There are intricacies to life as a long-term British expat in the post-Brexit world
A British woman who moved to Germany in 1985 considers the country her home, but said Brexit has made claiming a pension and caring for aging relatives in the UK more difficult.
Sheona Gillespie, 62, was posted in Germany with the British Army from 1985 to 1990. She met her now-husband, another Briton who had also been stationed in Germany with the army, and the pair decided to move there permanently.
“I’ve hardly lived in the UK,” Gillespie told The i Paper. “We moved around when I was a child because my parents were both in the military, so Germany really is home.”
When she finished working in the army aged 26, there was no doubt in Gillespie’s mind about whether she would stay in Germany or return to the UK. They moved to the western city of Krefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia near Düsseldorf.
“[My husband and I] both started working for German companies and just had a whale of a time travelling around mainland Europe,” she said.
“We’d go to a lot of rock concerts and football games. It was exciting being in Europe in the 90s – a lot of fun. It was easy to get around and the cost of living at the time was much lower than in the UK.”
When Gillespie and her husband had their daughters, who are now 29 and 27, they sent them to German schools, which they found “very different” to those in England.
“Transferring them back to the UK for school wasn’t something we were going to do,” she said. “So we stayed.”
After that, they never considered moving back, and now live in the town of Erkelenz, about 30 miles south-west of Krefeld. Their daughters have stayed in Germany, too.
Gillespie and her husband attending a football match between Borussia Mönchengladbach
and Bayer Leverkusen
“They both consider themselves culturally British – we speak English at home and watch English-speaking television – but when they are with Germans, they are fully German,” she said. “They, like us, don’t consider the UK their home.”
However, moving to Germany when she was only 20 years old, Gillespie did not fully grasp the implications of living abroad at the age of 60.
Gillespie’s mother, who is based in the UK, has been unwell, meaning she has had to travel back and forth every other month to care for her.
“It’s something I never thought about, and I wish I had paid more attention earlier and prepared better for this,” she admitted.
Before Brexit, Gillespie could have brought her mother over to live with her in Germany.
“There might be a way to do it now, but it is so much more difficult,” she said. “I just wish someone had mentioned to me what living abroad would mean with ageing parents.”
Gillespie also did not considered her pension when she relocated to Germany. She said the British and German pension schemes were similar in many ways.
“Here [in Germany], you have a pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) type of scheme where you pay into the pension fund,” she said.
Gillespie with her husband and two daughters at Legoland Deutschland
Since Gillespie was 40, she has received a letter each year from the German pension authority outlining her contributions, when she can retire, and how much she will get per month: €2,700 (£2,349).
“I can retire at 67, which is again, really similar to the UK,” she said.
At 50, Gillespie was invited to the German pension authority offices to review her pension contributions and check there were no gaps in her payments. It was at this meeting that she was reminded she would also have a British pension to claim.
“I’d get a small pension from my five years in the military, and a small workplace pension,” she said. “It had never occurred to me.”
The adviser she saw in Germany at the time, when the UK was still a part of the EU, told her that he would make a call to a “pension guy in Newcastle” and link the British and German pensions.
“What would happen is that when I claimed my German pension, the bit that comes from the UK would have been paid by the UK pension authority,” she explained. “They pay it to Germany and then the German pension authority would give it to me in one lump sum.”
That, however, has changed since Brexit.
“Now, it doesn’t get paid in one lump sum,” she said. “The Germans pay me my German pension, and I have to claim my UK pension myself.”
It should, according to Gillespie, be a straightforward process. “You do it all online,” she said. “There are lots of forms, you give them all the documents they require, and they send it over.”
But it means yet another step that would not have existed before Brexit.
Gillespie’s husband has recently had to follow the same process. He was surprised to hear that, because he had an extra lump of money coming from his UK pension, he would have to pay a £200 a month to the German healthcare system.
“Our health insurance is deducted from your salary at source like in the UK while you’re working,” she said.
“It’s about 13.5 per cent of your salary, and the employer contributes the same. I’ll have to essentially pay that amount (13.5 per cent) out of my British state pension to German healthcare when I get it upon turning 67.”
“None of this about pensions had crossed my mind when I made the decision to live here,” she said.
Still, Gillespie does not regret her decision in the least.
“Germany is my home,” she said. “But I do miss a British pub and having common cultural connections with other Brits.”
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