DIVORCE (NOT US!)
One of our friends just announced that she and her husband are getting a divorce. They are about our age, and like us, married later in life. He had been married before and has grown children. She had never been married. We have other things in common with this couple. They too are expats living in Italy. They too made the decision to live in Italy rather suddenly…even more suddenly that we did. They’ve been here about three years now, and apparently he had been seeing someone else for the last year.
I don’t know what caused her to be suspicious, but in the end, she was right. She was able to get the proof she needed, mainly because he was stupid enough to think he wouldn’t get caught. She’s filed for divorce and plans to continue living in Italy. She had quit her job and severed all business ties once they had moved to Italy.
At this point she plans to continue living in the house they bought together. Her soon-to-be ex is currently living in the same town with the local putanna (whore) who is still married and has two young children. Our friend is hoping that eventually the discomfort of living in the same small city will force the ex and friends to move. Public sympathy seems to be on her side.
When I told Art the news, he was shocked. His response was “that’s almost as unbelievable as you and me getting a divorce!” I assured him that in the same situation, he wouldn’t have to worry about it. In the same situation, he’d probably fall down our very long and very hard steps…many, many times. Hell hath no fury, etc etc.
We now have a new web address. Please bookmark it for future reference: http://www.expatsinitaly.com/blog/barb.html
JOINED AT THE HIP
Art and I like to tell everyone that we’re now joined at the hip. This is partly because I don’t drive in Italy, so where ever I want to go, Art has to drive me. Of course the fact that it’s just the two of us also forces us to spend most, if not all, of our time together. As we talked about this the other night, we realized that our move to Italy isn’t really the cause of this situation.
When we were working, both of us had strange hours. I usually worked from 5 a.m. until around 10 a.m. Art worked at the Post Office from 5 or 6 a.m. until early afternoon, then he usually went to work at the track. Sometimes, depending on the time of year, he would come home for a few hours, usually to take a nap before going to work around five p.m. Although the track started out as a seasonal job, over the years it turned into a full time one. Art never seemed to mind…he always said that working at the track wasn’t like working at all.
If he wasn’t’ working late at the track, we were usually in bed before 9 p.m. This was mostly because of me…I need at least eight hours of sleep, and nine hours is really my preference. Although I’m really a night owl by nature, having to get up at 4 a.m. just forced me to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
Art was always able to get by on much less sleep than I. I honestly don’t know how he managed all those years, especially when he had to drive long distances in the dark while he was still half asleep. I think if left to his own devices, he would have stayed up much later than 9 p.m. Of course I would have found him asleep on the couch, but he would have put up a good fight.
The reason that he went to bed so early was because it’s something we’ve always done. Because Art worked so much, we always tried to spend as much time together as possible, even if we were just sleeping.
Also due to our weird schedules, we had no social life. We went to the movies in the afternoon on the day Art was off from the track. Because of my schedule, I was able to get all my running around done in the afternoon. I could go to the grocery, stop by Target, visit my mom, whatever I needed to do. For some reason I have never liked going out at night after supper, even to go to the grocery. My schedule gave me lots of free time without having to miss spending time with Art.
So even if we weren’t exactly joined at the hip while we lived in the states, we did spend almost every free minute together. I never went out with the girls for the evening, and Art never stopped off to have a beer with the guys. When we had the chance to be together, it just seemed natural that we would take it.
Amazingly, we still feel the pull and the attraction to each other. Now we have a history together. We’ve shared so much over these past sixteen+ years. Art introduced me to Hawaii and Florida. I showed him around England. Over the years we’ve visited about sixteen states and have explored sixteen countries together. Every trip has been an adventure, every moment a wonderful memory.
Maybe this is why we haven’t had too much trouble adjusting since we’ve moved. Maybe we’ve been preparing for this move all along. The fact that we’ve been so in synch with each other every step of the way can’t just be luck….we must have been destined to be together…soul mates from previous lifetimes who finally found each other again. Isn’t it wonderful when your best friend can also be your spouse?
