Retirement Move, Interrupted. . . . Or, After Covid, Portugal.. .

I can’t remember how or when I twigged to an impending retirement move by a frequent reader/commenter, here. But it didn’t take long for that move, in all its complexities and joys and losses and gains, to capture my imagination. Once it had, I realized that many of you might be equally captivated by the vicarious adventure, and I emailed Carol to ask if she’d be open to being “interviewed” by me for a post here.

Carol, on a trolley in Lisbon

“Yes,” she wrote back, and we began a happy correspondence. I devised a list of questions, and after breaks for trips to Portugal and logistical planning back in California, she emailed me back her answers. I asked for some accompanying photos, and she obliged with the ones you see here.  A few weeks in the back-and-forth, and I was all set to put the post together when travel restrictions against the spread of Covid-19 began taking effect, quickly followed by most of us moving indoors for. . . It hardly seemed the time to share dreams of an ex-pat life. . .

But as much as we’ve all adjusted to a different pace, to the limited, if comfortable, horizons of domestic life — we’ve even come to appreciate the benefits of slowing down, of finding joy in the simple pleasures to be found within arm’s reach — many of us are also becoming just a bit restless. Not simply about moving in space–outside of our neighbourhoods or cities or provinces or states or countries — but also about moving forward into the future. Many of us feel as if we’re holding time as well as space at the moment. Trying to imagine where the narrative might arc. . .

Cascais harbour,

And I think that Carol’s narrative arc, interrupted, perhaps slightly altered, but still energized by the momentum gathered over years of planning, offers possibilities to entrance and distract, at the very least.

So weeks and weeks later, here is my “interview” with Carol, along with a few photographs she’s generously shared:

1.     When — and how — did you arrive at the idea of moving after retirement? Was it a mutual idea or did one of you have to work to convince the other? And was the destination always Portugal, or was there research involved in choosing that country?

We’ve been talking about living abroad for years – I think the idea initially came from my husband, but I was enthusiastic from the get-go.  But we had a “someday” mentality – someday we’d do it.  I come from a long-lived family, and thought I’d probably work until I was close to 67, which is full Social Security retirement age here in the US.

In the interim we thought we’d explore.  We knew we wanted Europe, and research pointed us to southern Europe, and we started investigating the possibilities.  While we adore France, and Spain, Portugal kept coming up as an excellent place for retirees, and we added a few days there in 2018, when I did my most recent Camino de Santiago walk.

We fell in love.  With the people, the climate, the feel of the country, especially Lisbon, which reminded us so much of San Francisco.  As we continued our research, it ticked off all the boxes:  a climate similar to our current home in Southern California, English widely spoken, low cost of living, excellent retirement visa program, an international airport to facilitate travel once we’re there.

We paid off our house last September, which caused us to take a good look at our long-term finances.  We realized, much to our delight, that we didn’t have to wait until I’m 67 – that we have plenty of other resources available to us and we can rely on those and let my Social Security amass (my payout gets dramatically larger the longer I wait to start collecting).  At that point we said, “why wait?”

On their first night in Cascais, walking back to their guesthouse, entranced by the view. . .

2. What are you leaving behind and how are you preparing for the emotional impact of that? What do you worry most about missing?

We are leaving behind friends, which is obviously the most painful thing.  I’ve lived in LA since 1978, when I moved here from San Diego to finish college, and my husband has lived in southern California since 1967 and with me since 1986.  We’re renting a 3 bedroom apartment in Portugal, and hoping that people will come visit – people are already expressing great interest!  We’re leaving behind a sense of the familiar – after 42 years (wow!) I know Los Angeles really well, and can find anything I need here.  We’re leaving behind Mexican food, which will be really tough – we lived in Massachusetts for 2 years in the mid-90s, and that was probably the hardest part for me there (well, besides the snow)!

3. I know you’ve already begun culling the contents of your home (curious to know how long you’ve lived there). What’s your process for this? Are you going to ship some of your belongings to Portugal once you find a new home there? Will you store some things to decide about later? And as you’ve begun the process, are you finding a sense of lightening or a sense of loss? (From my own experience, these can both be present as once, or can shift back and forth in surprising ways — down the road four years, it’s mostly true that I feel lighter with fewer things to care for).

We’ve lived in our home since 1991, with the exception of that two year sojourn in Massachusetts, so we have a *lot* of stuff.  I wouldn’t say we’re pack rats, but we are collectors, and we are culling a whole lot for this move.  Books are tough, of course.  With fiction, I’ve told myself that if I want to re-read I can always buy on Kindle, but we both enjoy cooking, and culling the cookbook collection has been a process.  Autographed by the chef?  Probably keeping it.  Pretty pictures but we’ve never made a thing from it?  Gone.And the art books – I was an Art History major in college, and we enjoy galleries and museums and the accompanying catalogs.  We’re trying to limit the art books to ones that correspond to art that we own, or that give us special pleasure to re-read.  We’re trying to find good homes for some of the special ones that aren’t coming with us.

Other biggies:  My husband worked in the music industry for years, and has a huge cd collection.  He’s burning those to a hard drive, and then will sell the cds to a local store, but that’s a time-consuming process.

And my clothes.  I have a lot of clothes.  I’ve started the culling process there – getting rid of a lot of my work clothes and things that I won’t need for a more casual lifestyle, but I need to get rid of more, and it’s a hard process, because a) I have some nice stuff, and B) there are memories attached to so many items.  And shoes – I have lots of beautiful shoes and thus far haven’t been able to begin that portion of the purge.

