Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (00:21.934)
Ron, thank you so much for joining us. I'm looking forward to this conversation because it's been a while since I've checked in with someone that has done the golden visa. And I'm really interested in kind of golden visa and financial wealth and personal finance. And I feel like you're the man to talk to. So tell us a little about yourself.

Ron (00:22.704)
I'm ready. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I've loved your podcasts and YouTube videos in the past. I'm so excited to be a part of it. You guys do a great job and a great service. And we were it was very helpful for us in the research that we did in deciding to come to Portugal. So our journey really started in 2016 when our daughter graduated from college and she got to pick a trip as her graduation present. And we decided on Portugal, which none of us had ever been.

And I grew up in California. I spent most of my career in Philadelphia, but I grew up in California. We landed in Lisbon and we took the train up to Porto and we're going to make our way back. And when I was on the train, on that train ride from Lisbon to Porto, it looked like what California looked like when I was a little boy. It just made me feel very comfortable between the Chaparral and the vineyards and the ocean views. And it was a Western facing ocean like California is. And just, you know, everything felt.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (01:32.238)
Mmm.

Ron (01:43.44)
very comfortable from a geographic standpoint. And as we spent a little bit more time on that trip, the people were so kind and the food was great and the wine was great and just everything was beautiful. And we just really, really, really liked it. So like, wow, this is, this is a great country. So we ended up our trip in Kashkais. And as one does, we were looking at real estate offices in town, real estate offices. And one of the properties that was listed,

had a sign underneath it that said, this is a perfect property for the golden visa. Like, oh, golden visa, that sounds like, wow, it's golden, that's great. Wonder what that is. So I kind of filed that away and went back to the States, was at my desk. I was not a very good Portuguese person in those days. I would never take lunch. I would just pretty much work at my desk, but I might take 10 or 15 minutes out while I was eating and just kind of play around on the internet.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (02:18.382)
Hahaha.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (02:37.23)
Hmm.

Ron (02:37.296)
And I said, oh, yeah, what was that Golden Visa thing? So I looked it up and like, oh, wow, this is a great opportunity to be able to move to Portugal once we retire. So retirement for me was probably like eight years away at that point. So it was something I was thinking about, but just in the in very, very briefly. And we we went to.

Jessica's my wife, we were thinking about retiring abroad. We weren't necessarily thinking about Portugal, but we were thinking about retiring abroad. So it wasn't like it was completely outside of the realm of possibility, but we looked, we was like, oh, this could be really interesting. So I did a bunch more research of different sites and we got in touch with a lawyer who kind of told us about how it would work and decided at Christmas of 2017 that we should go back and see what it's like. So it's one thing,

this graduation trip was in summer. It's one thing to follow them over the place in the summertime. It's like, okay, what's it like in the winter? And it was really funny. It was a really, really cold winter in Philadelphia that year. And it was perfectly lovely here. It was maybe like 12, 15, 13, 12 to 15 degrees, something like that. And I was just wearing, if I was wearing a polo shirt like this, I would wear a light jacket. If I was wearing a...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (03:37.358)
Yep. Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (03:49.358)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (03:54.318)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (04:00.88)
dress shirt, I would just have a sweater on. And somebody actually asked me if I was like, did I need a coat? I was like, no, this is very warm weather. Meanwhile, the Portuguese people were wearing Canada goose down puffer jackets with hoods and fur and everything like that. It was pretty hysterical. Anyway, the winter was fine. We felt we can easily do this. We came back again in 19 and met with a lawyer in person. And we...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (04:03.214)
Yeah.

Right.

Ron (04:31.106)
learned about everything that we needed to do. And we decided that the golden visa was a better option for us for a couple of reasons. So one, I had the resources. That's the one thing, it's a more expensive option. I don't wanna sugar coat that, but it was a more expensive option, but it was a lot more flexible. Like I said, I was not ready to retire yet. I did retire at the end of 2023. That was kind of more or less the plan maybe a year later, but.

My job, I worked in the financial services industry for a big mutual fund company. It was an on the desk job every day. There was no working, I mean, during COVID I worked remotely, but there was no, you know, like, oh, I think I want to just go to Portugal for six months and work from there. That was never going to happen. And...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (05:02.414)
Hmm.

Right.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (05:15.054)
Right. And your company, I guess, as soon as possible, they wanted people back in the office. Okay.

