As promised, here the update on how things went with transferring funds from the U.K to my bank in Portugal.

By 3pm yesterday afternoon my funds had reached my Portuguese bank account and were available to be used. This whole process from start to finish took just over 24 hours, which I think is pretty amazing! I was expecting the banks to hold onto to it for at least 3 days.

Bearing in mind that I chose to pay £25.00 by using the CHAPS transfer method, I think it was worth every penny for piece of mind. You can send your money through SWIFT or BACS I’m told but the time frame to when it reaches your account will take a few days longer.

I forgot to mention yesterday that HIFX will reimburse any bank charges you incur from the receiving account, they will understandably need proof of the charge, so remember to send them a copy of your statement for your refund.

All in all a very painless experience and considering that some transactions from a U.K to U.K bank can take up to 5 days I think the HIFX have done themselves proud. They looked after me each step of the way so I shall definitely be using them again in the future.

I hope this little article has been of some help to some of you and managed to put your mind at ease.

Yesterday I had to transfer rather a large sum of money to put down as a deposit for a house that I wish to purchase in Martinchel, Central Portugal. I have been dithering around worried about making this transfer for some time. I had the dilemma of wondering if it was best to just do a straight bank to bank transfer or whether to use a Foreign Currency Exchange Company. Of course the downside of doing a bank to bank transfer would be that the rate I would be getting would be substantially lower than what I would get from a broker, but I had heard of some horror stories from other expats when using a broker.

I have been researching this for at least two years all the while knowing that one day I would be in a situation where I was going to have to hand over my hard earned money in the hands of total strangers and during all that time I had some horrible niggling doubts. Mainly because I trust no one and least of all banks and anyone that handles our money, after all some of the biggest banks in the world have made some horrendous errors with some of my accounts that have caused me nothing but grief and endless time and money on the end of a phone trying to get them to rectify their blunders.

With spiraling purchase costs and also the fact that the property I am investing in needs some work doing, and, not forgetting that the £ has dropped in value against the € quite sharply in the last 9 months I had little choice in which route I was to take. I had to get the best rate possible for my money, so that was to going to be through a Foreign Exchange organization. That in itself opened up another minefield I had to deal with because there are so many out there that I didn’t know where to start.

As you will notice throughout my blog and especially when it comes to purchasing property, I always advise everyone to do their own research, so I was back at the drawing board again spending hours and weeks trying to figure out the most efficient and professional Foreign Exchange company to use.

To cut a very long story short I decided to go with the HIFX because they ticked all the right boxes. They provide a great service, they always answered my emails and they will always rang me back, nothing was too much trouble for them. They explained everything to me and I didn’t feel afraid to ask them anything no matter how trivial and whats more they offered a great rate on the day.

It works like this, you first need to open an account with them, you don’t need to wait until you are ready to move your money, I did this over a year ago and with several brokers because back then I really wasn’t sure which one I was going to use. To open an account and in accordance with the money laundering law you have to send them a copy of your passport and a utility bill. Once your account is open you are then designated a personal manager, he/she will give you a call and discuss your needs and the time frame and so on.

When you are ready to transfer you agree on a rate with them and then you have 3 working days to get your funds into their account. They will send you an agreement email and within that email contains a link to your account which enables you to track your money. You know exactly when your money hits their account because you will receive a text message and an email stating so and of course you can see it in your online account with them, this all happened within a few hours of instructing my bank. The next step is for them to send the money to your Portugal account, this is where I’m at now so once that has cleared I will give you an update of how long it took all in all.

I hope this is useful to you all and that it will put your mind at ease, I must admit whilst the first part of the transaction has gone according to schedule is is a pretty hairy time whilst your money is in bank cyber space somewhere waiting to reach the other end.

Little things that we so often take for granted in life can fast become major obstacles when faced with living in a foreign Country where your knowledge of the language is limited or non existent. So with this in mind and going by my recent experiences I thought it would be helpful if I posted an article on how to withdraw money from a Portuguese ATM machine, generally speaking if you are using your native country bank debit/credit card the instructions will appear in your home language but if you have opened a Portuguese bank account it will be in Portuguese and you may (like me) find yourself stood in front of the screen wondering what the hell to press next.