Then there’s the stuff that has just amassed – for instance, when my mom died six years ago, I was responsible for the estate, and cleaning out her house, and there were things that I couldn’t decide on (I had to make so many decisions!) so they came back to LA and have been sitting in the garage.  Fortunately some distance has made that decision-making process easier and I’m powering my way through pictures and books and linens and other items from my childhood, and my mother’s.

We’re planning to take a few pieces of furniture, the books we decide to keep, our kitchen items (lots of Le Creuset) and our rather extensive art collection with us (oh, and my yarn, I have lots of yarn) – we’ll send it via container when we leave.  Portugal allows household goods to be imported duty free within the first year of residency, so we don’t want to sleep on that.

No storage for us – we learned that lesson when my eldest brother passed, and we had to deal with his storage space, which he’d held onto for over a decade, paying way more in fees that the contents were worth.  We promised each other that we’d never get a storage space – and that promise is making it much easier to make decisions about items.  Is it Portugal-worthy?  That’s the question we ask about everything we touch.

As far as freedom versus loss – yes, both!  My emptier closet is lovely to look at, and to access, and my garage is easier to navigate.  But it’s hard to say goodbye to some wonderful things, and more importantly, the memories they generate.

4. What is your current idea of what to expect or what to work toward in your new life in Portugal? Do you have a sense of how your everyday life will be different and/or the same there? And also do you have any intuition about where this new life might completely surprise you?

We’ve secured a 3 bedroom apartment 130 meters from the sea wall in São João de Estoril, an artistic community about 30 minutes west of Lisbon on the train line.  I’m looking forward to not having to drive 20 minutes to my seaside walks (we’re not going to have a car), and to living in a community where many necessities are a short walk away, instead of a car ride.  We’ll be eating a lot of fresh fish – the Estoril / Cascais area is a fishing community at heart, and one of the delights of our most recent trip was waiters bringing us a fish for approval when we dined out.

I’m looking forward to having writing time!  I’m published in romance, and I’ve been working on a women’s fiction novel that’s taking me forever (my day job was 45+ hours a week, with an hour commute each way, which left precious little time or bandwidth for creativity) and that’s probably one of the things I’m most looking forward to.

European travel is in our future – with advance planning, flights are incredibly cheap, so we’ll be seeing a whole lot of Europe.  One of my hobbies is genealogy, and I look forward to visiting the farm my great-grandparents left in Sweden, the church where my great-great-great-grandmother was baptized in Germany, and the street where my grandfather was born in Manchester, England.  We have friends in England, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and in Kosovo who are anxious for us to visit them.

I have no intuition vis-à-vis surprises, but I’m expecting them.  No place is perfect, and we certainly don’t expect Portugal to be an exception.  But my husband and I are both fairly easy-going people, so I’m figuring we’ll roll with whatever changes come our way.

The siren call of abundant seafood — Can you believe 25 Euros for all this?

5. Practicalities: are you learning Portuguese? acquiring a new wardrobe in anticipation of a different climate? working with a realtor or rental company to find a home? (have you narrowed down a city or region yet). . . and all the bureaucratic realities of visas, etc. . . .

We are learning Portuguese, slowly.  We both have a good grasp of Spanish, which is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to Portuguese.  Just when we’re sailing along, confident in our word choices, up pops a word that has no relation to Spanish, and we’re flummoxed!  The area in which we’re settling has an extensive expat community, so there are language schools, and the University of Coimbra has a series of intensive immersion courses that we’re planning to enroll in once we’re settled.

No new wardrobe needed – the weather in the greater Lisbon area is pretty much like our Southern California weather, which makes at least that part easy.

The visa process is thus far straightforward – we’re gathering documents now (passed the FBI background check!) and we will apply for our visa next month.  Basically, the Portuguese government wants to know that we have sufficient income, health insurance (once we’re there those costs will go down considerably), and that we’re responsible human beings.

 I’d also love to be able to give readers a snapshot of what your US life has been until retirement — just a sense of the career you’ve just left and the home/community/geographic environment you’ll be leaving. . .

I’ve just retired after working for the last 22 years in the finance industry, as an executive assistant to senior partners in investment banks and an alternative asset management firm, respectively.  These were demanding jobs, and while I thrived on the challenges I faced (“You’re buying a plane?  No problem!”), it could also be quite wearing, especially given my commute.

Our home is a darling Spanish bungalow, built in 1936, in a suburb of Los Angeles proper, near LAX.  We bought it a year after we were married, and yes, it will be hard to say goodbye to it.  We’ve tried to be good stewards, and we hope its next owners will love it as much as we do.

Of course, when I checked in with Carol last week to see if she agreed that the timing might finally be right to publish this post, I asked (with some trepidation) whether the move was still happening. So much has changed in the interim. I was relieved, and happy for her and her husband, to receive this reply:  We’re still planning to move – right now it’s a matter of the consulate in San Francisco re-opening so we can apply for our visas!  And of course, with everything shut down, our purged items have no place to go, so that’s slowed down as well.  At this point we’re hoping that maybe we can make the move in September or so….

 

In a lot of ways, the coronavirus has reaffirmed that Portugal is an excellent choice for our retirement – they’ve had far fewer deaths than neighboring Spain for a host of reasons, much of which comes down to a spirit of “we’re all in this together” and sensible government actions. . . 

 

In a continuation of the generosity with which Carol has answered my questions and allowed me to share her answers, she has also agreed to respond to your comments and questions. I look forward to reading the ensuing conversation, and I’ll be moderating comments as usual but will probably hold back on commenting myself, at least for now, and let you speak directly with Carol. On behalf of all of us who meet here regularly, I thank her — thank you so much, Carol! — for sharing this dream, and I extend my best wishes for its happy realization in the not-so-distant future. Can we have a round of applause, please?!