Ron (05:20.304)
Yes, yes. And other story, but I was ready to go back. I was not a very good work from home person anyway. I needed the social interaction anyway. But the other thing was that I've heard so many discussions about this on the different forums and the lawyer still aren't, like the lawyer that we talked to still wasn't 100 % sure. But if you look at what the requirements for the D7 are,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (05:26.478)
Got it. Okay. That's no, that's really good context. Thanks. Yep.

Ron (05:50.096)
It's passive income, which I didn't have passive income. I had a wage income. And I suppose I could have bought an apartment complex or something like that, but we didn't really have any passive income. And you need to have a private pension. If you want to count your pension income as passive income, social security wouldn't work, which I'm not old enough for it yet anyway, but social security wouldn't work. And savings don't technically work. Now I've heard tons of people say like, oh yeah, we just put that down and it was.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (05:53.902)
Yes.

Ron (06:17.808)
it was fine, but if you look at what it actually says, so that didn't look like it was gonna work. We wouldn't have been able to apply for it until I was already retired because once you on a D7 or I guess a D8, once you get the approval, you have, I think, was it like three months or something like that to get your act together and go. And again, I was at a job where I needed to show up at the office every day. So the golden visa just gave us a lot more flexibility. And...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (06:38.958)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (06:43.278)
Okay.

Ron (06:45.872)
we decided to do the investment option. This is so now today, you can only do the investment option, but then you could also buy property. We decided not to do that. And we decided not to do that for a couple of reasons. The main reason was that we didn't know exactly where we wanted to live. And I didn't want to, it was very expensive to buy property here. I think you've had videos about this Josh, but the property taxes are very low here, what you pay every year, but the upfront costs are very, very high. So we didn't want to like,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (06:52.814)
Right.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (07:00.654)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (07:11.214)
annually. Yeah.

Ron (07:15.312)
you know, buy a flat in city X and say, oh, we really want to live in city Y. That's, you know, that could be, you know, tens of thousands of euros of additional costs. So we didn't want to do that. And I worked for a big mutual fund company. So it's like, oh, you make you make an investment in a mutual fund company. I get that. I understand how that works. So so we decided to do that. We did. So I retired in December of.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (07:30.958)
You understood. Yeah. Yeah.

Ron (07:43.44)
We came in the middle of January of 24. We had Airbnbs lined up through the end of March in different locations. Well, we very slowly and very methodically decided where we were going to live. We saw an apartment on the second day. It ticked every single box and we bought it. So we ended up buying property. But what was good about buying is like now we just live there as opposed to if we bought it, you know, two or three years ago, we probably would have rented it out. And it was very, very, very

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (07:55.534)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (08:00.654)
Amazing. Okay. Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (08:07.95)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (08:15.12)
scary, I guess is the word, or just a little daunting maybe to be renting, intimidating to be renting property, renting out property in a different culture. We don't know exactly how it works. Like in the US, I know exactly what you do. You put this in the contract and we want to come back. You release this over. I didn't know how exactly that would work. I have had some experience in France where I used to live and, you know, tenants rights are very strong there. And I understand that they're strong here in Portugal as well. So he's like, you know what, let's just, let's just do the,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (08:18.03)
Sure. Intimidating.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (08:31.534)
Yeah, sure.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (08:39.246)
Strong. Strong here. Yes.

Ron (08:44.88)
investment and we're just going to pray that when our five years or the five -year lockout period is over, we get the money back. And so that was the decision. The other thing that is good about the Golden Visa is that once you're here, you can leave if you have to. Now, we got here sort of permanent. We got approved in... We got our cards in 22. So we came in 22 for our visit for that year. We came again in 23.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (08:52.91)
Okay.

Ron (09:13.712)
twice. I came once and Jessica couldn't come on that trip. So as a good husband, when Jessica had to do her 23 time, I went again with her. So we went to the Azores on that trip. And so we had to do the annual visits, but we didn't have to spend a minimum amount of time here. And now we've, we're here. We have NHR status. We're, you know, pretty much all set, but we had a lot more flexibility. And if we needed to go back to the U S for any reason,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (09:21.614)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (09:27.79)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (09:36.174)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (09:42.544)
We could have done that, which we haven't had to, but it's nice having that option. So that was kind of the decision process, and now we're here.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (09:53.678)
Okay, awesome. I have a couple points of clarification just for the audience. So we were talking earlier about the transfer tax when purchasing a property. There are two taxes that you'll hear about here in Portugal. Um, when it comes to real estate, uh, two main ones, I should say there's the IMT, which is the transfer tax. And this one, excuse me, this one is the huge one. Um, I can't remember exactly what percentage it is, but it is a significant amount.

