Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption
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Windymiller
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Moving abroadI read in last Saturday's Independent that Britons are leaving by the thousands to find a better standard of living. A letter explains how they moved to Poland and have a better lifestyle all round, from the people, to the price of land and housing.
And there's more. Champagne producers are buying English farmland to increase grape growing area, and farmland is becoming the latest must-have for the newly rich, prices are going up 10% in three months. If I were 20 years younger!
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Went
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Don't know what age you are but it is never too late.....friends of mine have just relocated and they are both nearing 70.....having a ball.
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Behemoth
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Re: Moving abroad | Windymiller wrote: | | Ia better standard of living |
A phrase which covers many reasons.
There was somthing in the Grauniad today but the bottom line was that you still need a job and you still need to be well paid by local standards to enjoy the 'better standard of living'. There are plenty of impoverished poles who are not enjoying a better standard of living and are voting with their feet. France is awash with Middle Class English people who can afford to move there not plumbers and electricians rushing for a lower income even if it is supported by better welfare etc.
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kevin.vinke
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Certainly thatīs what gave us the push. A change in job circumstances led to the opportunity for only one of us to work.
The lifestyle still means that the one job has to be a good one to continue that way but we are on a 10 year plan (almost -2 now  ) where we will own what we need and reclaim the time that the job takes from the family.
The worries are the same though, OHīs firm / sector has just been bought out and the possibility is always that we will be in the same situation we were in 3 years ago except we donīt have a 2nd job to fall back on.
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Vanessa
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There are so many other ways to measure quality of life apart from purely financial.
MOH and I relocated to France 18 months ago. We gave up well-paid jobs to come here. What we have now, is so different! We are penny-poor, in that we are currently living off less than 1/10th of our previous income (and yes, there are times when I wish we had more money) ... BUT we have space, clean air to breathe, time to talk to our lovely French neighbours, and the chance to run a smallholding.
If we'd stayed in England, we'd still have a large mortgage (we're mortgage free here), and still be working the 9-5 grind. We'd still be rushing here there and everywhere, still fighting for a parking space in the supermarket, still be breathing highly-polluted air, and still be stressed to the eyeballs. 
now, if we could have the best of both worlds, we'd be living in luxury!! 
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Windymiller
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| Ian33568 wrote: | | Don't know what age you are but it is never too late.....friends of mine have just relocated and they are both nearing 70.....having a ball. |
My age, 61 years.
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