I have known Rich and Marcia, an American married couple, for decades, both of whom work in tech. This is their story about how they decided to pack up and move to a suburb of Lisbon Portugal. I recently interviewed them via Zoom.

They started looking at so-called Golden Visas back in 2016. (You can figure out the significance of that date.) This type of visa is a way for ex-pats to emigrate to a country, with sufficient means to live there permanently. The couple became interested in Portugal and vacationed there a few times before the Covid lock-downs. “There was no second choice country,” Marcia said. They got temporary resident status last summer, and moved there for good in March. They are both about my age, and mostly retired, although Rich continues to work in tech a few days a week. “We wanted a higher quality of life, and wanted to find a place where people aren’t as obsessed with work or doing the Silicon Valley 24/7 hustle to get ahead,” they said. So far things are working out — “We are eating better things that taste better and cost much less.”

Well, almost. “March was horrible,” she said. “Our cognitive load was intense, and we found bunching up errands wasn’t going to work. We had to spread them out more.” Part of the problem is the way Portuguese do things is somewhat different, such as activating a credit card (you first use it to buy something in an actual store, then go through the activation process in person) or doing more business f2f, or navigating governmental processes that involve multiple forms and understanding the sequence involved. (I would say I have the same problem dealing with the City of St. Louis.)

But since then things have gotten better. “It really changes your nervous system, and we are a lot more chill here than in the States,” she said. As an example, the recent extended power outage wasn’t any big deal for either the couple or their neighbors.

Here are some lessons they have learned:

1. If you make the move, understand that you aren’t going to replicate your American lifestyle. “You need to figure out what the natives do and how they live, and build on that,” they said.
2. Throw away any preconceptions that you have formed before the move. “Most of them were flat out wrong,” they said. Amazon Prime next-day delivery? Not in Portugal. Packages will arrive seemingly at random. (I could say the same thing about my own Prime service, sometimes.) Two-factor authentication works slightly differently too. Milk is sold via shelf-stable ultra-pasteurized containers, not in the fridge aisle. There is less of a selection of consumer goods but a wider range of less expensive options to balance it out.
3. Be patient with building your personal friend community. “There is a lot more emphasis on f2f interactions,” they said, and also your community might end up spreading across several cities or even countries. Expect this to take months if not years to build up your network. They initially picked their location because of a large ex-pat English-speaking community, which while true still will take time to find their peeps.
4. Understand your relationship dynamics as a couple. If you are thinking about moving as a couple, realize that after you move you will be dependent on each other for large portions of the day and the majority of situations. If you are used to spending time apart for particular activities, that may require some adjustments. “We are a much more tightly bound to each other and have a different dynamic, because we don’t speak the language and have to depend on each other,” she said.
5. Get your consulting team together to ease the transition, especially if you aren’t fluent in the language. The couple does speak a little Spanish, which is a different language from Portuguese. “But it is the little things that catch us,” they admitted. Who is on their team? Someone who can help navigate the healthcare system (a combination of private and public providers), someone who can help navigate government paperwork and processes, a relocation consultant that is local to your target area to help set up your household, and a lawyer to handle the initial visa requirements. All of these folks will save you a lot of time and frustration and school you in how Things Get Done.
6. Don’t make the move all about saving money. Yes, plenty of places are less expensive than the States (which the couple charmingly refer to as “the old country”), but not necessarily by a big enough discount. And not necessarily uniformly across all expense categories. For example: healthcare. “We get ten times the service at a tenth of the cost of what we had in the States,” Rich said. “Healthcare is a human right here,” said Marcia.