Um, and then you have the EMI, which is IMI and that's the annual tax, which is a small percentage based on the assessed value of the property by the, the, the local government, not actually the purchase price of the property. And the assessed value is generally significantly lower than the purchase price. So it's like it drops it even more. Um, so this would be like maybe a couple hundred euros per year that you pay in property taxes, which.

to most Americans seems ridiculously low. Right, the administrative hassle of collecting it. No, that's exactly right. Although it's Portuguese, it's more significant, but I think from an American point of view and knowing what we pay for property taxes in the States, it's nothing, essentially. So I did wanna bring that up as a point of clarification. Now, let's move forward, because your story is really interesting to me.

Ron (10:55.312)
I know, it's not worth the price of collecting it.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (11:22.574)
you went the investment route and have there has there been a minimum investment amount that has changed since when you got the golden visa and then what it is now? How much did you have to invest?

Ron (11:25.648)
Yes.

Ron (11:36.88)
So we were, the regime seems to change all the time. But when we were doing it, if you bought property was 500 ,000 minimum, or you could buy multiple properties, but you had to spend at least 500 ,000 euros, the investment was 350 ,000 euros. And I don't mean to be too cavalier about like, you know, about it, but you know, 300, I mean, 350 is a lot of money. I think it was the largest check I've ever written up to that point.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (11:42.222)
Yes.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (12:05.198)
Sure.

Ron (12:06.544)
but it was, you know, it's not undoable. We were pretty good about saving money over the years and we were able to do it. Now it's 500 ,000. So that's more, that's a lot more. And so doing the 350 versus doing the 500 then to buy the property, it was probably better to do the 350 and just have the flexibility to buy the property where we want to know when we were doing it, we could have bought wherever we wanted to, but shortly afterwards,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (12:17.486)
Yep. Yep.

Ron (12:35.536)
Now you can't buy property until they enter the property option. You couldn't buy in Lisbon, you couldn't buy in Porto and you couldn't buy in any coastal area. So it really reduced the flexibility that you had as to where you wanted to be to buy and where you wanted to live. And we were not looking at it as investment property, we were looking at it as a place where we wanted to live. So we wanted to have more choice, which just made sense. And like I said, we're very fortunate. I don't mean to sound like a snob or anything like that, but we were just very fortunate.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (12:40.014)
Yes.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (12:43.662)
Yes.

Ron (13:05.296)
and we had the resources and so we just went that route. But believe me, I am very much hoping that when our lockout period is over that that money comes back because it was not an insignificant amount of cash.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (13:11.278)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (13:23.854)
Yeah, definitely. What are the terms? What terms were offered in terms of when the payback would be, how that technically works, and then what the returns might be?

Ron (13:35.024)
So it was a five -year lockout. We made the investment in June of 2020. So we should be getting it back in about a year from now if we are permanent by that point. So the thing is that because you have to maintain this investment in order to qualify for the golden visa. And...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (14:00.814)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (14:02.736)
like, you know, dealing people who, you know, are fans of your podcasts and other Portugal podcasts know that things with the government don't always work exactly like it's supposed to. So they say that, you know, in five years you get, you're all done. Well, you're not necessarily all done at that point because you might not have the appointments. So we have to maintain that investment until we get our approval. But another thing that's changed, and this has actually changed positive for us and

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (14:21.326)
Yeah, this is what I want to discuss.

Ron (14:32.752)
people who are situated like us is that it used to be that it was five years from the time you got approved, which would for us have been July of 22, which would take us out to 27. But, or I'm sorry, when you got your, when you actually got your cards, which would have been July of 22. Now it's like when you, yeah, and now it's, they're saying it's when you got approved, which for us was sometimes in 21. So now it only goes out to 26, or it might be when you applied, which was in 2020.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (14:46.318)
Correct. That's when the clock starts.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (14:52.142)
Correct.

Ron (14:59.088)
We're still working with our lawyer. She's not 100 % sure of exactly what they mean, but...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (15:04.782)
I don't think that they're a hundred percent sure because they've, they've put out, I mean, and you know, obviously not to sound funny, but like they've put out this information that this is what they want to do. And it's not necessarily like a grandfathering in it's a, a moving people start date to a more reasonable time because they realize the processing time has taken so long. So it's, I think that they've also done it for the, uh, for people on the D seven and D eight whereby.

