Hello! As we recently shared, we have reached a milestone by renewing our residency permits for an additional three years; woo hoo! We’ve been stewing on a “what have we learned” type post for awhile now, and this seems as good a time as any. However, we’ve got this series that we started the blog off with, and it’s received a good bit of attention over the years. So, rather than leaving it out there with increasingly-outdated information, we’re going to run them back up the flag pole with annotations of what we’ve learned along the way. Enjoy!

So, to begin with, a warning. This is going to be the spare-no-detail version of our story. I’m sure there’s going to be a cute “About Us” page that tells you the tl;dr version and it will cover the highlights, so if you ever think to yourself “holy hell how long is this going to go on??” I encourage you to pull the ripcord and check out that page. (First edit/ comment we don’t have one! So, you’re not missing something.) If you’re the kinda cat who likes to know everything then, kitty, this is gonna be catnip.

Lisa and I had formulated a retirement plan over the first umpteen years of our relationship; a good, solid, dependable, American retirement plan. We would work into our 60s, then move to Ashland, Oregon or one of the neighboring towns. There, we would integrate with the artistic and spiritual communities, volunteer at the Shakespeare Festival, and generally enjoy our life. We even had our eye on a retirement community a little north on I-5 that we always saw when we drove down, and figured that was where we would transition to if we weren’t able to live on our own at some point. It was a fine plan.

There was another part of this plan, one that came into being after we traveled to Europe a few times on vacation. This part of the plan detailed how we would spend a month or so every year in Europe, going to all of the great museums and archaeological sites we could get our arms around, for as long as our health allowed. The airport in Medford is small, but it has flights to San Francisco and Seattle every day and, from those two hubs, the world would be our oyster. Great plan!

It’s worth pointing out that by this point we’d been across the Atlantic a half-dozen times or so on a fairly consistent basis. It wasn’t completely pie-in-the-sky fantasy; we knew we liked the experience and we knew we wanted to have a lot more of it. I (John) think it’s a little slight-of-hand to undersell just how much we wanted to get ourselves onto “the Continent.” Lisa notes that she, at least, had no idea it was even possible to make a life outside of the U.S.

As the years rolled on, we came to love this part of the plan more than the whole “retire to southern Oregon” part. After all, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is great, but even if we see all 11 plays, twice even, that’s… well, not even a month. There are other, smaller theaters in the area… maybe a month and a half total. After that, we’re in a tiny town surrounded by rural area. (We’re talking golden hills as far as the eye can see.) We found ourselves noodling on the expense of traveling back and forth to Europe every year or so. The biggest expense, we thought to ourselves, was the actual traveling part. Once you get to Europe, it’s not particularly more expensive to vacation or sight-see there than it is in the United States. “What if”, one of us said to the other at some point, “we just lived in Europe for awhile?” But that’s not something people like us do, right? That’s fancy people. That’s Ernest Hemingway drinking Bellinis at Harry’s Bar in Venice, not John and Lisa doing… I dunno, John and Lisa things.

Meanwhile, several years ago (circa 2019) we had started trying to get a grip on the financial side of retirement. In a story that is too long and boring even for a detailed narrative like this one, we had a terrible experience with a financial advisor who, after metaphorically pulling a shark’s-mouth worth of teeth, gave us a report that was simultaneously exhaustively detailed, completely inscrutable, and utterly useless. We had no better idea of where we stood after working with him as before. Worse, when we explained that we wanted to workshop a variety of scenarios to know what our options were, we were basically handed a horrendously complex tool and told, “hey, this is what we used, plug away!” So, we threw up our hands for awhile. Fortunately, friends of ours told us over dinner one night that they loved(!) their financial advisors [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-j-chang] and we booked an appointment on their recommendation. After a couple of introductory meetings and some data gathering on their part, they had a meeting with us to explain in very clear language that our goals were completely attainable, we’d done an even better job than we’d realized in saving for retirement, and then showed us some ways to be even more prepared.

We continue to work with Kevin Chang to this day. There are people out there who poo-poo the notion of paying someone to do the work that you can conceivably learn to do yourself. We think of it like insurance; if things get tricky we are comforted knowing that a trained professional is already intimately familiar with our situation and can act quickly if that’s what’s needed. We meet online with him quarterly-ish, mostly to keep the lines of communication open. It may not be for everyone, but we continue to think he is money well spent.