Friday will be our fifteenth wedding anniversary. We’ll celebrate in grand style by going to Ternana’s for a pizza. We probably won’t be able to have gelato because Stefania’s may still be closed for the winter, but I think we can come up with some other ideas for dessert…..
WHAT'S NEW IN SAN VENANZO
Our friend Frank bought nine roses for his girlfriend Clara. Those NINE roses set him back €60….or $80….again…..for NINE!!!! I think he can thank the spread of American commercialism for these ridiculous prices! It wasn’t all that many years ago when this was a relatively minor holiday in Italy. Ah…progress.
Our neighbor Armando finally bought a new car. He’s been looking for a while, and we thought he was going to buy a used car. I don’t know how old his old car was, but it was a Fiat Panda, which is a very small car. His new car is almost as small, and it’s a Chevrolet Matiz.
Wendy said that the Matiz used to be made by Daewoo, and suddenly it’s being advertised by Chevrolet. We don’t know anything about that situation, but were very surprised that Armando would buy an American car.
We have a new four story apartment building going up in San Venanzo. It’s on the edge of town, next to the shoe factory and across the street from the soccer field. With four floors we assume it will have at least eight apartments, and are wondering who will live in these apartments.
It can’t be more Italians….the birth rate in Italy is WAY down. Most young people don’t leave home until they get married, and they usually don’t get married until mid thirties at the earliest. Maybe they’re expecting more stranieri (foreigners) like us and Frank. We certainly don’t know of anyone who’s planning on moving to San Venanzo.
Speaking of Frank, he made a trip to the military base at Livorno to buy some supplies at the PX. He took Clara with him, and introduced her to Burger King. Supposedly she liked it, but I have to think she was just being nice.
Frank brought back Duncan Hines cake mix, vanilla extract, seasoned salt, and for us, a 48 ounce jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. He also bought some frozen beef…a large roast for the American style dinner he plans to prepare for Clara’s family (complete with mashed potatoes). Because the ground beef here is so lean, Frank also brought some American ground beef for hamburgers. Lean is a good thing, but you’ve just got to have a little fat for the taste.
He plans to make a second PX trip, but next time he’s going to the larger base in Naples. He’s offered to pick up some things for us and I plan to ask him to get some of the heavier things like a large can of Crisco and a large bottle of canola oil. The absence of these items will make our suitcases a lot lighter when we return from the states. Oh, and he’ll also bring us some CHEESE…cheddar, Colby, American! Won’t that be a nice treat! We may even get some bread and butter pickles!
I don’t have to worry about dill pickles because our friend Judith, who lives in Citta di Castello, has a jar waiting for us! She had to grow the cucumbers in her garden since the variety they grow here isn’t the pickling variety. I’m not sure how many jars she canned this summer, but she called us over the holidays to say that we were getting pickles for Christmas! This was almost as exciting as the cast iron skillet I got for my birthday! Can you tell that I’m becoming food obsessed?
Oh, our neighbor Frank also plans to start his own business. He’s outfitted his Ape with framework to hold his machinery and plans to drive around the area sharpening knives, scissors, saws, whatever. When we asked him about the legalities, he said all he needs to do is to go to Terni, tell them that he’s retired and wants to make a little extra money sharpening knives. He says they’ll approve as long as he pays taxes on his earnings. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out.
We ran into our friend Corinna today at the grocery store. She asked us if we would like to stop by to see their house on our way home, and of course we said yes. Somehow Art and I imagined that they had a tiny house that was very old and that they were restoring it. Not so!
The house sits just off the road to San Venanzo. The building is a triplex, and Corinna and Maurizio’s house is at the far end. This means they only have one common wall, so maybe things are a little quieter, and it also gives then a side yard as well as a backyard.
The houses have obviously just been finished, and are very cute. Each has a one car garage in front, a small front yard, and a covered porch. Once inside there is a huge room, and a kitchen beyond, separated by knee walls on both sides. They installed a wood burning stove in the living room to augment the radiators, and it made the room inviting as well as toasty.