Ron (15:23.696)
Right.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (15:33.998)
when you arrive and actually touch ground here in Portugal is generally a drastically different date from when you have your first Ceph or IMA appointment to be confirmed as residents. So what they're saying is like, we're going to give you those two to four or five months back and, and your clock actually started when you arrived. But for the golden visa people, I mean, it was taking, or it has been taking 18 to 24 months for some people, which is, is crazy.

Ron (15:43.664)
Right. Right.

Ron (16:01.168)
Yes, yes. Right, so we're actually, exactly. So we're actually going through our first renewal in July of this year. So we'll see how that goes. The thing that makes me a little bit nervous is having, even though, is having an expired card, even though they know that things are slow, just like having expired card makes me a little bit nervous. But the other thing is we're doing two things because,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (16:04.174)
It's not like as advertised.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (16:14.67)
Okay.

Ron (16:28.24)
the address that we used was our lawyer's address, now we have our own flat. So we're not only are we extending our thing, but we're changing our address. I'm afraid that too, I'm hoping that changing two things won't overload the system too much.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (16:43.694)
Yeah, I worry. I worry about that too with people. You know, it's like you sign a, you sign a CPCV to purchase a property and then your passport number changes because you've had a renewal. Well, you know, how are they going to view those identifying documents now? Like, will there be anything weird that happens? You know, will logic prevail and will they recognize you're the same person despite this number having changed because you've had an expired passport or whatever?

Ron (17:00.592)
Right? Exactly. Yes.

Ron (17:13.104)
It's funny, we actually changed our passports right before we came because they were going to expire mid year this year. So we just did a little bit early and we brought the expired passports with us just in case like, oh no, here's the old one with this number and here's the new one. It's the same person for exactly that reason. Like, you know, sometimes, you know, people ask me, you know, have I enjoyed being here? And the answer is yes, it's been, it's been great.

But every day is in roses and sunshine. I was trying to figure out what are the bad days for me or the days that I have to do something with the government. So I have not exchanged my driver's license yet because I'm going back to the US at the end of May. And when I'm there, I'll get all the paperwork together with the...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (17:45.166)
Sure.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (17:49.966)
Okay, well let's come on to that. Yeah, let's talk about that.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (17:58.062)
Okay.

Ron (18:09.072)
you know, with my driving record and getting it translated and getting it apostilled and all that, all that stuff so I can switch my driver's license. But I, so I have not done that yet, but we've gotten our social security numbers. We have the, we have the health, we've been here long enough now that we had, we qualify, we have private insurance, but we can also get the social security number now. So we've got a social security number. Our daughter, we got a NIF for our daughter. We got,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (18:30.35)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (18:37.84)
had to register with Finansos, had to register in the fregazia that we live in the fregazia. It's like everything like they want different pieces of paper or this paper is your contract with Aguas de Cachecaiche, the water company. This is your contract with them. This isn't a bill. It has to be a bill. It's like, okay. Or the internet service doesn't count. It's got to be a utility, but internet's not...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (18:44.622)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (18:55.534)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (18:59.342)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (19:07.76)
considered a utility or just getting the Senya and waiting. I think one time we went to Finances and my number was like 65 and they were on four. It's like, you know, just like, you know, things like that are, you know, those days are not picture postcard days in Portugal. But the other days.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (19:09.23)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (19:32.142)
Which day, which days are, yeah, so when you're not having to deal with heavily bureaucratic things. I think Victoria's gonna pop in and talk about the scratchiness. I don't know what's causing that. Are you on a computer or phone? Okay.

Ron (19:44.336)
I'm on a computer, but you know what? Is that better?

Is that better? Test, test, test.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (19:57.838)
on the mic.

Ron (19:59.152)
Okay, you know what? I had a piece of paper. I will take it off the computer and now we'll be better.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (20:00.91)
Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (20:05.326)
Okay, that makes sense. Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (20:15.022)
You have a cheat sheet?

Ron (20:17.136)
Just a few things that I wanted to make sure that I remind myself about the Ron story.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (20:21.806)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (20:26.958)
Where's the mic on the computer? Is it a laptop? Okay, because I think that the mic is not coming through the headphones and it's coming from the mic that's actually on the laptop. So I think that the piece of paper was on that and anytime there was a bit of movement, we could hear it. But it wasn't horrible. We don't need to redo this at all. But if we can just move it. Cool.

