPT, and the difference has been immediately beneficial. I learned that:
We set up a web chat with Josh from Harrison Brook on the Assurance Vie as they’d popped out of some of the links we’d followed. Seems weird using a life assurance policy as an investment vehicle, but it seems to be the done thing. This will be particularly important as we’ll need somewhere to keep the house sale proceeds when they come in.
Josh pretty much said we are too early in the year to discuss this, and that we can’t set up an Assurance Vie until we are resident in France. So we’re putting a pin in this one for now.
However, with Rachel’s redundancy lump sum we did achieve our savings target for 2025. Planning a target to the end of September is trickier given it depends on Rachel finding a job, but we’ll be fine either way.
Rachel had tracked down a relocation agent, Ben from Ibanista, and we had a web chat with him to go through our plans.
We’d already had an indication that finding just what we wanted in Colmar may be a stretch given that market, so more recently we’d been shifting our search to Strasbourg and including apartments as a possibility. The tricky factor is the cat; apartments give us more choice and a lower cost but remove outside space for him. We were given an honest opinion from Ben on that.
Ben set out how he and his team could help us, which sounded perfect for what we wanted; help with putting together the all-important dossier for showing agents and landlords. It was good to hear as retirees we were the best case scenario as we wouldn’t be relying on savings to fund the stay - an instant turn-off for French landlords. Again we are a bit early to be discussing this, but we have a date set to discuss again in August as we get closer to retirement.
Top tips from Ben were:
Not only were Ben’s fees spot on for us, we also both liked him and his approach, so he’s definitely on our list to use. The conversation got us both excited and cemented that idea of making our plans ‘real’.
Rachel storms ahead with her dedication to learning and extra time to do it. She’s signed up for an Open University course like I have and generally likes their approach, which has pulled her away from quizzes and grammar books. She’s watching a Netflix show about a French property agency so is absorbing lots of real language this way
I’m still finding it hard going. I did finish my Beginners Part 1 course over Christmas and signed up for Part 2 straight away, but haven’t made much progress yet. I’ve also started focusing on phrases as I find this a good way to learn about vocabulary, grammar rules and practical things I will need to say. To that end I was delighted to get a ‘phrase a day’ desk calendar as an Xmas present from Rachel; every day I’ll learn it but also chuck into Gemini to dive into the grammar side of it.
We’ve both been looking at the information on the Formation Civique (or French Civics exam) required for longer term residency. Obviously getting ahead of ourselves in that respect, but actually a fascinating way to learn about what makes France tick.
Unlike the UK, France has really set out what it stands for and how those principles guide its policies and actions. It’s pretty inspirational stuff; Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité are easier to guide your actions than liking cricket, fair play and queuing.
With a shift in potential location to Strasbourg we figured we’d better check the place out a bit more in advance to see what areas might suit us, test out the public transport (although we did a bit of that in September) and soak in the vibes. So we’re now planning a week in Strasbourg late May as well as a break in Northern France a bit earlier.
Strasbourg we’ll do by Eurostar (via Lille to avoid the Paris slog) and Northern France by car using Le Shuttle again, which was a real winner in September.