Depressing living here. Any ideas about moving abroad?

[Crackle]

Move somewhere really shoot, shitter than where you are now and then when you move back it'll seem like heaven.

 

[vickster]

Move somewhere really shoot, shitter than where you are now and then when you move back it'll seem like heaven.

Sunderland? Their football team are probably worse at the moment?

 

[Globalti]

It worries me when folk talk about "escaping" to another country. As others have mentioned often the escaping has do be undertaken a lot closer to home with a change in lifestyles and attitude.

I cannot work out if you own a home if so be very careful of stepping off the UK property ladder...finding that the grass is not greener but being trapped there due to differential in home ownership costs is enough to do a person in. Personally i would diversify and take the bucket and cloth to the roads offering a car cleaning service or something less limiting and perhaps a new challenge.

If your health is a worry then please think really carefully about emigrating...it could lead to awful issues when you are least equipped to handle them

All that said..if you really want to get away from it all, live like a king on a tiny budget and enjoy a fantastic climate and environment then take a look at Argentina...just keep a property foothold in the uk if you Can...just in case.

Renting a small flat in the uk will provide sufficient income to live a fantastic lifestyle in Argentina.

This is spot on. How many people move overseas with the utopian dream that everything will be better and the sun will always shine? I couldn't think of anything worse than wall-to-wall sunshine, to be honest and I've spent enough of my life living abroad to know that Britain is still one of the best places to live in the world.

True story: friends of Mrs Gti emigrated from rainy Cumbria to Australia. For about a year we kept receiving irritating emails with pictures of the kids frolicking in the surf, barbecues, parties, sunsets, trips up-country and so on. Mrs Gti would look and I knew she was slightly envious. Then it all went quiet and the next thing we knew, the family had moved back and were living back in Cumbria! It turned out that they'd had some doubts but had agreed to give it a try but then somebody they knew had been scoffed by a shark and then they had realised that Oz is full of animals that bite, sting and eat humans so they had run home. Britain may have a varied climate but it's never boring and there's a level of culture and brain power you simply don't get in other countries. If you go to London that brain power and expertise is concentrated into one city and even more remarkable.

 

[Turbo Rider]

Move somewhere really shoot, shitter than where you are now and then when you move back it'll seem like heaven.

This exactly...or very kind of anyway. Try removing yourself from the regular things in your life. Try minimising everything you do. Get as bored as you can. Cling to that boredom for a few weeks or so and be relentless with it. Then write a list down of all the things you love and a seperate list of all the things you hate. If you feel bold, try gravitating to all the things you hate for a month. See how it goes. See if you feel the same. See if you were wrong. Then switch to the things you love again, disregarding the other list completely. By the end of the course, you'll have a clearer idea of the things you like and might pick up a few new things in the process. Should feel a lot happier by the end of it.

Warning & disclaimer...may not work at all.

 

[vickster]

I'm not sure how old Accy is but he could may be try retraining, learning a new skill, a language, something different and fresh

 

[shouldbeinbed]

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

not for my next door neighbours, our chickens have reduced a once scabby but green lawn to a squelchy brown mud bath

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Another day off work due to the crap weather! I'm sat here twiddling my thumbs thinking the usual depressing thoughts about what the future holds for me. I don't think it's a midlife crisis as i've had these thoughts for years. Basically i'm peed off with living in Britain. Not only the weather but the me me greedy materialistic society we've become. The roads are packed out with get there as fast as possible ignorant motorists. Shopping centres are full of overweight slovenly scruffy gits and the country is run by self serving politicians.
These aren't all the things getting to me,there's plenty more. If someone said hey there's a nice little job for you in sunnier climes i'd jump at the chance! I'm not after much,just a change of scenery and a roof over my head with some work to pay my way. The former landlady of my local pub was ridiculed for having such a dream the other year when she retired after losing the pub and her marriage,but she took the leap and went to live in Cyprus. She said to me before she went "Why live in old age poverty in shitty Accrington when i can live in poverty in sunny Cyprus?". She went out there,found some bar work,even flew her three cats out there and now all of them live the laid back life!
Is it just a pipe dream or could it happen? Your thoughts please!

Big life changes need a positive attitude to realise their full potential. Are you in the right place mentally to make such a big change right now? If you aren't you could well relocate to live the dream and find yourself just as miserable as you are now but in a different location. You may even feel worse!

As to pipe dream or could it happen? Yes, it damn well can but only if you seize the opportunities out there and grab them with commitment and gusto.

Mid to late 90's I was earning a salary that even by today's standards was very high. My wife had a really good job too. We had fancy cars, fancy holidays in abundance, fancy watches blah, blah, blah.

But what we didn't have was time together and time to enjoy life. In fact all we had (apart from each other) were careers and 'stuff'.

We also realised that far from a high income setting you free you actually become enslaved to it. We too questioned the materialistic culture that we were part of. We also questioned our careers and what it was that we were trying to achieve in life - we haven't entirely found the answer to the latter question but are well on the way to it.

Over a period of 6 months or so and many heart to hearts we decided to positively change our lives. That's the key word to me, we would determine our future and get stuck in to making it work with the same positivity we had employed in our careers. We were not of the mindset that we were running away or feeling hard done by and defeated.

