I am seriously considering leaving the UK!

[RedAlix]

We are quite lucky that we do own our house but that is because we were very lucky that I had a really well paid job and lived with my parents and managed to save a large amount. Also bought the house with my sister originally so that made it easier. A few years ago she bought her own place so she now owns a % of our house and has her own too.

I'm glad our mortgage is a lot cheaper when you compare it to renting, its less than half what people get charged for some of the houses they rent round here.

I'm also lucky that my husband has an excellent job, he started last year on a salary a few thousand less than what he was earning but he is happier in this job and at home a lot more (its shift work now, before he was working 8-6 5 days a weeks and 8-2 on a Saturday and was often finishing late).

We can't afford holidays yet and that is why I try and earn from home, also getting those treats that we couldn't afford.

My sister is trying to talk me into becoming a nurse, you get a bursary that is more that I make from working from home but then I would have to pay more for childcare. I want to wait till both our children are in secondary school before looking at starting a new career.

I couldn't leave the UK, it would mean leaving my family behind and we are all really close. I don't even think I could move to the next town lol (we all live within 5 minutes of each other!)

 

[sparkleandshine]

I lived abroad when I was younger too stellajose but in the south of france and Italy not Spain. We could never afford to go to the cafes either, it was McDonalds, crepes, Paninis and slices of pizza bought from street sellers or picnics from the supermarkets for us! We weredefinitely living on a shoestring but the nice weather made up for it and you ddon't mind so much in your early twenties, I never expected to have much money at that age as just starting out then and no one else I knew seemed to have much then either

 

[sparkleandshine]

So, the job hunting continues!

I've applied for a part time secretarial job - 16 hours - today, and the job I applied for yesterday got back to me to say if the person they have given the job to doesn't work out then they want to interview me, they said they would be in touch again in march to let me know, so that's better than nothing I guess.

The oh went for another interview today but it was this morning and I've not heard from him since then so I'm guessing it musnt have gone well

One day, we will look back and laugh..( i hope!)

 

[sparkleandshine]

Interesting article on the front page of the telegraph today, which I spotted whilst in the supermarket, about the UK's 'brain drain'. Apparently the top destinations for Brits leaving the uk to work abroad are Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, Spain and Ireland and those who were earning around £2,000 a month in the uk can expect to earn £2,580 abroad and report better health and a better quality of life than they had in the uk

 

[shahzadh]

This was really interesting thread. Being a college student on gap year i guessing it will quite hard get a job when i finish my uni.

 

[RickyRaj]

Interesting article on the front page of the telegraph today, which I spotted whilst in the supermarket, about the UK's 'brain drain'. Apparently the top destinations for Brits leaving the uk to work abroad are Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, Spain and Ireland and those who were earning around £2,000 a month in the uk can expect to earn £2,580 abroad and report better health and a better quality of life than they had in the uk

My cousin and his young family moved out to Australia a couple of years ago. They were under forty and both had good skills which meant they qualified - Australian immigration works on a points system. Additionally you have to have some money behind you.

 

[RedAlix]

Cost of living is more in Australia as well. Food is quite expensive there. My cousin came over from Australia last year and said everything is so cheap over here!

 

[mbmetro100]

I can understand why you'd want to move from the UK, as the quality of life in my opinion has dropped
considerably over the past two decades and there's a lot of unrest. The two things we have over most
countries is a decent healthcare service and educational system, but even they areas aren't the same as they use to be

Unless you have a barrel of cash to buy a property outright and lots of savings then, moving abroad wouldn't make
much sense, as the economy and employment in popular tourist places like Greece and Spain is awful. Yes, the culture
and language barriers can be overcome, but there's no denying the lack of financial opportunities.

Having your own villa, outdoor pool, orange trees and excellent weather is very appealing, but unless you have loads of cash
then, I would keep that thought for further down the line and as a retirement plan.

