The Portugal portion of our story is, unsurprisingly if you’ve actually read parts 1-4, complicated. When we started to sniff around Portugal as a potential Golden Visa target, we found all the things you’ve found if you’ve been doing a similar search. The weather in Portugal is beautiful in most parts. The beaches are exquisite. The people are reputed to be lovely. From a long-term perspective, the government seems relatively stable and forward-looking, the health care stacks up fine in Europe (which means it runs circles around the U.S.)1, the food is not insanely spicy or otherwise difficult to eat… it’s the sweet spot on the chart of cost vs. quality of life. We start to talk around the house like Portugal is “the place.” It feels nice to have some direction. Then we dig down into the details with our financial advisor.

So even before the iconic “read more” page break, we’ve got thoughts, big and small. The beaches are absolutely lovely but do your research because many of them are Atlantic-facing and are too cold to enjoy even in summer for some people. (It’s us. We’re “some people.”) The politics in Portugal are currently wobblier than we’d like, although it’s too soon to say if the country is having a lurch-to-the-right moment or if it’s just a reaction to a recent corruption scandal. That said, we can say from personal experience that health care does indeed run circles around the U.S.; the only thing we can’t speak to are corner cases that we haven’t had to deal with. Should anybody have a “oh yeah, well *I*…” comment forming in your head… I mean, say whatever you want, it’s a free blog, but we never said “perfect”. It says more about the U.S. than it does Portugal that it’s so easy to compare favorably to healthcare there.

I want to be clear – neither Lisa nor I are financial advisors. All I’m about to present is what we believe we learned. This ain’t the kind of thing you should feel educated by from a blog post. So, that said…. what we realized was that there was no efficient way for us to use our retirement investments to fund the Golden Visa (GV). The money for the GV would have to come out of 401(k) funds (not, you know, by law, just how our money is situated), and the penalties for premature withdrawal are brutal. And, even if we used one of the strategies for early withdrawal and it actually worked and we didn’t pay a penalty, taking $600,000 out of your 401(k) all at once means it will be taxed at the top of the brackets. In other words, to get $600,000 we’d have to withdraw ~$800,000 or more (don’t math-nerd me on this stuff, I’m keeping it simple on purpose), and that extra $200k we would basically be setting fire to; we’d never see it again. We’re doing ok, but we’re not doing “set fire to $200,000” ok.

So about the money (again). In classic Americanisms, “doing ok” is describes a reticence to admit that you’ve got significant savings. You read about the median American’s savings towards retirement being $87,000 and have to realize that’s not what we’re talking about. Even the “average” savings account, which means outliers weigh things down disproportionately, is around $330,000. If we had that amount in savings we wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing this, at least not at our age (in our 50s). Maybe in 10+ years, with additional savings and growth, but not when we ended up retiring (late 2021 for anyone keeping track). “Ok” in our case absolutely meant “in good shape for our goals.” And, let’s be clear, we were super lucky to be top earners for a few years and able to add much of it to our retirement accounts as well as paying down our mortgage. Even so, we can’t access much of our accounts until we’re older.

This doesn’t mean you can’t get it done on the average savings amount, just that you probably can’t go about it like we did. We’re done working. Kaput. Most people leaving the US at our age want to think about being a digital nomad, or some other way of continuing to earn while over here (with all the visa and tax implications that entails.) Especially since some of the financial advantages we were able to take advantage of no longer exist (like the NHR scheme). We need to be super clear that we are not consultants with fiduciary responsibility to you – talk to a professional! Talk to several! Then talk to one more. Moving abroad — to any place — is a huge decision that can leave you without resources in a crucial future time.

So, we pivoted to figuring out how we could get post-tax liquidity (that means cash or easily-cashed investments for those of you about as new at this stuff as I am) as fast as possible. We’re talking half a million dollars or so, depending on exchange rates. As I said in Part 4, you aren’t “buying” a visa; your money is invested and there are plenty of legitimate instruments for this. But, you can’t do anything with your invested money for as long as you use the G.V. Since we planned to use it as a path to citizenship, that’s 5 or more years. That’s a long time for that much money to be tied up, for us at least.

