Should We Stay or Should We Go?!?

We have some really hard decisions to make this week and my head is spinning with it all. I'll explain the history behind what is leading us to these tough decisions.

We moved to Cyprus in January 2006 and set up a photo engraving business here inside a hotel. Our first year was fantastic. The business seemed to really take off and we ended up having to have my parents over with us pretty much the whole Summer as we were regularly working from 2pm to 6am as we were so busy. The kids were in school at that time and I worked with dh at our shop.

In the November I slipped outside the hotel and dislocated my elbow and fractured my left arm (and I'm left handed) so was in plaster for 4 weeks and ever since have been unable to fully straighten my arm and it still gives me a bit of grief from time to time so I haven't worked with dh as I struggle to place the keyrings and pendents on the machine.

In February 2007 we took E out of school as she has Selective Mutism (a fear of speaking in public) and was unable to communicate verbally with her teacher who told us that as she wouldn't speak then she was unable to teach her. Shortly after this J was bullied at school and the school refused to do anything so we removed him and I began homeschooling both of them.

The Summer of 2007 was good for the business but not quite as good as 2006 but we were happy as we got to spend lots of quality time together as a family and we were doing ok still.

The Winter of 2007/08 was quite tough and we struggled a little. We had just enough money to pay the bills, buy stock for the business and live. We considered selling our house in England to release the money tied up in it but decided against it due to the falling house prices.

This Summer has been very mixed. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it. One day dh would take 500 euros but the next day he would do 40 euros. This has made it really hard to budget as we have had no idea what he would earn from one week to the next.

It doesn't help us that Cyprus joined the Euro in January 2008 and then the UK pound has fallen so much against the Euro. We haven't put our prices up and if anything have been slightly cheaper than the last two years. However, because of the pound weakening against the Euro it means that people are paying approximately £2 more than the previous years. You could ask why we don't drop our prices to absorb this. The answer is our rent on the shop here went up sharply in January alongside the amount dh has to pay in Social Insurance here almost doubling. We have done lots of deals whereby if customers are purchasing more than a couple of keyrings we will do often quite good discount to ensure we don't lose the sale altogether.

Prices for almost everything here have risen hugely since the introduction of the Euro but this is the same all over the world as a result of this global credit crunch and the rise of oil prices over the Summer. The only good thing about the state of the markets seems to be that the cost of oil is coming down but it is not being passed on quickly enough at the petrol pumps in particular.

We have saved as much money as possible but at the moment I don't think it is enough to see us through the Winter here. This past week has again been mixed with two great days where dh made over 400 euros and things seemed to be looking up but this was followed by days where he did 25 and 40 euros.

Our shop is based in an all-inclusive hotel and the hotel has not been as full as previous years as a result of the credit crunch. Also the people that are coming are not bringing hardly any spending money so they aren't buying as much from us.

We had said that we had to have a certain amount of money by the end of October otherwise we would have to look at going back to England. As this month has progressed so far it doesn't seem as though we will reach our savings target and even if we do I worry if it will be enough.

We have had days this Summer when we expected to do well and took less than 50 euros and I worry that if we have days like that in the Summer what will we take in the Winter.

I am thankful that we have managed to clear all our debts this year as they were a big anchor around our necks last year. We still have our house in England which fortunately is paid for with no mortgage outstanding thankfully which we have rented out since we moved here but our tennants have given notice to move out in December. We use the rent we receive on our house in England to pay the rent on our villa here but if we are unable to get suitable tennants in almost straight away we would have to find the money to pay the rent on the villa here and looking at our finances that would be like a death blow to them especially if it went on for more than a month or two or we ended up with tennants who don't pay their rent on time.

So if you have managed to read down this far we are considering moving back to England for a year or at least until the credit crunch eases. Then we would probably look at either returning to Cyprus or looking at Spain or another foreign country to live in.

When we decided to move here it was a pretty easy decision. It was the start of a new and exciting journey. Now we have one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make. Do we return to England where we would be able to live reasonably ok as we are certain we could sell the business here or do we try and ride it out but not know from one month to the next just how long we can stay for.

It is looking increasingly likely that we will be returning to England sometime in December. We haven't made a definite decision one way or the other which is driving me mad as I really just want to know what we are doing so we can plan the way forward. I have at times this year been homesick as have the kids. J in particular has missed some of his friends but I felt that by me and the kids going back in August for a couple of weeks we got that out of our system and were happy with life here.

We should know in the next week or two what we are going to do. I didn't sleep at all well last night and it ended up with both me and dh sat downstairs from 3am - 6am talking things over but still don't know what to do. We are slowly edging towards going back to England just to have more financial security and know what money we have to live on. What worries me is that this year has been a lot worse than the year before and next year sounds like it will be worse still as the credit crunch bites people more.

I had planned on starting the kids with their work about 2 hours ago but I just feel exhausted. I am going to start them once J gets back from the shop and I've had my coffee. I am not going to stress though today if we don't get everything on my list done. If we can get through at least Bible, FLL3, Maths, Science, Reading and Charlotte's Web then we will have done exceptionally well for today.

If we go return to England then we will continue to homeschool the kids. My mother in particular is anti-homeschooling and will moan about us continuing to homeschool if we go back to England but I am prepared for it. I was chatting to my brother on MSN last night and the first thing he said was are they going to go to school. No chance. We love homeschooling too much and the kids have come so far since we started homeschooling.