As you will see you can perform a wide range of transactions with the Portuguese Multibank card.
Withdrawals - Levantamentos

Payments, most machines allow you to pay in cash and cheques to credit your account - Pagamentos

Transferral of funds between accounts in the same bank - Transferências da primeira conta para segunda conta

Transferrals from one bank account to an account in a different bank - Transferências Interbancárias

Paying utility and phone bills - Pagamentos de Contas/Facturas Correntes

Charging credit to a mobile phone - Carregamentos

Paying Income Tax and Value Added Tax - Pagamentos dos Impostos IVA/IRS

Paying National Insurance Contributions and Social Security - Pagamentos do Segurança Social

Paying Municipal Taxes - Impostos Municipais

Paying for goods and services - Pagamentos dos Compras e Serviços

Paying motorway tolls - Portagens

What to do at the ATM machine

Key in your PIN number

For withdrawals press Levantamentos

For payments select Pagamentos then several boxes will appear: Entidade (key in number of the entity the payment is for), Referencia (key in the reference number on the bill), Montante (key in the amount) then press Confirmar (Confirm). If a mistake is made press Anular (Cancel)

For mobile phone credits press Carregamentos – telemóveis then choose between TMN, Optimus, Vodafone

To transfer money select Transferências

To pay taxes or social security: select Pagamentos ao Estado where several options will appear such as Segurança Social (Social Security) etc.

After checking my stats I have noticed the most popular keywords that have been entered are ‘how to get a fiscal number’. I have mentioned this briefly in an earlier post but I’ll go into it a bit more for the benefit of those that need to know.

A Fiscal number is something that you will need for almost anything that you will want to do that involves money. You will need one to be able to do simple things i.e have you water & electric switched on for example and most importantly you can not open a bank account without one.

Obtaining a fiscal number will be the first thing that you will have to do to be able to live or buy property in Portugal.

Your fiscal number is basically your tax number, it’s easy to do but if you don’t reside in Portugal you will need someone to be your representative and that person must reside in Portugal obviously. You can do this many ways, for instance if you are buying property either your estate agent or your solicitor should be able to arrange this for you.

However,  there are some unscrupulous people that will charge extortionate amounts of money to do this , so be wary because this should cost you no more than 7.00€ and possibly a small fee for your translator. If your solicitor is handling this for you he may ask a fee for his time but please look around first as this should not cost you an arm and a leg.

A fiscal number involves a trip down to the local finances along with your representative and your passport, sometimes, depending on where you are applying you may be asked for additional proof of ID.

Once you have applied you will get a temporary piece of paper with your fiscal number on it, which can be used right away for any other things that you may need to do involving a fiscal number, I opened my Portuguese bank account right after getting the temporary paper. You should receive your actual fiscal card within a couple of weeks and if you change address in Portugal it’s a simple case of going to the office again and getting it changed, no fee is applicable for this.

So that’s it, nothing complicated and certainly not something that is going to set you back a couple of hundred Euro’s!

Finances Office Portugal

If you have any questions please leave a comment or contact me using my contact form.

Hi everyone

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to update this blog. Since I have emigrated I have been very busy finding accommodation and working, so not much time to write on here until now.

I have started a sister blog to this one which will be on a more personal level, mainly for friends and family and anyone else interested in the trials and tribulations of emigrating to Portugal.

You can find my new blog Tales From Tomar here. I’ve got around to making one post but I promise I shall keep it updated as often as I can.

Please pop in and feel free to leave me a comment, it will be great to hear from you!

Our Community Forum is now up and running again.

Maybe some of you are wondering why my blog has not been updated for a while. Well, tomorrow I make the first leg of my journey to Portugal by car. I will be stopping off in Dorchester overnight to spend some time with family and to say goodbye. During my last trip not all was a disaster, I managed to get a job whilst I was there, so this means I’m packing up a few worldly goods and I’m on my way.
It will be hard, I’m leaving my family and my beloved pets behind but as the saying goes ‘No pain, No gain’. At the same time there will be some advantages. I will be renting initially and I will get to see any property that comes onto the market first hand as my job will be with a registered estate agent.
I’m very excited and very nervous at the same time. My husband will be driving down with me, we will hop on a ferry at Plymouth and set sail at 12:00 noon on Wednesday. We will dock In Spain, Santander and drive down to Portugal. This will be approx. an 8 hour drive, providing we don’t get lost.

