Moving to an affordable area of Italy after the Brexit vote, Nick Millard has been able to retire early
A British retiree who left east London before Brexit to move to a remote mountain hamlet of 700 people in Italy says he has cut his monthly spending from £2,250 to just €750 (£650).
Nick Millard, 60, said that after the UK voted in 2016 to leave the European Union he knew that he wanted to remain part of the EU.
“When the UK marginally voted for Brexit, I decided that I wanted to remain part of Europe and knew I need to make the move before Brexit was finalised due to the probable increased difficulties if I left the move until afterwards,” he told The i Paper.
The former environmental health manager said: “The Brexit campaign was based on a lot of lies about the potential benefits of leaving the EU. Having spent two weeks of my masters in environmental health in Brussels learning how the EU operates, I knew that the bureaucracy that the Brexiteers blamed on the EU was not the truth.”
Nick, who lived in East Ham, said he was unhappy with the “rat race” in the UK capital, which meant that the majority of his monthly wages went on covering basic bills.
In 2018, he bought an €80,000 (£70,000) farmhouse with 10 hectares of land in Villa Celiera in Pescara province, in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. He was delighted to discover how affordable life there was.
“As a result, I was able to retire at 53 instead of 67 and live a far better life in beautiful Italy,” he said.
Before moving across, Nick first spent time researching properties online. Looking for an affordable location not too far from Rome, and close to beaches and mountains, he opted for Abruzzo.
After a tour of several homes in the region, he bought a panoramic old three-bedroom farmhouse where animals had been kept on the ground floor, providing heat to the living spaces above.
Nick bought an old farmhouse for just €80,000 (Photo: Nick Millard)
The farmhouse came with a cellar, terrace, attic, and barn, a stream that runs along one side of the property, and dozens of fruit trees. Nick grows most of his own produce and has planted truffle trees – trees around which the prized funi grows. Her also cultivates saffron. A similar property in the UK would cost more than a million pounds, he suggests.
He also replaced most of the plumbing, wiring and installed solar thermal panels himself.
Before relocating, Nick, who is divorced, had sold his three-bedroom mid-terrace house in east London for £430,000, which enabled him to live off the sale proceeds.
He said the cost of living in Abruzzo was significantly cheaper than in the UK. His monthly utility bills are €40 (£35), council tax is €29 (£25) and he spends around €160 (£140) a month on groceries, including dog food for his three rescue dogs. Eating out costs less than €11.50 (£10) for a pizza and wine, or around €25-€40 (£22-£35) for a three-course meal with wine.
“As such my monthly outgoings including going out four or five times per month are around €750 (£654) per month,” he said. “In the UK, my outgoings per month excluding mortgage were £1,400 (£2,500 including mortgage), which meant I was hardly ever able to eat out.”
Nick has embraced life in Italy, including snowshoeing on nearby mountains (Courtesy: Nick Millard)
Also, as Millard lives in a town of less than 20,000 people in the depopulated region of Abruzzo and is retired, he pays a flat rate of 7 per cent tax on his pension. It is a special fiscal scheme recently introduced by Rome’s government to lure pensioners to the country’s poorer regions.
In Italy, Millard has embraced a peaceful, bucolic lifestyle. He attends about 20 festivals each year, including the traditional olive and wine harvests and transumanzas, celebrating the migration of sheep and cattle across pastures. He also acts as a marshal for the SkyMarathon, where competitors race for 34km up and down several mountains.
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“There are 30,000 hectares of vineyards in Abruzzo and as a wine lover I love taking my guests wine tasting in the summer,” he added.
He has set up a WhatsApp group called “Lost With Nick”, which he uses to organise tours of the many nearby mountain peaks with his new local friends, using snowshoes.
“Apart from growing fruit and vegetables I also forage mushrooms and other wild plants,” he added. “My life is significantly more relaxed and stress-free than living in the UK.”