This was actually a pretty emotional moment, particularly for Lisa who, it must be noted, has been the guiding star for our financial success. Both as the primary bread-winner and as someone willing to make hard financial choices, it was a tremendous moment of validation for her that she had fundamentally succeeded. Don’t get me wrong, I did a share of the lifting, but the simple truth is that she surpassed me professionally for most of our relationship; she just killed it in the working world. (Can you tell I’m proud of her? I’m proud. )

Buuuut hang on. If we’re in so much better shape than we even realized… does that make us fancy people? Well, maybe, maybe not. We at least felt like we had permission (so to speak) to investigate fancy-people options that we had previously thought were beyond us. As soon as we began to even nibble at this idea, however, something became very clear: you don’t have to be fancy people to emigrate to Europe. At least, some parts of it. Most countries just want proof that you aren’t going to be a burden on their social systems and will play fair and contribute to the tax system if you plan to partake of their services. While it would be wrong to say “anybody” can do it, way more people can do it than probably think that they can. And as soon as we realized that, the wheels started turning.

The $64,000 question, so to speak, is “so how much do you need to do this?” Americans are trained almost from birth not to talk plainly about money, and we struggle to overcome this ourselves. But here’s at least some clearer guidance. First of all, we can’t speak to digital nomads or people just coming to work a job; we retired. We researched the options for retirement. The financial requirements vary wildly from country to country. The UK, when we looked into it, expected to see a million pounds, each, liquid, on account for prospective immigrants. I’m not pouring too much tea to tell you that that ain’t us. That said, if you’ve been saving for retirement in the modern, post-pension America, you’ve probably been working on a nut that will get you overseas. On the other hand, if you’re in the situation of a lot of Americans in that you are far (FAR) behind the model for post-pension America, sad to say Europe is probably not a viable alternative. There are other options, however! We may not be able to offer much guidance, but there are plenty of options in South and Central America, as well as swaths of Asia, that make excellent landing spots for folks with the right temperament. Along those lines, we just had friends return from a trip to Tangiers and their summary review was “we’re glad we looked in Braga first because if we’d seen this place we might have moved here instead.” So, don’t rule out parts of Africa.

One of our long-term plans for being in Europe is to create opportunities for long stays in places. (As an example, a bucket list item for John is to live in London for a year so he can see everything playing at the theaters.)

We’re not made of money, as the saying goes, so we’ve always known we’d need to be creative about how we made long-stay travel possible. Back in the day, pre-Portugal, our plans had to factor in long travels days as well as lodging costs. Now, it’s basically the high cost of lodging. Sheer practicality: even a cheap accommodation of $75/ day adds up if you stay there for a month. Back when we were working we could occasionally splurge, knowing we would make that back over time. Now we are on a fixed income and it feels scary to dip into our pool of moolah for such a large amount.

As a side note: our residency also carries a restriction about how much time we spend outside of Portugal. For the first two years its capped at eight months; then its eight months again, but it’s over a three year period. Permanent Residents, which can be requested after five years, are allowed to be out of country as much as six months each year.

As a side-side note: All of this is subject to the Schengen 90-day rule which states that you can stay no more than 90 days in any 180-day period within the 27 countries of the Schengen area. As a practicality, this means that can’t travel in the EU for more than three months, even if you are crossing borders during that time and not staying in one country.

The Schengen Area (SA) is made up of these countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

There are four EU countries that are NOT in the Schengen area: Ireland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Cyprus, although the last three are in the process of becoming members.

Sneak-minded readers may have figured out the “loop hole” of the Schengen Rule, which is that one can stay 89 days in the Schengen area and then travel to another country for at least 90 more days before resuming their stay within the SA for up to 90 more days. For example, you might spend 90 days in Italy, then step across the border to spend the next 90 days in Switzerland, before moving along to France. This is known as “doing the Schengen Hop”.

Side-side-side note: Future readers: as of 2024, visitors from 60 countries (including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and all EU member states) will need to apply for an online ETIAS, which is essentially a visa waiver, when entering the SA. The waiver will be valid for 90 days within a 180-day period.)

[Yes, this is a very long side note.]

So, unless we become permanent residents or EU citizens, we’ll always be conscious of the time spent out of country and within a Schengen area. Nonetheless, long stays are eminently possible, as long as we have the budget to support paying rent while not living in Braga (we’re ignoring the daily costs of food and such because that’ll be similar n matter where we sleep).