I will be starting a new blog where I can hopefully keep friends and family informed of what is happening on a day to day basis. As soon as this is set up I will put a link on my blogroll. I will still be keeping Dream Portugal alive so please keep checking back.

Upon meeting and greeting the ‘agent’ we were swiftly hustled off to view the property. The land was was absolutely gorgeous, the tiny house which comprised of a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom was finished to a very high standard with good potential to extend, however, I had a nagging feeling that the house was not licensed as dwelling. I asked the agent to get copies of the cardeneta’s, its should state on that paperwork what the building is registered as. If it doesn’t have a pre-1951 certificate or a habitation licence then it is more than likely registered as a barn or a store of some sort.

Needless to say the building was not registered as a dwelling despite making a few emails and phone calls to the agent before embarking on this inspection trip. I was irritated to say the least because every time I make an inspection trip, it costs me in the region of £600-£800!

However, this was just the start of a string of problems that were about to occur. When we left the property and arrived back at the agents house he promptly asked me that if I was interested would I mind under declaring the purchase price of the property upon completion. This is a common problem when trying to purchase in Portugal because the vendor normally wants to pay less capital gains tax. This is not only highly illegal but will come to bite you in the bum when and if you decide to re-sell because on paper you would of made more profit than in reality. The way they get away with it, is by asking you to pay X amount ‘above board’ and then the remainder in cash. Not good! and although you will be assured that this is ‘normal’ the authorities have long since cottoned onto it and they are clamping down quite a lot.

Anyway I obviously said to the agent that I would not be at all interested in doing business in this manner, which irked him somewhat. At this stage I was still keen on the property and in my mind I was trying to figure out a way to get the property registered with a habitation licence. The agent then hit me with something even I couldn’t of dreamt up - he told me that on completion the funds must be deposited into HIS account! This was unbelievable, after all I had only just met the fellow for less than an hour and he was fully expecting me to trust him with handing the funds over to the owner.

This was not going to happen, I had made up my mind that I would let my legal representative deal with that if I chose to proceed with the sale. As the evening went on he also insisted that he would be my representative. For obvious reasons this would not be very wise, seeing that he had a vested interest in the sale as he was to be paid a commission from the vendor, hence the reason as to why he was hell bent on the funds being paid to himself first. The way I read that was, he didn’t want the vendor to know how much commission he would be lining his own pocket with.

The next day the agent took me to the land registry so that I could check out that the property did indeed belong to the owner and also to check out that all the land that was included in the sale was correct. Obviously the agent requested these papers on my behalf as my Portuguese is very limited. When we got the certified copies I was asked for €115.50. That was fine but as we left the building I asked the agent for the copies as I had paid for them and they are now mine. He refused to hand them over, claiming that they were his! In the first place the owner should be paying for any paperwork such as that and secondly he had no right to keep them. Great!! It’s at this point I have made up my mind that no matter how much I loved that property I was not too happy about doing business with this guy. In effect he is sitting with papers that I had paid for and more than likely he would sting the next lot of unsuspecting buyers for them and still keep them in his possession.

I was allowed photocopies of the original paperwork I had paid for so I took a 3 hour drive through mountains to get them looked over by a friend of mine in Tabua. I had worked out for myself that the land was not as much as had been described on the property details but I wanted it all double checked anyway.

The agent was using really hard core selling tactics which I had never experienced before on my previous 4 trips. He was pushing to by pass the Promessa [deposit contract] and go straight for the escruito on the Friday, we were on Wednesday when he let this bombshell slip! Of course I knew that I wouldn’t be going any further with any of this and decided we would be leaving a day early because I simply couldn’t stand being around this guy a minute longer.

My husband and I decided to take a leisurely 3 hour drive to Lisbon to spend our last day and evening in the City. I was so relieved to leave that place I just can’t express it enough in words. On the way to Lisbon I decided to ring up a contact that I had met online, Derek and his partner Nicky have a registered estate agent in Tomar. Tomar is about 1 hr 10 mins from Lisbon. It really is a great Town with lots going for it. It was so refreshing to meet people who were professional and doing things above board that I nearly cried! We had a long chat about my experience over several espresso’s and lunch. They have over 500 properties on their books and kindly took us to see a few before Derek had to head off to another appointment.