For a post entitled “Portugal” I haven’t really talked about the country much, have I? Like I said, it’s a complicated subject for us. As we’ve read about the country we’ve become more and more interested in it. Porto seems to have very Seattle-like weather. At first this appealed to us since we figured we’d have little problem adapting. But then… look, we’ve become trained to respond to bitching about Seattle weather, e.g. “hey, Houston gets more rain than we do!” This is true, and it’s not even close; the difference is Seattle dribbles it out over seven months or so, while Houston just has downpours every now and then. Or, “our summers are the best kept secret!” and this is also true – from July to September or so it’s actually dry, temperate, low humidity… just drop-dead gorgeous really. On the other hand, as I write this in mid-June, we’ve had weather warm enough to not want a comforter on our bed foooooor about 3 days. There just comes a time in May or so where you can’t help but think “shouldn’t it be warm by now?” So, maybe not so much Porto? There are many diverse climates in Portugal, and we’ve investigated many of them. Surely, if we spend a month toodling about the country, and doing plenty of reading besides, we’d Baby Bear this sucker.2 So… yes, at this point in our process, we were not in love with Portugal the way we were with (aspects of) Italy and France.

Dear Lord aren’t we just adorable? For trying to replicate Seattle weather we did about as well as we could hope, in that it’s even hotter down in the Algarve, but hoo boy. Our little Seattle, evergreen trees and rolling green hills acclimatization has taken a beating. We have in fact found an excuse to leave Braga for at least a little while each summer when the heat has been in full bloom.

It’s not the desert or anything, but compared to where we came from it gets warmer earlier and goes higher for longer. Not complaining or anything, but it’s funny to read these assertions from 2021 us.

The next part of this story is, weirdly, a moment that I can remember super-clearly. Lisa and I were sitting in a couple of Queen Anne-style chairs we have (had – sigh, we miss those chairs) in our living room, talking the same things through over and over and driving each other juuuust the teeniest bit insane, when an idea started to form. (Neither one of us can remember who said it first, so we credit one another every time we tell the story.)

“You know… if we’re going to spend the next several years building the funds to get the Golden Visa, running out the clock here in the U.S. while constantly feeling like we’re just waiting for the good part to start… we could, you know, spend that time in actual Europe simply by going the more traditional visa route.”

In other words, instead of going on some insane quest to accumulate a massive amount of “extra” wealth, when there’s no guarantee that jobs or stock/housing markets would cooperate for all that time, we could go immediately; the only “sacrifice” is having to adjust to the moderately more restrictive “regular” visa process. Which, come on now, would mean having the run of the continent for about 9x more time than we normally get these days.3 We just sat and looked at each other for a minute. I mean, this isn’t rocket science, I’m sure plenty of people start from this premise at the beginning of their process. But for us, it was like trying to pick a lock and suddenly feeling the tumblers snap into place. This is how we’re going to do it. And just like that, moving to Portugal switched from a happy dream to consider to … well, if not a guarantee, a much more tangible possibility.

So when are we going? Yeah, that’s a whole story of its own.4

Footnotes:

¹ if you want to debate about the state of U.S. healthcare, do it elsewhere. Lisa went through cancer in the U.S., and we’ve both experienced various minor surgeries, broken bones, and general illnesses over the years. We’ve had parents with ICU-level illness, joint replacements and on and on. We’ve experienced all the vagaries of insurance, and authorizing companies, and all of that nonsense. If you genuinely think the U.S. has superior healthcare, especially considering how much is spent on it, nothing we can say will convince you and nothing you can say to us can drag us back into delusion-land.

² “This part of Portugal is too warm… this part of Portugal is too cold… this part of Portugal is juuuuuust right!”

³ We vacation in Europe approximately every 3 years for about 20 days, give or take. At the most restrictive period of the “normal” visa process we will get ~60 days in every year that we can be out of Portugal, so 180 days in that same 3-year period. And of course, when we aren’t wandering the rest of Europe we’re still free to rummage through Portugal to our hearts’ content.

Boy oh boy. We traveled our little heineys off in the first year or so that we were here, and the results were that a) we were actually a little tired of traveling, to the point where, more than a year later, we haven’t done any similarly-significant trips. Make no mistake, we’ve traveled when we’ve wanted to, we just discovered that there was in fact an upper bound to our appetite for adventure. And b) we didn’t scratch our limit of time-out-of-country with that amount of traveling. It’s both a relief and a bit of a humbling experience to discover that our idea of “lots” of travel is not in fact pushing all boundaries of sense. We have friends here that are out of country more than we are. They just don’t advertise it in a big dumb blog so people don’t notice so much.

⁴ Sorry not sorry about all the footnotes. You’ve probably noticed that I can be an incredibly parenthetical talker, and it just occurred to me that this might be a more interesting way to format my longer digressions.⁵

⁵ I wish I hadn’t forgotten about this footnote thing – it’s not like I’ve become less parenthetical over the years. Hrm….

