Moving to Bulgaria: How It All Began

This is the story of how my husband and I came to leave England and retire to Bulgaria.

How It All Began

We were both in our late 50s, living in an idyllic village in the south of England when a sequence of unexpected events led us to reassess our lives as a busy professional couple. I was a social worker, and my husband, Jeff, ran his own business in the building industry. What did we really want from life? Was it really a new conservatory? More debt and more worry?

Ten years earlier, we had bought a property in Bulgaria. It had been an impulse purchase – our own midlife crisis – after we had both been through messy divorces. Both our former partners had left us for other people after 25 years of marriage. My divorce from my headteacher husband had been particularly traumatic, especially financially. At the age of 45, I had been forced to start all over again.

Soon after we married, Jeff had received a £12,000 redundancy payment from his previous job, and we had debated what to do with the money. Eventually, we decided to do something rash and treat ourselves to something we had both always wanted: a holiday home in the sun. Of course, the sensible thing would have been to pay off some of our mortgage, but we decided to have an adventure instead. Studies show that a common death bed regret is to not have pursued one’s dreams – and a home in the sun had always been one of ours.

Where Can You Buy a Property for £12,000?

But where could we buy a property for just £12,000? We looked at the obvious places, such as France and Italy, but prices were far too high. Then Jeff’s father suggested we look at Bulgaria. The country had recently joined the EU, he explained, and property prices were still relatively low. He believed they would rise substantially, as they had in neighbouring Romania. We decided to take a look.

The Property Surpassed Our Wildest Dreams

With the cash in a suitcase, we made our first trip to this amazing country. I won’t go into all the details of how we purchased the house here – that is a story in itself! Suffice it to say, we discovered a property that surpassed our wildest dreams. It was a large, detached house with a collection of outbuildings, including a donkey shed, a barn, a chicken coop, a wash house and a smoke house.

Of course, the property needed quite a bit of renovation, but we weren’t deterred. Jeff had plenty of experience in the building trade, so we felt confident that we could tackle the work.

Would I recommend buying a property in a country you had never visited before? Absolutely not! It was our first time in Bulgaria, and, as I said, I think we were experiencing our own midlife crisis at the time. Thankfully, though, everything worked out well, and we have never looked back.

We travelled to our home in Bulgaria twice every year spending one week renovating and one week just enjoying a holiday. We did this for nine years. Over the years, we grew to love our Bulgarian Village and came to appreciate the differences between life there and life back in England, where the pressures of everyday living could feel overwhelming. But that brings me back to where this story really begins.

Why Did We Leave England?

Nearly 10 years after buying our Bulgarian property, life in England was becoming increasingly difficult. I was experiencing serious health problems, whilst Jeff was facing financial difficulties with his business.

As a social worker, stress had always been a regular part of my working life, but I had reached the point where I was off work with dangerously high blood pressure. I also have a severe visual impairment, and changes to the computer system at work had left the specialist software I relied on inoperable. I was struggling to do my job, and the future was looking increasingly uncertain.

Then, one day, as I sat in my back garden, I heard a posthumous interview with Tony Benn on the radio. He was discussing slavery throughout the ages when someone asked him, “Does slavery exist today?”

His response prompted an epiphany.

He said, “If you have a mortgage, then you are a slave to that mortgage.”

I had spent almost my entire working life struggling to keep a roof over my head – an ambition, I sometimes felt, that my former husband had never shared. After being left practically homeless at 45, I had spent the following decade trying to rebuild my life.

And suddenly, sitting in my garden, I asked myself a simple question: what was I doing all this for?

I already owned a property in the sun. Why on earth didn’t I just go and live in it?

And so began our transition to Bulgaria.

Over the coming months, I will share the story of how we made that life-changing move and what we discovered along the way. I will also explore the many differences between life in Bulgaria and life in England, from the everyday pleasures of village life to the customs, traditions and experiences that make this such an extraordinary country.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you ever consider moving to another country? What holds you back? Where would your home in the sun be?