Final Thoughts

While these are final thoughts for this trip, they can only be first impressions based on a short three-week tour. Admittedly, our opinions could turn out to be way off with continued experience in Portugal.

Cost of living

Achieving a lower cost of living was the primary motivation for wanting to move to Portugal, and we were not disappointed. Housing and food are our greatest expenses, and roughly speaking both were about half of what we were paying in the U.S. However, housing costs vary widely, and it is safe to say you could go as high as you want in this area. But in general, when you compare Portugal to the U.S., you can get a lot more for the same money. Except for gas, we didn't see anything that was more expensive than in the U.S.

Having said that, there are some additional costs to consider. Living in Portugal, we would have to pay Portuguese income tax, so that would have to subtracted from the savings that would accrue for food, housing, and other essentials. While health insurance would be more affordable to us than in the U.S., we would have to opt out of Medicare for the time that we lived abroad. If we were to come back to the U.S. and re-enroll in Medicare, we would have to pay an additional premium of 10% for every year that we were out of the program.

Finally, we had to look at the cost of moving, which would mainly be airfare, legal fees, and Portuguese language instruction. Our moving strategy would necessarily be bold, as international shipping is prohibitively expensive. The plan would be to take two suitcases each, with only clothing and a few other essentials. Everything else would be sold or given away before leaving.

Climate

The climate in Portugal is similar to the Pacific Northwest, but warmer and more humid. Generally speaking, the Algarve would be the hottest, the area around Lisbon less so, and in the north around Porto it tends to be cooler and wetter. Central Portugal inland can be extremely hot and dry in the summer, which is one reason we limited our search to places on or near the coast. We are not fond of cold weather, so the climate in Portugal would be good for us.

Hibiscus flowers

Lifestyle

In some ways, Portugal has a third-world vibe, about as third-worldish as we want to deal with. At lot of things are rusted out, broken, or don't work right. A lot of places had many abandoned buildings, crumbling away right next to newly renovated ones. In many of the places we visited, the graffiti was out of control.

A lot of people smoke cigarettes, so you have to be alert to stay away from that. They don't seem to allow smoking indoors, but it is allowed in outdoor restaurant seating. A lot of people don't look that healthy, especially the elderly.

The people are friendly and courteous. They seem to appreciate any attempt to speak their language, but those who speak English are quick to switch to English if they perceive that you are in over your head. Most people speak some English, and many are quite good at it, especially the younger folks. But the older they are, the less likely it is that they will understand English.

One nice thing about Portugal is the lack of what we would call strip malls. Also pleasantly absent are shopping malls, most fast food restaurants, and corporate franchises. Yes, they do have McDonald's and Burger King, but they are few and very discretely blended into the surrounding environment.

Another nice thing is the absence of homeless camps. We know from our research that they do have some homelessness, but it must not be a very big problem for them. Except for a couple of people camped out on the street in Lisbon, we saw no evidence of homelessness after visiting nine cities over three weeks.

Conclusions

After an initial period of wild enthusiasm, towards the end of our visit I started to have some misgivings. We could definitely live for a lot less in Portugal, but with the initial investment of travel costs, legal fees, Portuguese income tax, and the rest, it would probably take us two years to break even and start realizing some genuine savings.

I came to realize that most of the expat success stories that we came across were from people who had significant financial resources. They were able to sell a home in the U.S., buy a comparable home in Portugal for half the price, and reap big profits. They could probably afford to take a financial hit if something went sideways. In our case, we would have to pay six months rent or even more up front to get a long-term lease, which is required for immigration. Landlords in Portugal are notoriously unresponsive when it comes to maintenance and repairs. They don't seem to have the concept of a non-smoking building. If our apartment proved to be unsuitable over time, we wouldn't have much recourse.

Another factor to consider is health care. In the U.S, for people under 65, the so‑called "health care system" can be a nightmare, but for us, Medicare has always provided excellent care at a low cost. Portugal supplies free health care to all citizens and long-term residents, and private health insurance is also available. It sounds good, but the quality of care would be a big unknown for a couple of old people, one if whom is a three-time cancer survivor.

Then there is the language barrier. As on previous European trips, I spent about two months with an online course, and as usual, I learned enough to ask questions, but not enough to understand the answers. Stephanie studied a lot more and got a lot better at it, and with the Spanish that she already knew, she was better conversationally and great at reading food labels, menus, and signs at bus and train stations.

Still, some people will say of Portugal: "No sweat, everybody speaks English." Well, some do and some don't. Just because your waiter can take your order in English doesn't mean that on the street he could help you out if you need directions. For both of us, learning the language would be a requirement for integrating into the society and basically not being "out of it" all the time. I found the Portuguese language to be strangely beautiful in its own way, but most people would agree that it is a difficult language to learn, maybe even worse than English. Studying it was sort of fun for a few weeks, but achieving fluency would take a long time. I decided that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life learning Portuguese.

We both had mixed feelings about the decision, with Stephanie leaning towards the positive and me leaning towards the negative. For such an important decision, we had to concur, and so we opted not to do it.

If we were 40 years younger, I would want to do it for sure, but at age 70+, it would take a lot of energy and cause a lot of stress to pull it off. At this stage of life, I would rather take things slow and easy. In the end, I just wasn't feeling it.

Despite this, the trip was not a waste, as we had decided at the beginning that if it didn't work out we would still enjoy it as another one of our European vacations. And it was a lot of fun and it's always informative to see how other people live. I guess you could say that for us, moving to Portugal was just a crazy, romantic idea. But hey, that's how we roll.