[Thanks for hanging in so far, btw.]

All of which is to announce (really, can this lede be buried any further?) that we’ll be adding a Page to this site for our new availability as house- and pet- sitters!

All props to our (fantastic) house sitter, Barbara Farfan. She first sat for us during our honeymoon in 2012, and returned again in 2017, and 2019. She was (and is) a full time ‘sitter who creates income with writing gigs and inspired us to contemplate using house sitting as a way to get to travel the world in our retirement. We figure that we’ve got some value-add as experienced pet owners who have had animals with behavior issues, as well as elderly/special needs critters who got all sorts of medications over the years.

We found her (and the others who covered other travel events) through an online clearinghouse (housecarers.com) where we’d found the people who sat for us in previous world travels. Since those early days, a number of sites have sprung up and are doing a roaring business. What we noticed was that the successful sitters had references.

Obviously we didn’t have references as sitters, so we’ve being doing sits for friends. As it turns out, our community of immigrants here in Braga is a den (heh) of animal lovers, so there’s been no shortage of friendly acquaintances who could use the help. Plus, bonus, we get to have pets for a few days without the actual commitment of having pets. Win win win… win? Four wins, I think? Maybe three. Anyway. It’s been a lot of fun to hang out with kitties and pooches again, with the added bonus of helping out people we genuinely like. And our friends appreciate that we aren’t charging for services rendered; not that we would charge friends even if it was just for kicks, but the fact that we’re just looking to build our resume makes it an easy sell.

The various pet-sitter clearinghouses online have actually become pretty competitive, especially if the ‘sit is in a popular destination. When we finally decide to start doing this for real we’ll have a few things (hopefully) going in our favor. First, we’ll have built up a good portfolio of references. Second, living over here and being retired, we can prioritize people who emergency/last-minute requests with little hassle. And third, we’re not too picky about exactly where we go so long as it’s interesting. We were just noodling on a ‘sit on the west coast of Scotland, in a little village. Nothing world-class sexy about it, but hey, it’s Scotland; plus, since it was “just” a cat-sit there’d be some travel flex and rail travel is dead easy over there. It may be a little hamlet that nobody has heard of outside of Scotland, but who cares? It looked pretty and it was logistically sensible. Anyhow, we didn’t try for it but it’s definitely the kind of thing we’ll be looking for in the future. Stay tuned!

We’ve got some big changes coming. At the end of November we’re going to San Francisco to share Thanksgiving with our family there.

The next day, we’re boarding our flight for Portugal.

We have one-way tickets.

But first, hello to the handful of readers – mostly family! – who come here to see what’s going on with us. (Hello!) Now that we’ve avoided burying the lede, let’s rewind a bit.

A bit more than 10 years ago John and I were having dinner and I told him that I’d like to get married. Until then, we’d been gently circling around the idea, but when the moment came it was with very little warning. That was a big shift for us.

BIG.

It was a voyage into the unknown, one that has gone places we never expected. We are completely and utterly thrilled at how well its turned out, this bringing two worlds together (kind of an understatement) and our lives are so much richer for making this shift.

Like many, the Year (-plus) of COVID has created a huge shift in our lives, one that led to much introspection, discussion, and revising our future plans.We began to feel very much like there has to be more to life than  . . .

Of course, like everyone else we were working from home. So many of our personal activities (hobbies, socializing etc…) involve our computers, though, that it felt like we never got up from our desks. The lines between working on my computer for my employer and being on my computer for fun got very blurry. And depressing. On the other hand, the pandemic times also caused us all to stretch our notions of how we stay in touch. It’s not the same as getting together, obviously, but frankly there were some friends and family that we talked to more in the last year than we had in the previous two or three. And finally, being forced to untether from so many of the physical places that were a part of our life (workplaces, restaurants, the homes of friends and so on) that we found ourselves asking just what, exactly, was keeping us where we are? We felt, viscerally and literally, that “tomorrow is promised to no one” and if we want to fulfill our dreams, there really is no reason not to start now.

NOW.

In saying that out loud, our world shifted. The moment the idea of moving away became even a possibility, it quickly began to feel like an inevitability. If this is as interested in the subject as you’re likely to be, well, there you go – we’re moving to Portugal for awhile and this is why.

If you have any deeper interest in the subject, watch this space. We’ve both been journaling about this process and we think it makes for some interesting storytelling.