{"id":467627,"date":"2025-10-02T05:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T05:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/467627\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T05:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T05:11:11","slug":"im-a-waspi-woman-who-feared-losing-my-home-i-moved-to-france-to-be-mortgage-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/467627\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m a Waspi woman who feared losing my home. I moved to France to be mortgage-free"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tSarah Olney Ross sold her home in Gloucestershire for \u00a3175,000 and moved to France debt-free\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

In 2016, Sarah Olney Ross had been \u201cstruggling\u201d with an interest-only mortgage when she sold her cottage near Cirencester in Gloucestershire and decided to move to France.<\/p>\n

She now lives in Uzerche in the south west of France, in a home that she describes as a \u201cHarry Potter medieval house, meets New York loft\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sarah had always wanted to live in France, and took the plunge in early 2016, before the vote for the UK to leave the European Union.<\/p>\n

It enabled her to go entirely mortgage-free, after selling her UK-based home for \u00a3175,000, and buying the French property for \u20ac108,000, which now equates to around \u00a394,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cI moved as soon as someone made me a cash offer \u2013 I honestly think I may have been repossessed if I had stayed given where the economy is. I was a Brexit escapee in that I moved knowing it was going to be an \u2018out\u2019 vote,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOwning your own home and knowing nobody can chuck you out is excellent. Once you know you\u2019re safe, that\u2019s something to aim for,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Sarah\u2019s townhouse has a large cellar, a terraced garden, and two standalone apartments, which she used to rent out, but she now offered to friends and family to stay.<\/p>\n

Sarah\u00a0is one of an estimated 3.8 million\u00a0Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi)<\/a>\u00a0women affected by major changes to the state pension age.<\/p>\n

These campaigners say that women born between 1950 and 1960 were not given enough notice about the increase in their pension age and ended up receiving the payment later than expected.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sarah\u2019s home in France. She moved before Brexit, in early 2016<\/p>\n

\u201cI rented out the room as I needed an income stream at the time. I had worked in PR and marketing but was a bit burned out and did not want to do that at the time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She now gets the full state pension plus a workplace pension which totals around \u00a31,360 per month and also has restarted doing some freelance work for a PR company called Albador Bishop, which is run by her friend.<\/p>\n

With the extra income from work, she has bought a second home on the Italian Riviera, which needed extensive work doing.<\/p>\n

Sarah has no regrets about moving to France, and says her adult daughter encouraged her to do so.<\/p>\n

\"\"The interior of Sarah\u2019s home in France. She also has a second home on the Italian Riviera<\/p>\n

She says her decision to move abroad on her own raised eyebrows from some people, but that it can be an enjoyable experience if you go into it with the right \u201cmentality\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends are just people you haven\u2019t met yet. That\u2019s the mentality you need to do it with,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

As well as the advantage of being mortgage-free, she also says that other elements of living in France are far cheaper.<\/p>\n

She says: \u201cThe quality of food in France is excellent. If you want to eat well the food is better and cheaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get a two course lunch that is excellent quality for \u20ac17 or less. That might even include a small carafe of wine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe French government also capped energy price increases during the inflation wave, which really helped on that front.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bus fare can be as little as a single euro and we still have the excellent network of rural public transport that the UK does not.\u201d<\/p>\n

She now says that being entirely debt-free is very important to her, so although she spends money, she avoids owing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a credit card, but I don\u2019t even want to owe money on that,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah Olney Ross sold her home in Gloucestershire for \u00a3175,000 and moved to France debt-free In 2016, Sarah…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[802,12824,2825,2000,299,36,6792,5747],"class_list":{"0":"post-467627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-brits-abroad","10":"tag-debt","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-mortgages","15":"tag-waspi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115302857773777151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}