Ron (20:30.512)
It's a laptop.

Ron (20:49.328)
Okay, well, yeah, put the paper. I can't even reach it now.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (20:57.518)
Can you see it though to reference what you want to reference?

Ron (20:59.888)
I've just, it was kind of getting the order of, yeah, we came here for Sefi's graduation trip. We did this, we came in this in December, we came in October, we did this, we, you know, so it was, I think I'm fine. Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (21:04.75)
Order of events.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (21:15.31)
Good? Okay, cool. Let's jump back in. Go ahead. Talking about the good times.

Ron (21:21.008)
So the good times. The flat that we bought is in the municipality of Kish -Kish. The municipalities here are larger than what the town itself may sound like. So people who've been here will think of Kish -Kish as the center of Kish -Kish where the train terminal is and the commercial center is around there. But it's actually a much larger municipality with different, that's made up of different fregazias. And so...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (21:27.566)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (21:45.55)
Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Ron (21:49.296)
What people think of Cache -Cache is the fraggazia of Cache -Cache with the municipality of Cache -Cache. So we still live in a municipality of Cache -Cache, but in a municipality called Parade, which is four train stops away, a little bit closer to Lisbon, where a five minute walk to the train and a seven minute walk to the beach. We've got a nice size flat. We're still waiting for furniture. Furniture takes a long time to get delivered, although I think that's true in the U .S. as well. It's been a long time since we bought a whole bunch of brand new furniture, but...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (21:58.798)
Uh huh.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (22:18.798)
Right.

Ron (22:18.96)
So what's nice about Peret is that it's a little bit smaller than Qashqaij, it's a little bit quieter, and it's definitely more Portuguese. And that has its challenges. I'm probably at a B1 level in my Portuguese, which is like, you know, probably enough to get into a serious trouble, but not good enough to get myself out of the trouble necessarily. Especially if they're speaking very quickly. You know, my comprehension goes way down, but...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (22:40.494)
Hmm. Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (22:48.046)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (22:48.336)
it's forcing us to adapt into the Portuguese community. And it's important to us to do that. We didn't want to come to Portugal. And while we have American and British and other English speaking expatriate friends or people who've immigrated here, we don't want to just live in the expat bubble. We want to integrate into the community as much as we can. And that's so much easier to do in Pareto where...

you know, the dry cleaner. I went to the dry cleaners yesterday for the first time. I got my hair cut. Like all these, all these things that you do in your normal day, you have to, you have to do it in Portuguese because they don't necessarily speak English to the degree that they might in a place like Kashkais or Lisbon. So that's been, that's been great. The people that we've met have been great. The food is delicious. It's so fresh. I, I was so stupid, but.

I had a banana, it was like, oh my God, this banana tastes like a banana. We had carrots the other day that just, everything is so good. The cost of living is better. It's just, it's a slower pace of life. It's a more relaxed pace of life. I couldn't imagine a better place to be retired. And I know a lot of people who listen to this aren't retired, but if you are, and you're in that every day, every day Saturday is part of your life, it's...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (23:49.614)
Hmm

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (24:12.398)
Right.

Ron (24:14.704)
it's really great to just be able to do what you want. And Josh, as you know, this winter has been colder. Everybody says this is the coldest winter they've had since the ice age or something. But it hasn't been that cold compared to the Northeastern US where we lived. And so that's been great. We're looking forward to the really truly spring weather and the summer. And it's just, gosh, I don't know. It's just...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (24:32.91)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (24:38.062)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (24:44.272)
It feels...

It doesn't feel like we're permanently on vacation, but it feels like we're so much more relaxed and so much more low key than in Philadelphia, where we... Yeah. But you know what? And I, so I retired on the 29th of December and we left on the 16th of January. So I had three weeks of retirement in Pennsylvania and we were mostly getting ready for you to come. So I don't know what it would have been like to be retired at home because at home I was just kind of worked. It's a big city. I don't know. It's just...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (24:57.23)
But this is how retirement should be, right? You know?

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (25:13.472)
Yeah.

Ron (25:17.52)
I'm going back, like I said, later this month and I'll be gone for about a month, a month and a half. So we'll see what it's like then. But I think so. I think I.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (25:26.446)
Maybe it was a cleaner break in that regard, right? Because you retired and then those three weeks were just filled with having to do stuff to get ready for the move. So you didn't have to.

