Spain Money Saving Tips and Offers

Vodafone has said it will make it cheaper for UK customers to use their smartphones when travelling in Europe.

UK customers who travel occasionally can take their domestic data plan abroad for £2 a day.

Frequent travellers can take a price plan that includes data roaming within their existing monthly package, with both options being available for consumer and business customers.

The mobile phone giant claims the new tariff is both simpler and cheaper.

Customers will be able to access the new tariffs in all Vodafone's European countries, plus France, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria.

Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone, said this was the year of the smartphone: "We expect smartphone sales in Europe to grow from 32% to more than 70% by 2013 and we want to drive that growth with what we believe to be the best value market-leading roaming data package."

Source: BBC News

Carrefour have got some excellent discount vouchers at the moment for brand name cat and dog food.  The discount codes can ve printed out from the Carrefour website.  You will need to register your details before you can print them off:

www.huellas.carrefour.es/Home/EscaparateCarrefourCuponesDescuento/tabid/69/language/es-ES/Default.aspx

There are quite a few different vouchers, including 25-30% discounts off brands such as Pedigree, Friskies and Whiskas amongst others.

Carrefour sell an own brand 1 litre bottle of beer for only 65 cents.  This is one of the cheapest own brand beers around.  The big brand cervezas such as San Miguel and Cruzcampo are almost 3 times the price.

I've not tried the beer yet myself, but I've tried the other own brand Carrefour beers and I've been very impressed.  In fact Carrefour's own brand range of products is generally excellent.  I'll pick some up next time I'm in Carrefour.

SuperSol, the Spanish supermarket chain have various discount coupons on their website that you can print out and take to any of their stores to redeem.  Here's the link to the coupons.

What you need to do is:

• Select the coupons you are interested in
• Register yourself on the SuperSol website
• Print off the coupons
• Take them to any Supersol store to redeem.

The coupons change regularly, so it's worth popping back to their website from time to time.  Some of the discounts are only for 10-20 cents, which is not really worth wasting printer paper on!!

Spanish Discount code websites seem to be popping up all over the place at the moment.  This type of website has been around for a long time in the UK now, but they're still quite a new thing in Spain.  In Spain, discount codes were typically in newspapers and magazines.

Similar to the UK sites, the Spanish ones give you discount codes, vouchers that you can print off, free shipping, 2 for 1 offers and so on.  Given how tight money is for most people in Spain these days, these sites offer a great way of saving money.

Here is a list of the most popular Spanish discount code and coupon websites:

codigo-promocional.com - Offers discount/promo codes and has an alphabetical list of companies.

Family Check - This has a range of printable vouchers for KFC, McDonalds, Pans & Co and many other big name brands.  Unfortunately, this is only for the Madrid region.

codigos-descuento.com - This is one of the most comprehensive Spanish discount code websites.  It has a nice alphabetical index along the top where you can search for companies.

ahorrocheques.com - This site offers discount codes, 2 for 1 offers etc. It lets you search for offers by city/region in Spain.  Although not every area is covered, but the main areas such as Barcelona, Madrid, Alicante, Murcia and Valencia.

There are other discount code websites for Spain, but these are the main ones currently.

British expats can now watch BBC TV abroad for free, via the Corporation’s online iPlayer, after the release of a computer program which tricks the system into thinking it is in Britain.

The iPlayer’s catch-up service is only available in the UK, a common source of annoyance for British expats. But Expat Shield – designed by software company AnchorFree – assigns a UK IP address to connections made abroad, making it appear domestic.

It has been technically possible for people outside the UK to access the iPlayer for some time via Virtual Private Networks – similar to those used by companies to provide staff with remote access to their work IT facilities – but, as technology blog The Next Web reports, the VPNs required to secure it are complicated and usually cost money to set up. Expat Shield, however, is free to download. Both companies were unavailable to comment.

Source: The Independent

Link to Expat Shield website: http://www.expatshield.com/

The biggest incentives for moving abroad are to find a better way of life and to boost earning potential. But these two benefits are rarely found together, a HSBC Bank International survey has revealed.

According to a HSBC (LSE: HSBA.L - news) Bank International report on expat experience, while the majority of expats questioned claimed that increased financial gain and career opportunities were their key reasons for becoming an expat, the countries which provide these improvements tend not to satisfy quality of life expectations.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Russia are the most popular countries for those citing financial gain and career progression yet rank in the bottom five of 25 countries in the quality of life league table.

In contrast, expats moving to countries that score well on the quality of life league table, such as South Africa (3rd), Spain (6th) and France (7th) are much less appealing as destinations to those looking for financial gain.

There are exceptions to the rule: expats living in Bahrain and Bermuda both scored particularly well for quality of life, scoring 2nd and 5th respectively, as well as featuring in the top quartile of this year's HSBC Expat Economics league table.

BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the Middle East were found to be the most difficult expat locations to set up in, taking into account a range of factors such as the ease of setting up their finances, healthcare, accomodation and utilities. South Africa, followed by Canada proved to be the easiest countries to do this.

The only area South Africa-based expats found difficult to set up was their finances, where nearly a third admitted having problems when first relocating.

India was ranked as the most difficult country for expats to set up in overall, with adjustments to the new culture and lifestyle something expats found particularly challenging.

4,127 expats from more than 100 countries worldwide took part in the Expat Experience survey by HSBC Bank International , making it the largest of its kind.

Source: The Telegraph/Yahoo Finance