Hello and Work

Michael · Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 8:30 pm Post subject: Hello and Work

Hi to whoever reads this - my wife and I are seriously contemplating moving to the lagos area sometime this year

Weve been frequent visitors to Lagos over the years and have fallen in love with the place like many of you have I suppose

My question is simple - whats the work situation like as i will need to have some form of income ?

We can put our hands to most things - and if we cant find anything that suits straight away we'll probably look to start some form of business - and that is the long term plan anyway

Any way I'm rambling - thank you for reading and any honest advice would be much appreciated

Cheers
Michael

VinhoTinto · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:54 pm Post subject:

Hello, Michael, and welcome to our friendly forum. An, albeit frequent, visitor to Lagos, I'm not in a position to help with regard to employment opportunities in town but I'm sure that Gareth, our Admin. and a couple of residents might be able to give you some idea. Keep logging on here and sooner or later one of them will pop in.

Gareth · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:38 pm Post subject:

Hi Michael,

To be honest I´ve found it difficult, don´t get me wrong the sheer joy of living here makes it worthwhile. I spent my first 3 months gardening then a combination of gardening and evening bar work, the bar ask me to go fulltime and moved me upto manager this continued for almost 12 months, I´ve spent most of my life working with computers so over the first year here in Lagos I simply let people know I could help with pc problems, slowly my client base grew and eventually I quit the bar, the last year its been a combination of pc work and converting my girlfriends house into 2 appartments for some extra income during the summer.

Most successfull people here I know offer services to the huge expat community if you have service skills that the expats need you will be ok, it will take some time to get going and the first year is difficult, you must try to remember that most people here only earn around €25 a day the mininum wage is €487 per month so by those standards its hard making ends meet, meaning most portuguese people in the lower earnings bracket have to work 2 jobs just to qualifie for morgages and other large puchases.

A high percentage of expats come here to retire as there pension pounds go alot futher (ok the exchange is bad right now but it will pick back up) general quality of life is much better than the UK, rental prices and house prices are cheaper and a night out is much cheaper but cars are expensive so I guess its horses for courses, its great if your retiring but if your younger like me with no pension then you have to work alot harder.

You mentioned starting your own business, thats problery the best way to head but be prepard for a slow and difficult start as from my experience its been word of mouth that has best served me, advertising did´nt help at all but I´ve found that simple things like arriving on time, being organised & trying to do the best job I can has people telling there friends and passing along my number. To be honest the last year II´ve been more focused on this house renovation/conversion and let all but my regular customers slip away oftern refering other tech´s for the job. Of course this is all relivant to the type of business you intend to start.

If your aiming your business at the expats like me then theres little need to learn portuguese but if your business is more generalized then learning portuguese is a must, after 4 years here I still don´t speak portuguese, well I know the basics but deep conversations are beyond me I don´t try enough or else I´d be fluant by now, its actually embarressing now especily since my girlfriend is portuguese so this year I plan to finish the house learn portuguese and expand my pc repair business.

I hope you find my comments usefull