Lostlily

Well then, why are you giving me grief?? Nobody gave us the money to invest in rental properties, we did it the hard way, by scrimping and scraping and buying places that needed a lot of renovations. Which we did by hard graft. Any one of you could have done the same, a lot of our friends chose different paths IE having the latest model of car, new furniture, designer clothes, but to be honest we were never interested in all that materialistic crap. Most of my clothes were bought at opshops and our family certainly benefitted from our waste not want not attitude. The result of this is that we are pretty self sufficient and I am proud of that. It seems the green eyed monster is appearing here. We all have choices and we made ours as you made yours.

OMG you have got it so wrong! You obviously have an axe to grind....... We came here with some money which we worked 7 days a week for many years to produce. In the meantime employing many people in the UK, who to be honest are still regarded as close friends. We needed to invest our money somewhere and NO we do not rent out Mcmansions. We have a few affordable rental properties and we are providing a much needed housing need at affordable rentals, we are decent landlords. we do not exploit our tenants. You obviously have an attitude problem!

I know, I am wasting away inside with grief because I am in a similar position.

If you are still in the UK and contemplating coming over here. My advice is that it is not worth the heartbreak. I am in this position as one of my daughters has moved back to the uk and has n 18 month old, but I also have a daughter here with 2 kids. I cannot begin to explain the pain!

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Hi Marisa, You have like us, obviously tried to retire back to the UK and found it is not as easy as may first appear. I would love to hear your experience of this?

Oh My Goodness, you poor thing, how absolutely awful for you. This is another example of heartbreak isn't it

How strange, we were going to move to Cornwall, but instead came here. I still adore Cornwall. I didn't drive at all for two years before we came here but now I can manage about 5 mins as there is less traffic. Yeah Surrey is very busy and I couldn't possibly drive their either. Your idea of moving to another area would be too traumatic for us at the moment. We are near our daughter and grandchildren and I wouldn't like to be far from her as well.

You have nailed exactly what I have been trying to explain! At the moment, we can live on what we are earning and still afford a holiday back to the UK every year, although sometimes it is a bit of a struggle. BUT as we discovered last year, the 6 months here and 6 months there would alert both the ATO and Inland Revenue and we would be in a far worse situation financially (well this is what we have been advised) then because of that, we wouldn't have enough to live on, neither my own health or my husbands is good enough to go get a job. But we still have a small (not very profitable business here) which if we could sell it might make things easier. We spent months in the UK last year trying to figure out a solution, but unfortunately money does come into the decision and we basically had to abort our plans. But hey ho my chin is up a bit more today. I am going back over in a few weeks and really looking forward to it. I guess people just don't really think ahead, on the other hand "all we have is today" Yesterday is history Tomorrow is a mystery Today is a gift That's why its called "The Present" I feel for others in our situation and I am normally pretty good at figuring out solutions, rather than just moaning, but I have tried, believe me I have tried. I see their are a lot of kind compassionate people on this forum and I thank you and maybe have given some others "food for thought" or an insight into the complications of returning home for half a year.

LOL !!!!

I understand what you are saying, but I would be perhaps even more unhappy if I coerced my poor husband to go back, which would make him very unhappy as well as breaking my daughters heart into the bargain. Sometimes you can't always get what you want can you, there is always a price to pay. But it has been good to vent my feelings on here, I just need to settle myself down.

No, There is a reciprocal arrangement between the UK and Aus but I do believe that if the tax is higher in the UK you may have to the extra, but please don't take my word for it there is a lot of info on The Inland Revenue site, which should confirm your position.

I think the main problem was trying the long term rental and also the borrowing car's from friends and family. In the end what we did which worked out a lot cheaper, was to hire a car in the UK for 3 months but went through an online Aussie site (even though we were already in the UK. It may have been europcar I think) this was about half the price of renting for 3 months using our Aussie driving licence and going to exactly the same local car rental company directly. Sorry if this all sounds really confusing. We were there from Jan-June last year.

