UK Finance News

Several years ago I found myself in a position where I was able to pursue a personal ambition of leaving the UK and spending some time experiencing life in another country.

As it had been a dream for most of my working life, when the opportunity arose I felt that I had to take it. Our children had lives of their own and while anxious about us leaving were supportive and keen that we should give it a go.

Having found tenants for our house in the UK but not having a time span in mind, we gave away or sold as much of our belongings as we could and travelled to Europe by car with me, my wife and our dog and a boot load of personal items.

We headed for the sun and ended up in Southern Spain, and finding a wonderful warm climate in November, we decided to stay.

We chose to live in a mainly agricultural area in the foothills of the mountains where there were other Brits and Northern Europeans but predominantly Spanish people.

We spent seven years living in Spain and during that time allowed our UK credit cards to expire in favour of doing business the Spanish way, with hard cash.

Recently for reasons beyond our control it became necessary to return to England and back to our old home. While we were aware that we needed to purchase essential furniture for the house, we hadn’t given any thought to our lack of credit cards.

OK we had cash at the bank, but we arrived with no car and a difficult though not impossible walk to reach the bank, where there is a daily limit for withdrawing cash.

It was obvious that we needed to apply for a credit card to make our lives that much easier and set about re-furnishing our home.

A few months later we are still getting there, but we have the essentials in place, thanks to the enormous array of online shopping sites and of course a valid current credit card, something that we have found it is impossible to live without in the UK in our current circumstances.

Despite the dreadful English weather it is nice to be back home, until the next time.