December 2010 The Expat Telegraph published an article I had written called Thoroughly Modern Expats.
For a number of years following I was a regular monthly columist for them.
Reading through the original articles that I submitted recently, I was taken by a) how relevant many of them still are today, and b) I had no online record of them of my own.
So I have added the original submissions to this blog, so if you want to read more of them just search for telegrapharticles, and while you are at it you may want to search for expatarticles as well to see other columns I wrote in the past for various newspapers in Spain.
I have been living this so called ‘expat’ life for a number of years now and whilst recent years have seen me based in Southern Spain this isn’t the only country that I have called home for a variable period of time.
In all these years one question stands out as being frequently asked by fellow expats, locals and friends and colleagues back home: “do you see yourself ever living back in the UK”. The accurate and truthful answer to that has been no, I don’t. Well not by the definition that I suspect they mean i.e. job, career, family, golf club, fish and chips on a Friday etc. Shouldn’t really be a surprise as I would venture the opinion that the majority of expats are expats partly because they don’t feel that a ‘settled’ lifestyle suits them.
At least it used to be the accurate and truthful answer.
One advantage of being an expat at a relatively early age is that I have had the opportunity to observe many a retiree struggle with advancing years, illness and the loss of friends. I say advantage not in a gloating sense but in an informative way and it has made me revise my thoughts regards the future significantly. Asked the same question these days my response is that yes I do envisage returning to live in the UK in the twilight years to (hopefully) be close to friends, family and familiarity. We have ensured that we have retained a base in the UK to ensure we have somewhere to go, and indeed we have started on a plan to ensure that we both spend more time back in the UK than either of us had envisaged, maintaining relationships, developing a future lifestyle. At the same time we have ensured that we have the fluidity and flexibility to move back when the time is right for us.
Perhaps the most salient lesson of this current financial crisis has been provided by the amount of people that have become trapped, unable to move back home. Having sold up in the UK they have opted to invest in a property rather than rent, they have moved all their capital over to take advantage of favourable exchange rates, and they have severed (virtually) all ties with the UK. Of course in years gone by these were admirable actions: a commitment to the future, throwing yourself whole heartedly into your expat life, having faith in your decision, becoming an expat.
But the world changes and it is important that expats like everyone else change with it. Long before the financial crisis ruined many a dream I had been amazed at just how many expats had settled only to return for what appeared to me to be remarkably predictable reasons: ill health (own and family back home), birth of grand children, inability to adjust to a new culture.
Initially when asked I would offer the advice to rent before you buy. Give yourself time to adjust, to try the new life before committing lock stock a barrel. Now when asked my answer has halved: rent! Why sell up in the UK, invest in a country that you don’t know, that you are unlikely to live in for the 15 to 20 years that a property realistically requires to appreciate through the inevitable peaks and troughs of the market. Why sit at home in your new country in your lovely house but with no cash to enjoy your time abroad. You may think I am writing exclusively about retirees but I suggest the same applies for all age ranges.
I can hear the property companies and economists spluttering away about how the economy needs investment in property but I would offer the suggestion that the economy would be compensated by the extra spend on leisure activities, trips back home, the movement of money to take advantage of the fluctuating market.
All of which has led to be wonder about the future for expats, indeed if the role of the expat even exists anymore?
In its broadest sense, an expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. There is little differentiation made between being temporary of permanent in the definitions although for tax purposes an expat has to have plans on retuning home, which is a key point: being an expat is a temporary state.
So at the risk of upsetting many an expat I am going to suggest that the majority of you are actually immigrants: a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence. I say ‘upsetting’ because I have little doubt that many attach a certain stigma to being an immigrant and a certain cache to being an expat. It is one of lives wonderful ironies that for many a self proclaimed expat living in Spain who left the UK because there were ‘too many immigrants’ the fact is the UK is full of expats and Spain is full of immigrants from the UK.
Of course there are still many British expats in Spain, professionals working and living abroad for a period of time for example but they are in a minority and I suspect that they are not the ones we are meant to conjure up when we read about the Expat Dream, or as that should read the Immigrants Dream ……. doesn’t quite have the same ring about it does it!
So do expats really exist? Of course, but in nowhere near the numbers that we are led to believe. All that could change though if more rent rather than buy, see their time abroad as a temporary period of their life, a twilight adventure, before heading back to to the UK to see out their final years.
Please feel free to search on Google for the published versions of these columns.