Our priorities were to quit the corporate rat race, spend a lot more time together and (we are outdoorsy people) to live in our dream location (Lake District).

The biggest hurdle was attacking the 'will we have enough to live on' question. This was scary and the thought of turning off a high income was pretty hard to handle. We did our sums though (they looked ok, not great but ok) and come the day of casting ourselves free it wasn't as bad as we thought - in retrospect we laugh at the audacity of what we did; we went from a great net salary to zero overnight. We were far from poor and had savings and investment income to live on but it was a huge step and entirely 'contra' to anything that we had done before on the financial front.

We relocated 350 miles to a smaller, still lovely house, no mortgage etc and the quality of our life improved from literally the first weekend that we arrived up here. Time slowed down, really slowed down and it was heaven. I remember that we grinned at each other as we were so happy - the weekend went on and on...they still do some 15 years down the line. And yes, we are still grinning to this day.

As time went by we realised that we did need some 'work' in our lives - it gives you a lot more than an income in our view and I now run a small business that is pretty much stress free and is pretty much run on my own terms (you can never quite avoid customer demands) and my wife has a 'lesser' but infinitely more enjoyable part-time job. We have heaps of time together and a smashing work/life balance.

We managed to achieve our dream so yes it can be done. The changes we went through were huge. We no longer have very expensive cars, corporate expense accounts, absurdly expensive holidays, wardrobes full of fancy clothes. We have a small (albeit new car), we live simply but very well and are generally to be found wearing outdoors clothing apart from when my wife has to don work attire. We have also managed to shuck materialism - we are fortunate that if we want to buy stuff we can but tbh we only buy things when what we have wears out or if we embark on some new hobby/passion/interest. We really don't care if our phones, TV's, car, etc etc etc is not right on the money fashion wise. We have absolutely zero interest in who's got what and no longer reference ourselves against other couples - we can't believe we ever did but we know it would be a lie to deny it. We live in holiday central as far as we are concerned and tbh the fact that we rarely leave the county these days is a blessing after a lifetime of living in business hotels and flitting about on trains/planes and driving silly miles in some fancy piece of German engineering day after day.

The one thing that really spurred us on was that we saw these as positive changes to our lives and attacked them with relish - I'm pretty sure that if we had approached them in a 'switch the nasty stuff off and run away' fashion that the outcome would have been very different.

I'd have a really good think about what it is you want in life and who it is you want to be. Somewhere within that thought process you may find what it is you are looking for and if you do then 'go for it' and do so with a really focused positive attitude - none of that woe is me nonsense.

Good luck to you.

 

[vernon]

No 1 son is on his way to Honduras to spend some time diving. I'm not jealous. I wouldn't want to have the sun on my back. I wouldn't want to miss these storms for anything.

I'm thinking of moving to Accrington - that'll show him.

I'll come too. That'll show us.

 

[neil_merseyside]

We downshifted (posh for dropped out) around 6 years ago when my wife had the option of redundancy (or Canary Wharf) and I could take voluntary redundancy (at legal minimum 12x£290 I think). So we had a summer cycling, then most winters as ski bums (chalet hosts/driving/odd job man etc) as well as couple of summer bum jobs in the mountains too, and we are actually still doing the winter seasons. Wages are little more than beer money (we get food and board (good board too - unusual)) and have some investment income to just cover our empty UK house expenses. No way are we going back to the real world unless/until we have too! BUT even though we love France we wouldn't move here as the numbers just don't work and despite trying we cannot master the language (despite throwing rather too much money at learning).

Get yourself a handyman/cleaner/bar job for a winter season (Mid Dec - Mid April) and see if you like it, you'll get little more than a bed and food and beer tokens but the mostly blue sky days will more than compensate for dark and dank and grey and wet UK. Ski work is a really good fit for both avoiding SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and prospect of some work in a season that is dead elsewhere.

 

[buggi]

My sister moved to Oz, loves it.
My other sis moved to NZ, loves it.
My brother lives in Scotland, not technically abroad but still loves it.

 

[vernon]

My sister moved to Oz, loves it.
My other sis moved to NZ, loves it.
My brother lives in Scotland, not technically abroad but still loves it.

They've all moved away. Do they love you?

 

[shouldbeinbed]

He's depressed about the weather...it is better (warmer, drier) in London than the NW !

TBH after nearly 48 hours of continual rain only broken up by horizontal hail, I suspect there are balls of ice in the oort cloud that are a more attractive proposition than my and accy's neck of the woods right now.

 

[ayceejay]

I grew up in the UK and have lived in Holland the US and now Quebec. All three places have good aspects and not so good aspects but one truth I have borne out is what an old friend told me years ago, he said "Wherever you go the first person you meet when you get off the plane is yourself".I thought it was a bit preachy at the time but the happiness and sadness that I have found has had very little to do with the place.

 

[Rafferty]

My daughter lives in NZ. She was depressed and almost suicidal living here . Since moving she is a changed person. It depends on what type of person you are I suppose.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

We watched this on Saturday night - it is packed with some profound messages and is not a bad light-hearted watch too. And if the sight of Rosamund Pike doesn't lift your spirits - then there is no hope for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_and_the_Search_for_Happiness_(film)