Ron (25:36.048)
Well, and also here, and also here too, like, you know, we were, we were, you know, bought the, you know, bought the flat and we were furnishing it and doing this and doing that. So we kind of had a project and I think having a major project when you stop, you know, when you stop your career is a great thing to do because, you know, I had a pretty intense job. I worked really hard. I worked long hours and to go from that to just kind of like, you know, you have to have a project to keep yourself busy.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (25:39.374)
Austin. Yeah. Setting up life.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (25:53.262)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (25:59.918)
Sure. Yeah, it's well, it's I think in some regards is the perfect transition. Cause you're cause you're you're kind of setting up that time when you can really enjoy retirement and not have to work, whether it be working to set up a new house in a foreign country or work at a desk on the grind. Okay.

Ron (26:06.832)
Yes.

Ron (26:17.744)
Right?

Ron (26:21.424)
Right. There was also a period of time where we, I think I'd mentioned earlier on that we had Airbnb set up in different places while we were deciding where we wanted to live, but we bought the flat straight away. So we just, you know, we were able to cancel them, but one of them in Porto, we were not able to cancel. So we just said, well, you know, we're at this point where we had bought the flat, but none of the furniture had come yet. So it wasn't really usable in a comfortable way.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (26:35.47)
Hmm.

Ron (26:49.168)
So we just said, you know what, let's just go to Porto. So we went to Porto for 10 days and we were able to just kind of drop everything and went and we had a great time. We met you guys and some of the other people who were at one of the meetups that you had. I just went to Poland and Germany on a trip. I mean, it's like Europe is at your doorstep. It's, you know, it was a three hour flight. It was just great. And I love that travel part and those travel adventures and just being able to do it.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (26:49.198)
Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (26:57.23)
Yeah.

Ron (27:17.968)
But I got to tell you, when I came back to Lisbon and it really felt like I was home. It was really just great to be back. Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (27:22.798)
Cool.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (27:27.726)
That's a good feeling. I've got to ask you, because you brought up earlier that you're at a B1 level. How did that come about? Because you've been here for a couple months. So what were you doing before moving that you've picked up the language?

Ron (27:39.088)
So what my COVID project was to do Portuguese. So I did it online. I was in a class with a couple of other people and we had a Brazilian teacher because there are, I think like 280 million Portuguese speakers in the world of whom like 260 million of them live in Brazil. So there's more Brazilians around and the time zone for Brazil just kind of worked different, worked a lot better. So.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (27:44.942)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (27:59.694)
Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (28:05.454)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ron (28:07.504)
For learning the grammar, it was fine for, and she was really a good teacher. She said like, oh, well, Ron, for you, when you go to Portugal, you do the direct object this way instead of that way, or you do. So she was, she was very helpful, but at some point I needed to move on to conversation and I needed to do it with a Portuguese person because I wanted to get the accent down. So I found somebody who I would talk to once a, you know, once a week online.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (28:10.158)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (28:21.006)
Cool.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (28:31.246)
Okay.

Ron (28:36.752)
for an hour and that was good. And then when I came here, I enrolled in a language class and I did that from February, March and into April. And then I went on this trip to Germany and Poland that I referenced. So, and we're going to Spain actually next week. So I'm kind of on a break from class, but I was able to just kind of jump back into it. It was pretty easy to jump back in.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (28:57.998)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (29:03.47)
Well, and now where you're living, you were saying that you're going to be able to practice your Portuguese more because you're living among Portuguese that maybe don't know English or don't know it as well. So it, yeah, it's good. Cause I mean, Kaylee and I've said this numerous times, but it's very easy for us to just slip into speaking English because so many people around us speak English. Whereas when, you know, when we're having to deal in Portuguese and kind of forced to,

Ron (29:07.664)
Yes.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (29:31.822)
We do, we get on with it and it's no problem. But if we can operate in English, we just, we tend to, I don't know if it's laziness or just trying to be efficient with communication.

Ron (29:40.592)
Great. Well, for me, it's definitely more efficient to talk in English. There's no doubt about that. But like yesterday, for example, I got my hair cut and the guy actually did speak English and he probably wanted to practice his English a little bit. I said, look, you're in Portugal. We need to speak Portuguese. I had done my homework. I'd looked up like how to say trim my eyebrows and clean up the hairs of my ears. And I want it.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (29:47.63)
Sure.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (29:54.766)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (30:07.822)
Mm.