The kitchen was bright and airy, and the kitchen cabinets they had installed are a blond wood, keeping the open feel. A door opens to the back yard, and they’ve put down a narrow patio along the edge of the house. I’m sure they’ll eventually expand this so they can have a table outside.
The back yard was a nice size, and along the back border was a raised bed planted with shrubs and surrounded by an attractive wrought iron fence. The only downside is that the back yard faces an apartment building. The building is fairly attractive, but it’s not a s nice as a beautiful view.
Also on the main floor is a large laundry room with a big laundry sink, and I complimented Corinna on her foresight in this area. A large bathroom with a shower and a guest bedroom are also on this floor.
The stairs to the second floor have no railing, which helps the room to feel so large. The steps, as well as the entire second floor are done in a beautiful blonde wood that Maurizio put down himself. We later found out that Maurizio is quite an accomplished artist, and his works are displayed throughout the house.
The second floor has two nice sized bedrooms and another large bathroom, this one with a large tub. Corinna told us that this is HER bathroom. I understood completely. Oh, and there are balconies off both the front and the back bedroom.
Of course since they’ve just moved in, they’re still in the process of furnishing and decorating. They’ve strung up a line in the guest room to hang clothes from since they don’t have the money to buy an armadio yet. We certainly understood that!
Although they said that the house is too big for just the two of them, they wanted to have the extra bedrooms in case her father and his mother should ever need to live with them. Unlike most Americans, this is just an accepted fact. I’m not even sure if nursing homes exist in Italy, at least not as we know them. We have the old folks home across the street from us, but I think this must be the exception rather than the norm.
Corinna fixed coffee in her American style coffee maker. She told us that her years of living in Germany converted her to the American style of coffee. She also opened a bottle of sweet fizzy white wine, and we nibbled on nuts and a few pastries while we talked.
They told us they thought we were strange Americans…because we thought so much like them…because we don’t approve of the war…because we have no use for organized religion…we seemed to agree on so many issues, I did my best to speak Italian even though Corinna is fluent in English and Maurizio can get by. I think this is the perfect situation to practice, because I can always ask for help or maybe just an explanation of why a certain word is used.
We must have stayed for at least an hour, and before we left Corinna gave us a huge bag of the small Easter egg chocolates from Perugina. They want us to come for dinner at their house…the water and the gas have just been hooked up in their kitchen, so now they can cook.
We left Corinna and Maurizio feeling so lucky to have met such wonderful people. The fact that they live so close makes it even better…we’re almost neighbors! We’re probably just as interesting to them as they are to us, but whatever the reason, we enjoyed our visit with them immensely and look forward to seeing them again.
RETIREMENT BENEFITS
Once Art turned fifty five he started getting invitations to attend the retirement seminars at the Post Office. We attended our first seminar just to get an idea of the topics that were covered. For something like retirement, the questions you DON’T ask can be the ones that hurt you the most. We had no idea what questions we should ask, so we attended several seminars, learning something new each time.
For Art’s pension from the Post Office he was given three basic options: receive a full pension each month that would pay me nothing when he died, receive a greatly reduced pension that would pay by 100% of his benefits, or receive a reduced pension that would pay me 50% of his pension when he died.
There was no way we could afford to retire if we took the 100% survivor benefit. We thought we could manage on the monthly amount for the 50% survivor benefit, but it would cost us $200 each month, automatically deducted from his pension check. After taxes I would get (at today’s rate) about $900 per month. That didn’t seem like a very good return to me.
We began to do some research, and to ask other retirees what they had done. Amazingly, many people had simply taken the survivor benefits package without a second thought. Of course they had done this with the best of intentions…to provide for their spouse once they were gone. Unfortunately, this is a really bad investment, both now, and in the future.
I think that we assumed that whatever our representatives in personnel were telling us was what was best for us. Now we realize that these people are only passing on whatever information the company wants them to pass on. Not that they weren’t helpful. But if you don’t ask the question, they don’t give the answer. The real trick is to know what questions to ask.
