The beginning of the rest of our lives…

So we decided to escape the rat race and work for ourselves, well if you are going to slog your guts out it may as well be for your own pleasure rather than to make someone else rich.

But how do you get out of the Rat Race and live a good life? You need to be self sufficient and financially independent, right. We still had a big mortgage with 17 years left to go until we could call it all ours and paid for. We did have a good income and a good lifestyle but this depended on a well paid job and a healthy profit share bonus at the end of each year.

So armed with a calculator we added up what we were worth if we liquidated our assets and became cash rich. I am fortunate (through working) to be in receipt of a military pension which is index linked from my 55th anniversary so 55 seemed to be the optimum year to do it, but we wanted to go now.

We worked out that if we sold the house we could use any equity 90k to buy a property in France and then live on the pension aided by any savings to raise the living level until I was 55 ( that would be August 2013) - so we had a plan…

Since we had done some riding on France we had a good idea of where we would like to be located. Since we also wanted to spend what quality time we had riding our bikes we would need to be near some of the best biking roads we could find but also in an area which would afford us a 360 degree option of rides which would be different. Our choice was the Limousin. With the Med, and Spain to the South, Switzerland, Italy, and the Alps to the East, The Atlantic Coast to the West. North gets us the Grand Massif, Holland and of course the UK.

We were pretty lucky to find a house which met all of our criteria quite quick – second house hunting visit. It was on the market for 120,000 euros plus fees another 12,000 euros just over the budget but we made an offer of 110,000 euros and to our surprise it was accepted, we put our house on the market in October 06 and within 3 days we had accepted an offer for £5,000 more than we expected. We were commited.

Since we still have to save a bit of cash we decided we wouldn’t go over full time until I was 50 so we needed somewhere to rent in the meantime. Well you could have knocked us down with a feather when the buyer (a fellow Marine) offered to rent our house back to us until we go and for £100 less than we had been paying on the mortgage – RESULT!

SO we have a house in France which cost us £84,000 leaving us some money over for improvements a place to live in the UK whilst we save a little and a future to look forward to.

The Future is Bright…

Our New House

Well we are nearing the end of the purchase part of our life changing experience. the final part of stage 1 is swiftly drawing to a finale which is taking possession of our new house, (New to us that is).

We Sold our house within two days of putting it on the market This made us wonder if we had under priced the property but also we were very happy that we could sell quickly thus doing away with needing a mortgage to finance the French Property. We were also pretty fortunate that the buyer was looking for an investment and was happy to rent the house back to us for less than we were paying on he mortgage.

We quickly made an offer on our French house 10,000 euro's under the asking price and were very pleased to have it accepted, we were off to a good start. When it came to transferring funds to France to pay for the house we were also in luck as the exchange rate rose in our favour and actually saved us £2500 from our estimations.

So the date is set to pick up the keys. Friday 16th February, the ferry is booked for the 14th Feb (romantic crossing of course) as you can imagine Wendy is buzzing and I am reserving judgement until I have the keys in my hand...

Whilst we are over there we need to ensure we read the meters, arrange direct debits for the utility bills, and open a bank account.

So we will be saying at our house in France from the 16th Feb til 18th Feb when we dash back to Poole, which is going to be difficult as I suspect both of us will want to stay as there is much to do for phase 2.

Stage1:

• Selling our house in Poole
• Purchasing the house in France
• finding somewhere to rent in the UK

Stage 2:

• saving up so that we can survive until the B&B can sustain us
• modernise the french house to create a home
• network and establish a B&B 4 motorcyclists

Stage 3:

• give up work in the UK
• move lock stock barrel to france
• enjoy our life riding and entertaining motorcyclists.