Ron (30:08.976)
longer on top and shorter on the sides. So I kind of knew exactly what to say in Portuguese. And it worked okay. But the truth is at a B1 level, you're still having very basic conversations. You're not discussing thermodynamics or anything like that. But...

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (30:14.318)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (30:23.374)
Yeah, that's the way I feel.

Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. Yeah. Like sometimes I'll say a rather complex phrase or sentence, but then it's like, now where do I go? Because like that was, I've put all that together. And then if we go any deeper than what I've just said, I'm lost. I can hear, I can hear things and put things together, but like being able to say something. Um, yeah.

Ron (30:50.288)
Right. And I can still at a point where when the Portuguese are speaking to themselves at the cadence that they usually use, I pretty lost. I need to like my my favorite phrases, my Stavro God, poor for more.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (30:58.19)
Right?

Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (31:06.798)
Yeah, yeah.

which is a good one, which it means speak much slower, slower, please. Um, okay. So let's talk a little bit about, uh, since you're into personal finance and you've, you've done obviously very well for yourself and that's kind of a part of your job is working in finance. How have things changed now that you live in Portugal in terms of the way you manage money or maybe even in retirement, the way you manage money, is there any advice you can give to audience members?

Ron (31:14.16)
Hahaha!

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (31:38.958)
in that regard.

Ron (31:40.624)
I would say that it's important to have a budget. It's important though to give it some time to develop what your budget is. You really figure out how much you're spending on food, how much you're spending on bolt, or if you have a car, the car expenses. We don't have a car at the moment. We don't really need one. We may choose to get one. We haven't really made that decision yet. How much is your, are the other expenses of your life? How often do you expect to eat out?

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (31:42.99)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (31:59.566)
Hmm.

Ron (32:10.64)
And then, you know, kind of for us, the wild card is like, well, then what's left over for how much do we want to, you know, how much can we travel? And then, you know, based that on, you know, how much, how much money do we, you know, do we have? And I'd say that, that the, the thing that's been hardest for me is we've been pretty good savers. We always contributed the max to the 401k and got the match and then we, you know, save money on top of that. And,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (32:15.662)
travel. Yeah.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (32:25.166)
Hmm.

Ron (32:38.448)
now I'm kind of taking money out. So that's been a weird transition. So I've got some, my parents both passed away, they left behind some 401k money of their own that has required minimum distributions. So this year, instead of like, I would just take the money from that account and put it into another Vanguard account, so I just went from savings one,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (32:44.814)
Hmm.

Ron (33:07.408)
vehicle, the savings to vehicle, this year actually took it out. And that was like, ah, and, you know, it felt awkward at first, but you know what, that's kind of the way that it's supposed to go, I guess. So just getting used to that and deciding, you know, what your, you know, kind of we're adhering to the 5 % rule and, you know, taking 5 % out to, for spending in my personal situation.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (33:10.606)
Hmm I'm sure that feels awkward

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (33:21.454)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (33:28.942)
Okay.

Ron (33:36.624)
I'm actually had some deferred comp and I've got that deferred comp coming for three more years, which is actually messing up my Portuguese taxes, which I'm not a hundred percent thrilled about. I mean, not messing it up, it's just, you know, putting me into a different tax situation than I thought I would be in. But so I've actually got a little bit of income coming in, but, but now, but you know, at some point my income will just be whatever my savings earn.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (33:53.23)
Got it.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (34:05.038)
Okay.

Ron (34:05.584)
And that's probably, of all the things, that's like the weirdest transition of every other Friday, there's no money going into my bank account automatically anymore, except for the annual deferred comp payouts. But.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (34:18.254)
Okay, my other question then is what do you think is a reasonable amount that someone should budget to live, let's say in the Kashkash area, because Kashkash, Lisbon, Storile area, because the whole country has kind of different ranges, but what do you think about in your neck of the woods?

Ron (34:29.904)
Yeah.

Ron (34:35.664)
Well, I would say that you don't come to Cache Caixa if you're looking for the cheapest place to live, because it's not. And we chose to buy a property and we chose to pay cash for it. I'm 64 years old. If I were to get a mortgage, I think the mortgage would last for three weeks or something like that. It's very different here in Portugal compared to the United States, where I think in the US, they would say like, well, they've put enough down that we the bank are protected.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (34:41.454)
Correct. Yep.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (34:49.038)
Okay.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (34:54.318)
Hahaha.