First we needed to think about what our needs would be, both as a couple, and as singles. If I were to die first, Art would continue to collect his full postal pension, his racetrack pension, would inherit my IRA, and would have his own IRA as well. He would also be collecting about 85% of his Social Security benefits, due to the number of years he put in at the track. We decided that he would be in pretty good financial shape. For this reason we decided there was no need to carry life insurance on me.
If Art were to die first, I would have a small postal pension of my own, the larger of our two social security benefits, Art’s IRA, my IRA, and whatever other benefits we elected to take. Art continued a very small and short term life insurance with the Post Office to allow me to continue with the health insurance once he was gone. I think it’s something like $5000, which is the minimum. Additionally, if we elected to take the survivor benefits plan, I would receive the $900 per month. I would definitely have less money coming in.
As mentioned earlier, it would cost us $200 per month to be eligible for the survivor benefits. But did we have any other options? We started looking into term life insurance policies and discovered that we could buy a $250,000, twenty year term life insurance policy for about $93 per month. Not only would this give us an “additional” $107 each month, the benefit pays the same should he die on the first day of the policy or the last day. Additionally, since it’s a life insurance policy, it’s also tax free.
If you do the math, you’ll see that even if Art had died on the first day of this policy, the $250,000 would have paid me over $1000 per month for over 20 years. By investing all or part of this money, I would be able to make it stretch even further. This definitely seemed like the way to go.
Once Art applied for his pension from the racetrack union, we decided once again to take the full monthly amount with no survivor benefits. We decided that we want to have the most money while we’re both still here to enjoy it.
The point of this is that everyone needs to educate themselves, to take responsibility for their own destiny. Don’t blindly accept what others may recommend. There may be a better solution for your specific situation and needs. The secret to having enough money to retire when YOU want to is to start early, save as much as you can (even if it hurts!) and ask lots of questions. The only person who gets hurt by not being prepared is you.
PRINCE CHARLES
The papers have recently announced the engagement of Prince Charles to his (w)horse, Camilla. Although I shouldn’t be surprised, many people seem to wish them well. I am not one of those people.
For a variety of reasons, Charles and Camilla never married years ago when they first courted. Charles went away with the Navy and Camilla married someone else (poor shmuck!).
But, as the world would later discover, and as many close to them knew, the affair never ended. It continued even through his courtship of Diana. Apparently Charles and Camilla were together the day before his wedding to Diana. He proudly wore the personalized cufflinks that Camilla had given him when we went on his honeymoon with Diana. (And don’t forget, she had to be “certified” a virgin in order to marry Charles!)
I’m not saying that Diana was perfect, but she was certainly blameless in this situation. She didn’t have to drive into another woman’s arms….he was already there. Diana was misled from the beginning. She was a very naive young girl, and I’m sure believed in the fairly tale she thought was about to be her life.
We all know now that the only hope of this marriage surviving was for Diana to turn a blind eye. I assume that this was what was expected of her by the royals, who never much warmed to Diana in the first place. This I think can be explained quite easily: an iceberg doesn’t want to be too near a source of warmth because eventually the iceberg will disappear.
So many years have gone by since the death of Diana, and it’s been even longer since her divorce from Charles. Charles is now free to marry whomever he pleases. The fact that the affair between Charles and Camilla started many, many years ago and continued throughout the years, throughout their marriages and behind closed doors for many years after their divorces doesn’t make it right….far from it. In my opinion it makes them even more despicable. To continue their affair, knowing the pain they have caused indicates to me a complete lack of morals.
For some reason, people seem to have very short memories. The fact that Charles and Camilla have been together, although “unofficially” for years seems to have somehow made it right. People seem to forget the hurt that was caused by their deception during all those years. Who knows how differently things would have turned out if the affair had been terminated before the marriage of Charles and Diana? Who knows how differently things might have been if Charles had been faithful and honorable and truthful with Diana? Might she still be alive today? Might her sons have had the chance to be guided by their mother as they grew into young men? Might her “problems” with anorexia and self doubt and tattletale lovers been avoided if she had only had what she thought she was getting when she married Charles….a husband who loved her and was true to her?