I know it seems insane. But say you did what you are suggesting, you are asked when trying to insure the car if you are a resident of the UK. Sure you can lie and say yes, but what if you have an accident? They will almost certainly not pay out. Additionally if you wish to become a resident of the UK for say 6 months, that alerts the good old Inland Revenue and we were assured by our accountant in the UK that they would then be after you for a nice slice of cake. In fact from memory, the official stance is that if you spend more than 3 months pa in the UK for 4 continuous years they can consider you "domiciled"and "resident" in the UK. Your place of domicile is where your Father was born. You can only really change that if your intent was to permanently leave that Country etc, which is of course what we did in the beginning, but by returning for frequent long trips, puts you at risk of being domiciled back in the UK. All this information, for anyone who is interested can be found on The Inland Revenue website. If you wish to cause yourself a brain tumour by getting your head around it lol.

She was 23 when we came over.

He hates it really!

I do not let my daughter know how I am feeling, because in her own way she is struggling as well, I have no wish to add to her burden, so I try to stay positive around her. My husband HATES the idea of going back. I am not in therapy at the moment, have been down that route and CBT etc, most of it didn't help me very much. The answer lies within myself. There is no solution I can work out, even though I have tried so very hard and it makes me feel quite ill even thinking about it, so unless there are ways to get around the 6 months here and there, I just need to practice "acceptance" on a daily basis.

Re car insurance. Well two years ago that is exactly more or less what we did in the UK and every other visit beforehand. But last year was a different story. There are quite a few companies who hire cars for 3 months at a time for very reasonable rates, they are brand new cars and there is some benefit to the companies regarding VAT. So that is where we first discovered the problem, they made it perfectly clear that if we were not UK resident we would be unable to get the insurance. Then our friend who lent us his car the year before (only having to pay 20 quid) was told the same thing. Believe me, we tried everything to get round this problem, I think this is quite a recent thing over there.

But what about my daughter, who I brought here totally under pressure (as many do, be honest!) She would be so sad, lonely and resentful) I do not have it in my heart to make her feel I have betrayed her At the end of the day it is not all about me!

You sound like a beautiful person You have a very lucky wife!

He truly doesn't want to go back, he may have considered 6 months here and there for my sake, but we just couldn't seem to make it work

This is not so simple, because my OH loves it here as well. What the hell am I to do, put my own needs first and upset my daughter here and my OH??? That would not make me happy either. This is just a typical example of the long term prospects of making what seems to be a great decision, back firing on you.

Just cover your back, we were offered several friends cars but when it came down to the nitty gritty, not only were we not insured if we wrecked their cars, we would also not be insured if we killed or dangerously injured someone.......Just not worth the risk.

Oh Heck, This is all becoming confused. OK let me say I am semi retired, not by choice, but because I suffer and have done for 30 years from severe anxiety attacks and they got so bad that I had to let my business go as I physically couldn't drive there. My husband and I do have a small business but we would love to get rid of it, but that is not easy. I do welcome everyones thoughts and encouragement, but the only way we could work out any sort of solution that would make us all at ease was to try to spend 6 months here and 6 months in the UK. But as I said, there were so many difficult tax implications that we simply could not afford to do this. For example, if we sold our investment properties here we would have to pay huge CGT. At the moment we are just about managing, and the idea was to keep the properties here for our income. But you are taxed at the higher rate which is a lot higher in the uk so we wouldn't be able to afford to live. The death duty thing is irrelevant as when you are dead you are dead and I am not expecting anything from my parents, just a point I wanted to make I guess. So I think I was trying to address the accusations (probably well founded lol) of being a whinging pom for the last 3 years and not doing anything positive to address it. We spoke to accountants in the UK, we spent many many weeks trying to make this work, we even almost bought a property in my UK daughters name but that fell through (long story). It is not an option for me personally to sell up everything here and go back to the UK full time (even if we won the lottery) as I couldn't break my daughters heart and my husband would be very unhappy as well. Surely it is better for one person to be unhappy and vent now and then than to break others hearts into the bargain. I feel sorry that I opened up this conversation, not because of anything unpleasant anyone has said, but also because of all the lovely support I have had as well. I know I started off on the wrong foot, but I was in a really bad space at the time and I am sorry for that. Also I feel that I wanted to warn others to think very carefully. But if anyone has any great ideas for 6 months here and 6 months there (knowing all the "resident and domicile rules" I would really welcome it. You seem to be a lovely lot of people

Well we tried that and were told they would not accept named drivers on the insurance unless we were UK residents aaaarrrhhhh drove us mad!