Our first few posts here at The Ramble have been recounting the story of how Lisa and I came to our decision to move to Portugal, and we’ll get back to that in a little bit. However, in going back and telling those stories we’ve been neglecting to share the present with you, and recently the present has been plenty interesting. (If, that is, you find any of this interesting. YMMV.) We kicked around several pithy titles for this post, mostly along the lines of “the last 48 hours have been one heluva day.” Allow me to explain.

In the middle of all of our plans for getting ready for our transition, we scheduled (wisely, we told ourselves) a week of forced relaxation; a chance to recharge our batteries, to “sharpen our saws” as Stephen Covey would say. Lisa went to Maui with her sister, and John went to South Carolina to visit his parents. We will set aside any thoughts on the fairness or lack thereof regarding these arrangements and move on to the relevant bit. This past Sunday we each flew to San Francisco where we reunited with each other (and also with our luggage; a story for another time). The purpose for this diversion from home was a critically important step in the process of our move – the formal handing over of our applications and supporting documents for our D7 visas. Our what now?

As has been discussed in other posts, most countries have a variety of visas (the legal instruments that say a person from country A is allowed to be in country B) to cover the multitude of reasons that foreigners might have for wanting to visit their country. What Lisa and I are shooting for is a temporary residency visa in the country of Portugal. HOWEVER, the formal meeting at which you request this visa must occur in Portugal. To facilitate foreigners (e.g. us) being able to come to Portugal they are issued an interim visa – it says “these people aren’t just tourists, and they can stay as long as it takes for the residency meeting to happen.” This is a “D7” visa in Portugal’s system. By all accounts, the meeting that occurs in Portugal is far less rigorous than the D7 application process; if you get approved for your D7 the next step is (almost) a formality. We’ll talk about what goes into a D7 visa application in detail in future posts in this series; today, we’re just sharing the adventure surrounding the application meeting.

Our appointments were set for 9:30 AM on Monday, September 20th, at the VFS Global office in San Francisco. VFS Global has carved out an interesting little niche for itself in the immigration ecosystem. To simplify the lives of embassy employees throughout the world, VFS will “vet” the applications of prospective immigrants. They don’t make value judgements as to whether a visa should be approved. What they do is they make sure that the applicant has appropriately provided documents to satisfy each of the parts of the application. For example, some (but not all) of our requirements were to fill out an official application form, provide proof of sufficient funds to cover our expenses, and show that we have arranged housing for one year. So, our VFS agent made sure that our application was filled out properly (the right places were initialed, the right places were signed etc…), they looked over our documentation showing sufficient funds, and they looked over the lease for our apartment and the proof of wire transfers showing we had paid the deposit and 1st two months’ rent. (Y’all have an apartment?? We do! We’ll tell you all about that later.) There’s much more to it, but you get the idea. Our VFS agent doesn’t actually say “this looks like enough money”, they just make sure that we’ve shown something and that it looks to be in the ballpark of what the Portuguese embassy will be looking for.

So! Monday morning we get up bright and early (ok, 8 AM. You try dealing with a couple suffering from 3-4 hours of jetlag from two different directions trying to sleep at the same time :p), make ourselves presentable, and head out. We booked a room at the Hyatt, 3 blocks from the VFS office. We stroll down, find the place, make our way up to the 5th floor, and present documentation of our appointments – an initial step that they take very seriously. We’re a few minutes early, so we sit ourselves down to wait. The waiting room is like an upscale DMV – it’s still lit with flourescents, and the carpet is Industrial Chic, but it’s at least air conditioned, clean, and there’s only 8 or so people waiting so it doesn’t feel too crowded.

9:30 comes and goes, but we’re pretty sure we’ve figured out which of 7 cubbies is dealing with Portugal and they’re working with someone, so no biggie. 9:45, no problem. 10 AM, that person finishes up and the VFS employee calls out “next person for Norway?” Oopsie. Ok, we wait. 10:30, we’ve slipped from excitement, to anxiety, and are now drifting into boredom. Plus, just a hint of “is something wrong?” 10:45 or so, we finally decide to ask. I slip out to the security person staffing the front and ask her if something’s up with Portugal. She says we should be helped soon, but she’ll go and ask. A few minutes later, another staffer calls out some other country (I forget, but for example “next person for France?”) at which point Lisa very calmly stands up and says “is anybody doing Portugal?” Around 11, a very nice man named Duane (Dwayne? Didn’t see a nametag) kneels next to us and explains that the woman who was working Portugal today had an emergency and is out. Combined with some other staffing issue that was aluded to vaguely, this left nobody that could handle Portugal. Could we please call you tomorrow, he asks, to confirm an appointment with you for that day?