I remember one of the first interviews with Charles and Diana after Prince William was born. I was surprisingly impressed with Charles. He seemed to be such a “hands-on” father, and I hoped that he wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his parents. He had said how much he hated being sent away to school as a child, and I hoped that his rather chilly upbringing would make him want his children to be raised differently. How very wrong I was. What a good actor he was! Perhaps he was in such a good mood because of an afternoon liaison with his lover.
All I can say is that these two people have ruined enough lives. I don’t think they deserve to be happy, I think they should be punished and suffer for the pain they caused Diana and William and Harry. How can these sons ever forget that it was THIS woman who fanned the fires of insecurity within their mother? If they can, they are certainly better people than I could ever hope to be. Yes it’s true; it’s not my place to judge. Eventually they will both have to answer for their sins, and I know that I should let it go at that, but I really see no reason to be happy for them! To wish them well!? I don’t think so.
The latest sound bite has Camilla coyly telling how Charles had to convince her to get married. Her reason? She didn’t want to be the wife of the king of England. Huh? I don’t quite understand what she meant by that, but to my way of thinking, if being his whore was good enough for all those years, why change now?
EVERYTHING’S COMING UP ROSES…I HOPE!
We finally got a break in the weather this weekend…it’s up in the 50’s, the snow is finally gone, and the sun is even trying to find its way through the clouds. This seems like the perfect day to drive to the garden center and get my McCartney rose.
A quick phone call to Antonella by the owner of the garden center tells us where to look for the rose she has set aside for me. As we walked to the back of the yard, Art stopped to get two large bags of rose planting mix.
After a few minutes of confusion, the rose with my name suddenly appeared right in front of me! It looked very healthy and had just the first beginnings of growth. I was told to plant it as soon as possible, and after a quick stop at the grocery store I was ready.
As I gathered everything from the garage, I realized that the slow release rose fertilizer that I had brought from the states was nowhere to be found. Art and I looked in every imaginable place with no luck. The last time I saw it was sitting on the ledge of the small window in the wood room. Neither one of us can imagine that someone in San Venanzo would take it out of the garage, but for now, I can’t imagine what else could have happened to it.
I took a few empty buckets, the shovel, and a rake to the backyard. I had a few plants to rearrange before planting the rose, and that was fairly simple. First I moved the verbena that fried last summer. I had thought about putting it into a large pot, but since I didn’t have one and the plant needed to be moved NOW, I decided to take a chance and move it to a VERY shady location. If it lives, great, if not, well, every garden has things that just don’t work out.
Next I raked all the mulch aside and started to dig in the area where I would plant the rose. I figured that the dirt that was the deepest would be the worst dirt, and planned to take it over to the garden at Adamo’s. I’ll use it to hold the newspaper mulch in place later in the spring.
Previously when we’ve dug in the backyard, we’ve actually needed to add more dirt than expected because we always remove so many large rocks. This was why I had insisted on two bags of soil instead of just one. Art and I took turns digging and turning the soil over, and we removed lots and lots of rocks as expected. Once we had the bagged soil worked in thoroughly, I played around with the placement of the rose. A good watering, then raking the mulch back in place and I was done! Although the sun in this particular location was way too intense for the verbena, I’m still not sure that it will be sufficient to support a rose. I had to take the chance and at least try, because I love this rose so much. Time will tell.
CARNIVALE
Jill and Larry invited us to go to Foiano with them last weekend for the Carnivale celebration. Apparently Foiano is quite well known for this event, and once we arrived there we understood why! Four HUGE floats were in a staging area, allowing us to get a good look at them. We surmised that each float represented a different neighborhood, and each float had lots and lots of people of every age dressed in costumes that coordinated with the theme of the float.
We wandered through the town, and once we reached a large piazza, an announcement was made....the parade was about to begin! Slowly.....each float made its way down the street and around the corner. Once in the piazza the float would stop. Music would blare and the people accompanying the float would perform. Usually this meant some sort of dance, but for one group, I think all they did was go around in circles and sway to the music. Whatever they did it was a blast to watch!