 

[sparkleandshine]

Really, we just want to be happy, and we are not happy living the way we are now, feeling like we are barely scraping by all the time. And not being able to have a home of our own, that's the one that really upsets me the most. Living in private rented you still feel like you are living like students when in reality you're in your forties with kids of your own. That's the two big issues really, housing and wages which aren't keeping pace with the cost of living. It's like being a kid at a party where you are told, look, there's all these lovely things, but you can't have any of them. We know we're not the only ones feeling like this but we can't understand it really the way things have turned out for us, because we are both graduates with good degrees and we both devote a large proportion of our time to searching for better jobs, I've been looking for over a year and my partner has been looking for the best part of 3 years, and we're both very determined, focused people who go after what we want in life, so really, we should be doing a lot better than we are but we're just not, somehow the dice just doesn't seem to be falling in our favour. It's been hard seeing friends get well paid jobs, buying houses, go on holidays and so on and all the time wondering when is it going to be our turn. Hopefully one day soon it will be. If we were to leave the UK, it would be when my daughter is older, as we are very happy with her school and wouldn't want to take her out of it

 

[Jon]

Really, we just want to be happy, and we are not happy living the way we are now, feeling like we are barely scraping by all the time. And not being able to have a home of our own, that's the one that really upsets me the most. Living in private rented you still feel like you are living like students when in reality you're in your forties with kids of your own. That's the two big issues really, housing and wages which aren't keeping pace with the cost of living. It's like being a kid at a party where you are told, look, there's all these lovely things, but you can't have any of them. We know we're not the only ones feeling like this but we can't understand it really the way things have turned out for us, because we are both graduates with good degrees and we both devote a large proportion of our time to searching for better jobs, I've been looking for over a year and my partner has been looking for the best part of 3 years, and we're both very determined, focused people who go after what we want in life, so really, we should be doing a lot better than we are but we're just not, somehow the dice just doesn't seem to be falling in our favour. It's been hard seeing friends get well paid jobs, buying houses, go on holidays and so on and all the time wondering when is it going to be our turn. Hopefully one day soon it will be. If we were to leave the UK, it would be when my daughter is older, as we are very happy with her school and wouldn't want to take her out of it

If you have been looking for this perfect job to change everything for over 3 years (1 year for you) and nothing has appeared then it's time to change the gameplan


Stop focusing on ONLY this job will make everything better and instead look at other ways of achieving that extra income that you want for a house/holiday/whatever

 

[sparkleandshine]

Any ideas Jon?

Homeworking wise I have tried, mystery shopping, social media management, virtual assistant work, direct selling, proofreading and telemarketing and never made more than a couple of hundred a month doing any of them, I know this is not to be sniffed at but really I need to be earning more than that.

I know you say the best companies to apply for are appen/lionbridge/leapforce, I've taken that on board and applied to appen and lionbridge, (I didn't think leapforce was for me as I don't understand google +) but not heard anything back as yet. How long do they normally take to come back to you?

 

[Jon]

Any ideas Jon?

Homeworking wise I have tried, mystery shopping, social media management, virtual assistant work, direct selling, proofreading and telemarketing and never made more than a couple of hundred a month doing any of them, I know this is not to be sniffed at but really I need to be earning more than that.

I know you say the best companies to apply for are appen/lionbridge/leapforce, I've taken that on board and applied to appen and lionbridge, (I didn't think leapforce was for me as I don't understand google +) but not heard anything back as yet. How long do they normally take to come back to you?

Understanding Google+ is nothing to do with the role - Just apply for leapforce, it's fine


outside of homeworking you need to look at part time work, evening work, weekend only work etc.

 

[sparkleandshine]

ok i'll apply to them as well then

evening and weekend work outside the home is impossible for me right now as my partner is never around then due to the shift patterns he works and one of us needs to be at home to look after my daughter as we have no friends/family who live close by who could have her, she is nearly but not quite old enough to leave on her own for hours at a time, I've started leaving her on her own when I go out to the shops and so on though so we are getting there with that one

part time work is what would suit me best at the moment, from home/outside the home, working around the school day I could easily work from 8-4 but currently only working from 11.30-1.30

or homeworking at evenings/weekends/anytime

I'm still taking on proofreading assignments but the work is sporadic I've not been offered anything at all by my agency since November

 

[sparkleandshine]

Now this, I think, would be a really great idea but I can't see them winning the general election

The Lib Dems are promising to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder through a "rent-to-own homes" scheme, if they are in power in May.