That evening we decided we were too tired to drive on to Lisbon so we stayed in a fabulous hotel in Tomar.

The next day we decided to take a quick trip back to the property we were both very keen on, it was a lovely little house in a great village about 15 mins from Tomar. We both loved this place and saw great potential for it but unfortunately someone had just put in an offer and I wont know until Monday if it has all gone through.

So that’s it in short, back to square one with the property hunt but at least I definitely know which area I would like to live in now.

If you have any questions with regards to property purchase in Portugal please contact me, I will do my best to help and what I don’t know I shall find out for you.

Unfortunately the Community Forum is temporarily down. I will endeavour to get this up and running as soon as possible.

Hi everyone,

I’m back after a rather harrowing trip from the Beiras Interior region of Portugal. This time around my trip was not as pleasant as usual. After an early 4:00am start to heathrow airport I parked up in the long stay car park which is huge and waited for the bus to take us to terminal 2. The buses were meant to be running every 5-8 minutes according to the booking website, well, it was more like every 10-15 minutes and because it was already the start of the city’s rush hour it took us a further 15-20 minutes to reach our terminal! This was cutting things a bit fine as far as checking in was concerned. Anyway, I made the flight but only just!

Upon landing in Lisbon I picked up the hire car from Avis, they spoke very good English and were extremely friendly. Getting out of Lisbon was easy, I had never flown into Lisbon so I didn’t quite know what to expect, Porto airport on the other hand can be a bit of a nightmare if you don’t know where you are going because it’s not sign posted as well as Lisbon.

I needed the A1 North and promptly missed the correct exit off of the roundabout hence having to make a few trips around the same roundabout before managing to work out the correct exit, I think this was a case of trying to get my head around driving right around a roundabout! About 15 km down that road I reached the toll gate, in Portugal you pick up your ticket first and pay when you leave the road you are on - it was a further 90km before I was to leave the A1 and the toll to be paid was €5.45.

After a couple of hours on the road I decided to stop at the services for something to eat, this is where lesson No.1 was to be learnt. I ordered their dish of the day which was pork and potato with a few lettuce leaves and onion. It was delicious but unfortunately the price wasn’t, it cost more than double what you would normally pay for a ‘dish of the day’ in Portugal - So if you need to eat and you are on the road it is definitely worth going off the main roads and into a town or village to eat from a local restaurant. I shouldn’t of been surprised really because at home it’s just the same, any services will charge extortionate prices!

After coming off of the main roads I drove through several villages, this can be a bit of a hairy experience if you have never been to Portugal before because the roads are usually very narrow and only look wide enough for one car to pass through at a time, this coupled with houses jutting out across the street and usually some sharp windy bends can make one a tad nervous but you soon get used to it and just hope for the best!

After 3 hours on the road and passing through several villages, vineyards and olive groves I finally reached my destination. I found the place that I was to be staying fairly easy and was met by the gentleman that was to be my ‘agent’.

In Portugal, especially rural Portugal, it is very common for someone to call themselves and ‘agent’ this is not to be confused with an estate agent - this basically means that he/she are advertising property on behalf of the vendor and will take you around to view various properties within the area. You have to be very cautious when viewing property with an unregistered agent for the simple fact that they are not registered with the authorities and should anything go amiss you will have virtually no backup.

You are probably asking yourselves why I chose to view property with an agent rather than a legit registered estate agent. The answer is simple, for many generations [especially in rural Portugal] people have bought and sold property amongst themselves with no legal representation, it’s normal for them. If you armed with the correct knowledge and have a level head purchasing property in this manner can be a fairly painless experience, however, on this occasion this was not to be.

I would like to stress at this stage that should you buy through an etsate agent you must do a few checks on them first to make sure that they legally operating because if you don’t you could find yourself being conned and if they don’t have the necessary credentials you will have a very difficult time trying to recover any monies lost. I will cover this in more detail in part2.

to be continued…….