The people with the floats weren't the only ones in costume. I would estimate that 98% of the children were in costume, and a good number of adults as well. Everyone was definitely in a party mode. Huge bags of confetti were for sale everywhere, and it was thrown about with abandon. Three days later, I'm STILL finding the odd piece of confetti. Art had some INSIDE his ear, and Larry even found some in his bellybutton! Cans of spray string were also very popular, but the empty cans on the ground were quite dangerous!
After maybe ten minutes, the float would move on to make way for the next one. How these huge floats got through these narrow passageways is a testament to years of experience. If only we could get the Italians to drive this slowly and carefully on the autostrada!
The parade was over after about an hour, and we stopped in a local bar for a quick cup of coffee...or in my case, hot chocolate. Once we had thawed out a little, we headed back towards town. An African band was playing in one of the piazzas. There were seven guys playing nothing but drums...I was in heaven!
As we drank some hot mulled wine and listened to the music, the floats drove past us again, giving us one last look. We walked back to the great parking spot we had found, were relieved to see that we weren't blocked in, and headed back towards Cortona. I had taken over 100 digital pictures, and think that a movie camera would be a wise investment for next year.
Here's a link to all of the photos...
http://www.slowtrips.com/photo/showgallery.php?cat=3278
GETTING MONEY
I can remember the first time I came to Europe. It was 1985, and I had been waiting and saving and dreaming about going to England since 1964. I was lucky to be able to go with my good friend Beth who had been to England several times before. She knew how to catch the train and what area of town to stay in. She knew how to find a hotel room and what do to about money.
These were the days before the internet. The days when you had to mail a letter requesting hotel availability months in advance so that you would have time to receive a reply and send a deposit. Normally the deposit was paid with traveler’s checks…credit cards were not commonly accepted by the smaller places I stayed.
Although today many of the smaller hotels throughout Europe still don’t accept credit cards, this is becoming rarer. Of course most of those small places that do accept credit cards are more than happy to give a discount for payment in cash. Nevertheless, accessing money to pay for things during a vacation in Europe is much easier than it used to be.
I hate to start off sounding like some old woman reminiscing about the old days, because I’m only talking about twenty years ago, but there have been a lot of changes in those twenty years. Credit cards are accepted in many more places than they were twenty years ago, and ATM’s, or bancomats as they are called in Europe, have changed the way we get our cash.
For my first trip to England, it was necessary to have enough cash to pay for all of my lodging and 99% of my meals. I also needed cash for odds and ends, and for those places that didn’t accept credit cards. This meant I needed to have a pretty good idea of just how much cash was “enough”, and then go to the credit union or to AAA to get traveler’s checks. I could get them at the credit union or AAA for free, but normally there was a fee for these, so you didn’t want to get too many…and you certainly didn’t want to get too few and risk running out of cash in a foreign country.
As the years went by, traveler’s checks would change considerably. When I first started traveling, they were as good as cash, both in the states and in England. Exchanging traveler’s checks in dollars for British pounds required a trip to the bank or exchange office, but those places were easy to find. Later, banks would only exchange checks which had been issued by their bank, and if you had American Express traveler's checks, you had to find an American Express office.
Once American Express came out with traveler’s checks in foreign currencies, it was possible to buy them in British pounds and save the trip to convert the dollar checks into pounds. Most stores accepted these checks as cash, just as American Express advertised. This made things a lot simpler and saved time. Then things changed again.
At some point stores didn’t really want to accept traveler’s checks as cash. They looked at me suspiciously when I tried to use them, and some smaller stores wouldn’t take them at all. While traveling in Germany, I was charged a fee to use the checks, even though they were issued in German marks. It became clear that something would have to change.
Once the internet began taking over our lives, credit cards became more acceptable. I could find and book a room in London or Frankfurt or Florence with the click of a mouse and use my credit card to guarantee the room. Upon arrival I usually had the option to pay in cash and get a small discount. I could access my cash through a bancomat, at first by making cash advances from my credit card, and later by using a PIN number to withdraw cash from my checking account. As with credit cards, the exchange rate was good. Withdrawing cash this way meant that I didn’t have to worry about bringing enough cash for the whole vacation with me. I could simply withdraw as I went, and the bankomats were easy to find, even in the smallest of towns.