Ron (35:04.88)
just based on the value of the property. And when they pass on, if their heirs don't take care of it, we can sell the property then. Here, I think you have to be done by, we didn't really look into it much because it was so silly, but it's like, you have to be done by 65 or something, is that it?

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (35:22.03)
They'll go up to 70. We've done a few interviews with a mortgage broker and yeah, he talks about some banks will be flexible, but then you're talking about having to get life insurance policies. So that can be an additional expense that just kind of vanishes. It's a sunk cost. Yeah. Yep.

Ron (35:27.76)
They will go up to 70.

Ron (35:37.84)
Right? Yeah. So we just we just we just paid cash for it. And we used a currency broker, which was either some costs associated with it, because I think like when I transferred money from my US bank account to the currency broker, I had to do it in US dollars. And there was a charge for that. But the rate that he got compared to if I transferred it in euros, what the bank would have given me for the amount of money that we're talking about was.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (35:42.222)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (35:56.494)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (36:01.774)
Right. Yep. Right.

Ron (36:05.296)
thousands and thousands of euros in savings. So that's a good financial choice is to use a currency broker if you're buying a property. But the upfront costs, I mean, so the upfront costs were very high because we bought it, but the ongoing costs are pretty, I mean, we live in a condo, so we've got a monthly fee. It's not even 100 euros. Again, it seems like it costs them more to collect it than it does.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (36:13.454)
Yeah, that's what we did.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (36:20.11)
Hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (36:26.126)
Mm -hmm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (36:31.054)
Right.

Ron (36:34.736)
The property taxes are minimal and they're paid annually. The utility prices are a lot less than they were in the US. But I would say like, for food and like not rent because we don't really pay the rent, but for food and all the other carrying costs, I don't think we're spending a thousand euros a month. Now going out,

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (37:01.518)
Okay, wow.

Ron (37:04.4)
Like, you know, I mean food like at the at the supermarket or at the little, you know, in the market. We actually have a Mercado in Cache -Cache where they have the fresh vegetables and everything like that. And one in Peret as well. I don't think we're I don't think we're spending a thousand a month. But then, like, if we go out for dinner, if we go, you know, when we do travel, we're spending a little bit more than that. And if you are renting your place here in Cache -Cache, I think you've got to plan depending on how large your place is and where you're.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (37:07.534)
Got it, okay, got it, got it.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (37:14.606)
Mm -hmm.

Ron (37:32.272)
locate you where you're located. I think you need to plan between 25 and 3500 euros a month. Sounds about right. But again, that's not that's not my situation.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (37:42.35)
Sure, okay, good advice. We're on it. At ExPats Everywhere, we believe that living abroad transforms lives. How has living abroad transformed your life thus far?

Ron (37:44.752)
Um.

Ron (37:52.016)
Well, it's been an adventure. I did actually do a junior year abroad. So this is, I've done it before. So it's kind of like at the beginning of my adult life and now towards the end. That was in France. Yeah, yeah, this in France. So, kind of towards the end of my life. But it keeps you, it's been keeping Jessica and me highly engaged. Cause we have to kind of start our lives over again. We've got to make friends. We've got to figure out how this place works.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (37:57.838)
Mm.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (38:01.646)
Was this France or was this, okay, okay.

Ron (38:21.552)
it's very different being on vacation than it is, you know, really living in a place. And it's very relaxed here and I feel more relaxed, but it's, you know, it's not, it's not vacation, right? So, um, um, so that's been, that's been one thing, but really just, um, you know, having a great project to keep, to keep ourselves engaged and keep ourselves.

sharp and doing new things and learning all the time and learning a new language and everything like that has been great for us personally and just meetings, you know, new people and hearing their stories and what brought them to this crazy place has been great as well. So it's been a great challenge and it's been great to challenge ourselves to make it happen and, you know, it's only been

you know, four going on to five months. We're still at the beginning phases of it, but so far so good.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (39:21.518)
Awesome. Ron, thank you so much for taking the time to share with Xpets Everywhere today.

Ron (39:25.52)
Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. And again, thank you so much for everything you do, because your videos were incredibly helpful for us and we enjoyed them very much and are still big fans of both the YouTube and the podcasts and now the building one. Let's get building. So we're looking forward to that as well. Great. Great. Thanks.

Josh | ExpatsEverywhere (39:44.878)
Yes, as soon as we hang up here, I'm going to be editing that first video, so I can't wait to get that out. Thank you again. Bye.

Ron (39:55.92)
Bye.