I mean… what was our option. “No, screw you?” Of course we’d do that, we had no choice. Except, we do have some other important things going on, like beginning the estate sale-like liquidation of our household on Wednesday (more on that process later, as well.) But, no, technically Tuesday is not a crisis. We spend some time arranging our flights and an extra night in the hotel, then spend an afternoon with Lisa’s mother who lives just outside of San Francisco. Fine. Dandy. We get back to the hotel and bunk down, ready to start fresh on Tuesday.

We’re up at 8 on Tuesday, not wanting to miss the call. We decide that if we don’t hear anything by 10 or so we’ll just go down and start making very polite nuisances of ourselves. We scrub up, scrounge breakfast from a bodega-esque joint, and settle down to wait. It’s just after 10 AM when we decide enough is enough, and we begin to dress for the day and to head out. As we are doing so, we get the call from Duane(!). Come on down, he says, there’s one appointment being handled right then, then we’d be made a priority, he says. Lisa and I have read a lot about this process, one appointment should be 20-30 minutes, tops, so we got moving. (I’m new at this; how’s my foreshadowing doing so far?)

We make it back into their offices and have a seat in the same chairs as yesterday. We draw a bead on the person who is being helped with his visa, and we immediately know that there’s going to be at least a litle trouble. The man at the counter has got a 500-page three ring binder in his lap. We soon grok that he is there with his wife/partner, who also demonstrates the ownership of a similar binder. We also overhear that they are applying for thier two children as well. Now, if you haven’t gleaned all the “oh fuck” in the above, let me illuminate you. There are 11 steps to the D7 checklist. Several of them are satisfied with 1-2 pages. NONE of them require more than 20 (that’s a stretch, honestly, but how you demonstrate your finances can vary wildly I suppose.) This family is WILDLY over-prepared for this process. And here’s the thing. When you’ve brought THAT much extra stuff, it’s clear (to us at least) that, in fact, you don’t which of those things you actually need. We even heard the guy mutter a few times “I’ve got this organized in just my special way, hang on, I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere.” This is, as we say in our household, no bueno.

We’re not com-PLETE-ly eavesdropping, so we aren’t sure what step they’ve made it to, but around noon or so Duane sneaks up to us again (oh boy…) and tells us that he’s been told it’s likely to be another hour or so, and would we like to go get lunch, or perhaps we would like to wait in the British waiting room? We don’t need lunch, but the “British waiting room” was certainly intriguing. Lisa also sussed out that they had COVID protocols and we were probably taking up seats that they needed. So, to the “British Waiting Room” (“BWR” hereafter) we went!

Y’all. Take a look at that photo. This place really cracked us up. Seriously, the Brits our so prissy that they even want prospective immigrants to be given dignified digs. They even had little bottles of water and grocery store biscotti under glass. Meager fare, perhaps, but the default waiting room offers diddly squat. Plus, the chairs are much nicer than the Ye Olde Conference Room Chairs in the other room. Seriously, we giggled. (I posted this same photo to the main facebook group we follow for these things, and many people were tickled as well.) Anyway, I got us a couple bottles of water and for the next couple hours we sat comfortably waiting for…

… why are you looking at me like that? Oh, the “next couple of hours?” Yeah sure, it absolutely took that long. Longer, actually. Our hotel checkout time was 2 PM, so during that time I slipped out, finished packing our bags and took them down to the lobby where they graciously checked them for us, then made it back to the BWR to settle back in with the missus, where we happily passed another hour before finally being brought in to the regular waiting room because “we’d be seen any minute now”. Which, by the by, I knew was incorrect when they said it because I’d heard the VFS staffer telling Duane that she had missed her lunch two hours ago and her blood sugar was getting dangerously low. I don’t begrudge her lunch at all, but that’s another half an hour.

In the end, our actual appointment was anti-climactic. We had done our research thoroughly and were almost impeccably prepared. One or two little niggles (our checks were made out to the wrong office, easily fixed) and we were passed with flying colors. Seriously, we really were done in ~30 minutes or so. By 4:20 or so we were back at our hotel, summoning a Lyft, and by 5 PM we were at the airport. We had, with some foresight, rebooked ourselves to the latest flight available, 9 PM, and so we had a relatively leisurely meal in the D gates, chatted, and boarded our flight. I’m typing this somewhere between San Francisco and Seattle from an altitude of 12,000 ft or so. It has been, as we said at the top, a heck of a 48 hours we went through today.