This is how we access our money now that we live in Italy. Art’s pension checks are automatically deposited in our U.S. bank account, and as we need cash to pay bills, we simply make a withdrawal from the local bancomat and deposit the money into our Italian account. To say that we get a good exchange rate is relative at this point. Yes, it IS a good exchange rate, considering that the dollar is so weak right now. Maybe I should say that the exchange rate is the best we could hope for under the circumstances.
Credit cards are accepted in many more places in Italy than they used to be. We understand that COOP, the large grocery chain, has only taken credit cards within the past few years, and Cristina tells us that the COOP in her area still doesn’t accept them.
The change to the euro has also helped the average European traveler. No longer is it necessary to have francs and marks and lira. No longer is there the worry that you’ll end up with $100 worth of francs just as you’re about to leave France. Trying to time the local currency to run out just as you crossed the border was never easy.
There are several more countries scheduled to make the switch to the euro in a few years. Eventually Britain will have to make the switch too. Switzerland may be the lone holdout in Europe, but maybe the pressure will get to them too.
I don’t foresee the world ever existing on a universal currency, but with the availability of bancomats and the increasing acceptance of credit cards, we should have the next best system. Now if only someone would do something to bring the dollar back to its former glory, our money would actually be worth getting! With the value of the dollar at $1.30 per euro, our house payment that was set up to be less than $500 per month is now just over $600. Or, to put it more simply, if we withdraw $2000 per month for living expenses, we receive about €1548! That extra $452 vanishes somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, never to be seen again! At least we don’t have to stand in line at the American Express office anymore!
TAXES AND GOOK LUCK
Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that we just found out that we owed a tax on our car, and thanks to Cristina at ExpatsinItaly, we found out in the nick of time. Actually we were one day late, but this only resulted in a 1¢ interest charge. The bad news is that we were COMPLETELY UNPREPARED for this tax of €135. Ouch!
Last year Wendy paid this tax for us, as she does for many of her clients. For some reason, she had our car tax listed as due to be paid in the summer. Cristina has added a calendar to the message board on her website to remind all us newbie ex-pats about such things as the ICI tax, (due in June and December), the garbage tax, (due in July) and assorted other important dates like when daylight savings time starts and ends, and if there are any train strikes scheduled. Luckily for me, I just happened to read the message board, and found out accidentally on January 31st that it was the last day to pay the car tax.
Since we were going to see Wendy this morning, I decided to ask her about our car tax. I honestly didn’t remember that she had paid it last year, and I was really afraid that we hadn’t paid it since we bought the car. Apparently it’s quite normal NOT to receive tax bills in Italy. Somehow people here just know what is due and when, and they go to the Post Office and pay it.
The car tax is due every year in the month after you first bought/registered the car. As luck would have it, we bought our car in December, meaning that our tax was due in January….damn! Luckily for us we had just made a cash withdrawal at the bank. I swear, we can’t really afford to have any more good luck for quite a while.
We got lucky last fall, again thanks to the Expats site. Cristina was conducting a survey to try to figure out average housing and utility costs. One of the questions was about the amount of garbage taxed paid. Garbage tax…what garbage tax? This was the first we’d ever heard about a garbage tax, so we walked up to the commune and found the office that dealt with the garbage tax. They told us that the bills had been mailed out in July…hadn’t we gotten ours? Well, no. We asked if we could pay it now, knowing that there would be some sort of late fee/interest, but we figured the sooner we paid it the better.
Imagine our surprise when they told us to just wait until next summer! They told us that if we didn’t receive a bill to make sure we came to their office to pay it. I was concerned about the interest, but they assured me that it wouldn’t be much….how scary is that? On top of that, now we’ll have to pay both last years’ AND this years’ garbage tax. Once again, it’s hard to feel lucky!
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Spina Bifida
