Managing retirement savings in Portugal

Hello!

When we moved to Portugal we took cross-border tax advice from The Spectrum IFA Group in Almancil as my husband had UK investments and a private pension.

The first hurdle we had was our UK Bank had a daily transfer limit of £15,000 per day and what we were looking to move was significantly higher than this. We could have flown back to the UK and went in branch to do the transfer in one go, however Mark at Spectrum recommended a currency specialist (Send Money Overseas) who gave us a named-account so our pension provider was 'happy' to deposit our funds into the account we had with SMO. I say 'happy' as I had to jump through a lot of hoops and sit through 30mins worth of security questions etc, but eventually it went through perfectly and I was happy with the exchange rate and service. Spectrum then assisted me to invest my funds in an EU-based plan (which I'm told was better for tax purposes).

We are still of working age and with the income we earn we do put some aside into Savings accounts. I'd be interested to hear more from other Expats as to if there are more lucrative options to be saving for our retirement. We did use MoneyBox ISAs for a little while and this seemed to be okay, but it would be good to hear about more options.

Maybe my attitude to money differs from others, I've worked/lived in various places and mainly kept tax residency in the UK (as I understand the language and would get state pension). I've bought, worked on and sold property in Portugal, based on quite a long time (years) spent getting to know places and finding where i wanted to live, looking at properties, understanding the system, construction techniques, basic legal property stuff. Visiting many local estate agents, getting to know local hotels (they do give a better rate directly), finding a trusty lawyer etc. The transfer of money to buy property for cash, opened 2 bank accounts in Portugal, 2 in Ireland (cheap Ryanair day trip to banks at the airport) as they are Euro accounts all in English based on UK address, and a couple of UK Forex accounts and a couple of UK bank accounts.  Then over a period of time (many months) following the hourly exchange rates moved/exchanged money and closed whichever accounts I didn't want anymore. So ending up with euros in the right place to buy a semi derelict property for cash.   I shall be in the position soonish to have basic UK pension, I know this is enough for me to live on in Portugal as I have years experience of how much things cost also UK basic state pension covers D7 visa requirement so I really don't need more.  As I don't have a vast private pension pot I have avoided any "pension advisors", what money i do have is in a UK self-invested personal pension (SIPP) and is hopefully enough to buy a cheap car which Is what I'll use it for before applying for D7.  UK pension will be paid into UK dual currency account which allows me to pay for things in GBP or Euros and so I can do online transfer to Portugal account. I think one of the errors people make related to retirement is not spending time working out what they'll do and trying it for themselves rather then "interweb research" - over years I've spent many many months living in Portugal so have quite a good idea what to expect and how to do things when I retire.