Property owners can open up Hungarian Bank Accounts and earn interest rates higher than those offered by UK and Irish banks. Not only do you get a great return on your savings but you are insured by the European central bank up to £85,000 / €100,000 and twice this amount if its a joint account.
Assuming you own your Hungarian property and are mortgage free this allows you to live extremely well, especially when you consider the council tax costs in Hungary are typically less than £50 / €60 per annum. In the UK interest rates are typically 1.5% per annum so you would need to invest in excess of £100,00 / €120,000 savings in order for this to yield enough return to pay the average UK council tax bill of £1,456 / €1750 ( Band D 2013/4 ). Whereas in Hungary your Council Tax costs can be covered by investing as little as a few thousand pounds / Euros in a higher yielding Hungarian bank account.
One should consider that instant access accounts in the UK and Ireland typically only offer 0.22% in interest. Bank of England figures show that the average cash Individual Savings Account (Isa) interest rates are only just better, yielding no more than 0.66%.
What is even more miserable is that the cost of living remains incredibly high in the UK and Ireland.