Under the plan, young people in England would make monthly payments equivalent to rent to build up a share in their home, without requiring a deposit.

After 30 years, occupants would gain full ownership of the property.

The Liberal Democrats have unveiled a policy that they claim would be revolutionary: to aim to make 30,000 new homes a year in England available to tenants who would slowly acquire equity as they made monthly rental payments, until after 30 years they owned the property outright.

Under the plan, occupants would have an option to cash-in their share at any time, which could potentially to be used as a deposit for a home on the open market.

"Prices are so high renters cannot afford to save for a deposit, which means they can never take that first step onto the housing ladder.

"Young people deserve better. Rent-to-own will mean, regardless of their background and family circumstance, they will be able to make this dream a reality."

Social enterprise business Gentoo Group said the idea was modelled on a 2011 initiative it had successfully piloted in the north-east of England.

Peter Walls, the firm's chief executive, said rent-to-own was "a now-proven concept" which "has already unlocked homeownership for many that were excluded".

 

[fivecats]

In response to the original post about moving, I just wanted to say I have experienced something similar and have moved at a time when it felt that we didn't have much going for us - my partner and I only moved to another part of the UK, but we did it to try to get something better, and psychologically it was a bad mistake to make.

We got to the new area and the fact that we didn't know anyone hit us hard - it was more than just the social aspect though - I was going to the job centre for advice and being told 'You'll never get anything because you're not from round here and no-one knows you'. It was the most intensely awful period of my life - there seemed no way to get any kind of foothold.

Six months down the line, we moved back home, and within a week I had a job in a call centre and my partner was working in a café - low paid, zero-hours jobs, but at least we were back in some kind of system and from there we could start bargaining for something better.

I know the jobs market can be dismal and it can be tempting to think you need to make a major life change to get anything better, but in my experience, you run the risk of really stacking the odds against yourself by moving when you're in that position, because you have to deal with the stressful side of moving, finding your way around a new place, having no connections, etc etc etc. No matter how bad things got now, my response would always be to 'use the things you know' and try to improve your situation little by little. Just my take on it

 

[sparkleandshine]

I understand what you're saying, we already live in one of the major cities so on the surface of it seems like there are plenty of jobs so the problem here is that the competition for jobs is just so incredibly fierce. But I have met so many people from wales and northern Ireland who have said they didn't want to move to Manchester but they had to just to get any kind of work at all. I can't imagine what it must be like to be in that kind of position, where you don't want to move but you feel like you have no choice

 

[Jon]

As someone that has moved around the UK quite a few times and had to 'start again' many times I find it goes one of two ways for people


If you move somewhere and you start working then it goes well. You increase your social group through work and get introduced to other bits and bobs that may interest you. Work nights out, oh YOU like the theatre as well! We should go! etc...


If you move somewhere but fail to get work and you end up sitting at home everyday alone you WILL feel cut off no matter where you live. You will then go through the 'rose coloured glasses' phase where you forget why you wanted to leave your original city in the first place and long to go back. Homesickness might also be a part of this if again, you are sat at home everyday with no social group and no company to bond to.

 

[sparkleandshine]

Yeah I agree, you would have to be really brave to move without a job to go to, especially if it meant giving up your support network

 

[fivecats]

When we moved, my partner had actually been given a job in the new place, but it had fallen through due to local council cuts and no-one told us that before we re-located. If I was going to move again, I'd try to do a much more thorough evaluation of the new place first, and make sure it was the kind of place where there would be some sort of contingency plan possible - I know there are never any guarantees, but in our case we moved from a city to a quieter area and we just weren't prepared for how insular it would be and how few opportunities etc.

 

[Jon]

Yeah I agree, you would have to be really brave to move without a job to go to, especially if it meant giving up your support network

yeah I mean whenever I have moved i've always done interviews in the 'new' city and got a job there first.


In regards to giving up your support network, i don't think it's a deal breaker as new support networks can be rebuilt as long as you are doing something like work or volunteering.


I said this, but then I'm not a mum who is stuck at home with the baby while the other half works which I imagine is a setup that quite a few of our members would find themselves in