A year of Portugal: an honest assessment
The good, the bad, etcetera.
This week, we celebrated our one-year anniversary of living in Portugal.
To celebrate, J and I went out to dinner at a special-occasion restaurant and toasted our milestone.
As we take a look back and forward, here are:
—Ten observations about how life feels for us now.
—Answers to a few questions that I would’ve wanted to ask someone at this point.
10 observations about our first year in Portugal:
(These observations are based solely on our own experience. I could not share some of these in Facebook expat groups without being crucified for perceived criticisms, so if you’re an expat living in Portugal, please keep in mind that I’m speaking in my own space for a reason. I fully respect that your experience is different from mine.)
1. What we see on a daily basis (the historic buildings, the cobblestone, the colors) looks normal now. While we still are caught off guard by the beauty sometimes, none of this looks unusual or new to us.
2. Our expectations of affordability were slightly off. Yes, it’s more affordable than the U.S. No, it’s not as affordable as we thought it would be.
3. The Portuguese people have been much more friendly toward us than we were expecting. While we understand that good friendships are probably unlikely (there are cultural and practical reasons for this, not just language reasons), the vast majority of people we’ve met here are truly kind, helpful, and welcoming.
4. The government is corrupt on a level that we didn’t grasp before moving. We knew Portugal had emerged from an oppressive dictatorship fairly recently, but we didn’t see just how much corruption exists and how it affects people. We’re staying alert to this and are feeling cautious.
5. The food is disappointing to us. Fruits and vegetables are fantastic, but meat is more of a struggle. Finding a satisfying level of flavor or spice - particularly in restaurants - has been nearly impossible. At the end of the day, we aren’t the biggest fans of Portuguese cuisine.
6. Housing feels like one of the biggest challenges of life here. We understand that it’s affecting Portuguese families far more, but we are also feeling it. Costs are skyrocketing and inventory is impossibly small. This is another wait-and-watch situation.
7. The cost and quality of healthcare has been amazing. We’ve been able to make tremendous strides toward feeling well and strong - it would not have been possible to do this in the U.S., and not just because of cost. The level of healthcare that we’ve found here is beyond anything we’d experienced previously.
8. The NHR program (Portugal’s tax agreement with the U.S.) makes it much easier on us to live here, financially. A significant part of our income would go toward taxes if we were living in another European country.
9. I like our pace of life more here. It’s slower, more focused, easier.
10. Portugal feels like a good place to be right now. It makes sense for us.
Here are the questions I think I would’ve had for someone who was a year into their life here.
What has been the hardest thing to adjust to?
The language. That’s specific to where we live; English is not widely spoken in our city. Other parts of Portugal are different. When we go to Porto, for example, we can spend the better part of the day without speaking anything but English.
What would you do differently if you did this all again?
I would choose where to focus my energy and time more carefully. I wish I’d been more aware and intentional.
I would focus as much as possible on just two things at a time, such as:
Medical appointments + language lessons
Language lessons + establishing a work routine
Work routine + social interaction
Once we had our feet under us, focusing on just two priorities at a time would’ve helped me feel more grounded AND helped us to make better progress in all areas.
Are you planning to stay in Portugal?
For now? Hell yes. We’re keeping open minds and staying nimble (we aren’t buying a home right now), but Portugal feels like the right place for us for the time being.
Looking back, was there anything specific that helped make the transition easier?
Two things.
First: my feeling is that there’s not a right way to do this so much as a right mindset. Being open to new experiences, remaining humble about being a guest in a country that’s not yours, and expecting that things will be hard goes a long way.
I tend to try to anticipate and head off potential mistakes - almost obsessively so - and that’s impossible when moving to a new country. It turned out that a flexible, adaptable mindset was the thing that kept me afloat.
Second: getting help from professionals. We worked with a relocation company on everything from our visas to setting up utilities. And we work with a healthcare concierge service that acts as a liaison for those of us who don’t speak Portuguese. Their service has made navigating the healthcare system so easy.
Moving abroad required every ounce of mental and emotional energy that we had. I can’t imagine the additional bandwidth it would take to figure out and execute all of the other stuff on our own. Working with these two services has been the best money we spent throughout the entire process.
What do you wish you’d brought from the U.S.?
I wish I’d brought a few more comfort items. A couple favorite vintage coffee mugs, a couple more vintage clothing pieces. Things that feel like home, like me, and that I can’t ever replace - particularly here, where this kind of stuff is rare to nonexistent.
Also some pepper seeds (particularly serranos), dill in some form, and some cheese powder for popcorn. Finding snacks here that are truly salty is weirdly difficult. (Cheetos have sugar. Rosemary garlic potato chips have sugar. Cheesy Doritos have sugar. And yes, they all taste faintly sweet.)
What advice would you give to someone who’s about to move abroad for the first time?
If possible, move in a way that’s lightweight.
Meaning, make plans but know that it may not be the overwhelmingly positive experience you hope for. Treat it like a one- or two-year experiment. Hold off on deciding whether it’s forever until you’ve experienced all of the seasons at least once.
Maybe don’t buy a home before arriving, and maybe don’t ship a household of stuff over right away.
Some people do those things and end up perfectly happy, but there is a super high number of people who leave within the first couple of years (and didn’t expect to).
Regardless of whether we live in Portugal for the rest of our lives or not, there’s a deep ease in having the freedom to pivot. It allows us the luxury of being clear-headed about our situation, of being honest about what we want without having to weigh the difficulty of extracting ourselves.
Do you think you might move back to the U.S. someday?
It would probably take something truly drastic to send us back to living in the United States. Living abroad feels like the best path for us. But we’ve learned to remain open, so there’s no certainty even there.
Having just celebrated our own 1 year anniversary, this is spot on.