The last few weeks have really seen our focus on moving to France change from the abstract to the detailed
I’m pleased to announce that Rachel Lawrence has been appointed to the position of Relocation Director. This is in reflection of:
It was always a bit of a gamble going early with the voluntary redundancy, and while roles have come up, Local Government now seems obsessed with making sure people are in an office (even for a temporary role 5 hours away).
While we could agonise about this, it is what it is, so it makes more sense to grasp the opportunity of really firming up plans and ironing out the details.
And this has really borne fruit….
As much as we love our car (purchased Sept 2024) and had been planning to take it with us as we moved, the realities are that this isn’t feasible.
We’d have to class the car as ‘permanently exported’ (so far as DVLA is concerned) which renders our plans to come back and sell it later in the stay unfeasible.
Not only that, UK insurance stops the instant we don’t have a UK address. And although there are arrangements we could make it’s all starting to stack up against the idea.
This makes the logistics of our actual move (the two of us and the cat) and a replacement french car a bit like the Fox, Chicken, and Grain riddle in that we need to take the cat, sell the car and buy a new one. Just not in that order.
So we’ve decided that our best move is to sell before we go, hire for a short time when we arrive and then purchase a car once there. There are still some gaps in the logistics (like how do we get to the port when stuck out here in Tolpuddle with no car?) but we’ll work on them.
Usefully we’d signed up for a webinar with the wonderful folk at Ibanista and spent a good 90mins in the company of about 20 other people looking to make the same move as us.
The webinar was focused on visa rule changes and had a visa lawyer providing answers to sent-in questions. Initially I thought this was a bit of a waste of time as the questions were pretty basic, but actually we ended up learning a few key facts we didn’t know:
None of these revelations have changed our plans, but they are really useful to know in terms of some of the flexibilities available.
On the back of our Ibanista session, and some good info picked up about potential health insurance providers, our Relocation Director got onto finding out more.
We picked on Fab French as an insurer as they offered a good rate and has a visa guarantee for the 1 year cover we have to get for a visa. They are also English speaking and have some nice extras as part of their package.
The key thing we learned is that after 3 months residence we can apply for French state health insurance (l’Assurance Maladie) from CPAM (Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie). This will cover 70% of our costs, so we need to take out additional personal insurance cover via a Mutuelle. Yeah, although we have a full year’s insurance - I’m still scratching my head about that one.
However, Alsace has a special social security regime that provides up to 90% of care rather than the default 70%, so the Mutuelle should be a lower premium at least.
So a chunk of up-front cost for the mandatory insurance, and then an extra cost for the Mutuelle but hopefully costs will settle from year #2 onwards. Once we reach state pension age we can grab an S1 form which should remove all extra costs and have the UK cover our costs. But that’s some time away.
One of our Director’s first actions was to look into removals costs and the practicalities of achieving this.
We had a good visit from Johnsons of Shaftesbury who gave us the skinny on the best approach. If possible, we should look to be part of a partial load rather than having our own lorry. That way, we can reduce costs by the removers scheduling our move at the same time as others; sharing the cost.
This sounded like a good deal, and it turned our minds to the question of “what do we really need to take?”. First up on the list was our groaning bookshelves in the office.
While a full bookshelf is a lovely thing to behold, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve taken and re-read a paper book from the shelves, having moved over to Kindle some years ago. I did read a comment by someone about bookshelves being a ‘trophy case’ where you display to other people things you have read. And that’s what it felt like; a packing liability.
I’m sure some bookphiles will be spitting pages at reading that, but having moved them all down here to Dorset 5 years ago (AND having cleared out a number as part of that) I think we can attest to the fact that it isn’t worth doing again.
So a brief liaision with WeBuyBooks and we shipped off 2 box loads for a modest bit of coin, leaving another 10 boxes to head to the charity shops. Job done!
The same principles are being applied to the rest of the house, room by room, as we move towards our leave date.
I’ve never seen the point of redecoration to sell really, but in the case of our middle bedroom an exception had to be made.
Some time ago, in an attempt to reduce drafts, I’d made the questionable decision to pull out the weep vents on the windows, fill it with expanding foam and stick over it some nasty adhesive foam tape. Job done, right?
Well, no. And after a few years the purpose of the weep vents became clear as moisture built up and the wallpaper started peeling around the windows. Plus that expanding foam didn’t exactly stop expanding…In short, it was a mess and a little to obvious to a potential buyer. So we bit the bullet and tackled it.
First genius move by Director Rachel was to get rid of the heavy, ugly curtains (also stained by the expanding foam - what was I thinking?) and swap out the awful blind for the venetian blinds from the back bedroom.
So began the restoration of the windows, which after much swearing, careful use of WD-40 and scraping with an old credit card all the foam staining was gone! Once I’d dug out the foam through to the outside vent I just had to find a supplier for a replacement vent and we were set.
Wallpaper was stripped, white emulsion applied, new blinds added and suddenly the room looked so much better.
We’ve also:
But with the prospect of an (empty) house when we’ve gone, a new (French) car, new contents insurance required etc we need to work out how it all gets covered. That feels like one to wrestle with.
Plus, after missing the cancellation of a direct debit when we moved to Dorset (don’t get me started), and me stupidly recently taking out a new 2-year broadband contract (no choice really), how we deal with utilities and ending contracts feels like a detailed plan is needed.