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Our meeting in San Francisco is next week. We sold our house and it is due to close on July 31^st.  The next day we fly out from Portland to turn in our paperwork to the Portuguese Consulate in San Francisco. Flying out in the morning and returning that same evening. We have everything on the list checked except for one item, the lease to an apartment in Portugal. We are awaiting paperwork for that any day now. It’s coming down to the wire.

Last month I listed some of the requirements for residency. I will go more into detail now that we are further down the yellow brick road. Remember, for those of you who are starting on this journey, anything I share here could change tomorrow so make sure that you get the latest information. Also, I could be wrong on some of these items. Confusion abounds.

I’m looking forward to the day (soon) when I can continue sharing our experiences in Portugal rather than our experiences becoming residents of Portugal. But if you are in the same boat that we are in, then maybe you can find a few helpful hints here.

Mo’ Money!

Mo’ money has become my catchphrase throughout this process. Hopefully, I can save you a few bucks by learning from my mistakes. Our first costly mistake was completely avoidable. It was due to a stupid mistake on my part in regard to the FBI background check. Procrastination on getting started with it compounded the problem. My wife and I went to the police station to get fingerprinted and I wrongly sent our prints to Olympia to get checked. When they were ready, we were going to drive up there to get our background check Apostille.

Apostille

 I’ve never even heard of this word Apostille before. It’s a French word for mo’ money. Not really. It’s actually a French word for certification. It’s like a notary except that it’s for international documents and it’s hard to find someone who is authorized to do it. Even when you can find someone who is authorized to Apostille, they often cannot Apostille your specific document.

The morning that we were to drive to Olympia it dawned on me that this was a Washington State background check, not the FBI background check which is required. So, that was already about $170 wasted. But worse than that, this mistake also wasted valuable time.

Don’t Forget Your Fingerprints

So the next step was to go back to the police station and get fingerprinted again. Except now that we were behind schedule, everything needed to be expedited. I believe expedited is a French word for mo’ money. We had to send the fingerprints to Fast Fingerprints (fastfingerprints.com). They sent the results back by email. Fortunately, no murders popped up in the search. Then I sent the results by email to Apostille Courier Express (apostillecourierexpress.com). Express is a French word for, well, you know the rest by now. It’s like the Eskimos having fifty words for snow.

Anyway, the second set of fingerprints and the Fast this and Express that came to about $500! Plus the $170 for the original mistake sent to Olympia. In other words, it can take several weeks to do it right so PLAN AHEAD! But not too far ahead because if you get your background check more than 90 days in advance of your meeting, it will not be accepted. If your meeting at the Portuguese Consulate is next month, then you’re already too late. You are just going to have to get in the express lane and pay mo’ money.

The Lease

As I mentioned previously, you need a lease on a domicile to present at the Consulate. They only require a six-month lease but the new law in Portugal requires landlords to write one-year leases. So it’s kind of like a Catch-22. And you can’t use Airbnb for this purpose. But here’s the sticky part. Your meeting at the Consulate is often a couple of months before you leave for Portugal and you need the lease signed and paid for at the meeting.

Oftentimes, rentals are difficult to find, especially from a distance, and you may need to pay a couple of months rent even though you will not be occupying the place until you get there. We just found out this morning that we will need to do this and it is too late for us to start a new search. I’m not happy about this but there is nothing I can do at this late date.

Get Your NIF and Bank Account While Still in Portugal

Here is what I would do if I were to have a do-over. I’d plan a trip to Portugal to take care of a lot of stuff ahead of time. I would get a NIF number while there. Otherwise, you will pay a couple of hundred bucks to do it from here. I would open a bank account because you can’t do that from here and you need a NIF number to do that.

The Consulate doesn’t absolutely require a Portuguese bank account but it looks good on your resume. We are using a Transferwise account which has served us well and should be accepted by the Consulate if they see that you have been using it to pay for things in Portugal. I would also shop around for my Portuguese health insurance while there. By the way, it is very cheap there compared to here in the US and you will get better coverage.

Save Time and Aggravation

You will save yourself time and aggravation if you take care of these things there, as long as it is not several months until your meeting. You may not save money overall if this was a trip that you were not planning on taking. But looking back, I would do it anyway. At least you will get another trip to Portugal out of it.

The other thing that I would do while there is to try and find a rental and secure a lease. The problem, of course, is timing it so that you don’t have to pay for the months that you aren’t there. To do that, you may want to plan it so that you are moving there in the off-season.

Management companies might know when tenants are moving out after the high season and you can move in around October. I know, easier said than done, and there may be some flaws in this plan that I’m not recognizing. But I think this is what I would attempt if I had to do it over again. Long distance preparation is a challenge. Fortunately, there is a lot of help with blogs and Facebook groups. Unfortunately, you will have to sort through sometimes contradictory advice.

Financial Statements

As a retiree, you’ll want to show confirmation of Social Security, any pensions or annuities. They also want to see three months of bank statements. Financial requirements are not excessive for residency. They want to see approximately $1,300 worth of income per person and $3,000 per person in your bank account. You can get a ten-year exemption on paying Portugal taxes if you apply for NHR status (non-habitual tax resident) when you get there. You’ll still be required to pay taxes in the U.S. for your U.S. generated income.

Personal Statement and Personal Reference

Your personal statement is simply a letter you write stating why you want to move to Portugal. I was advised not to say it is because of cheap healthcare because you might be giving the wrong impression and you don’t want to be a burden on the system. However, it should be noted that most of the taxes received by the Portuguese government go toward healthcare, transportation and social services. You rarely see homeless people in Portugal even though there is poverty.

You will need a personal reference from a Portuguese citizen stating that they know you. It doesn’t need to say much more than that but it does need to be notarized.

Timing Your Steps is Crucial

Timing has been the biggest challenge. You may need to sell your house first and once it sells you might not be able to have enough time to get everything together before you move. And then there are things on the list that you can’t wait until the last minute but you also can’t do too far in advance.

You will need to go to your closest Consulate from where you live. We are going to the one in San Francisco but you may be assigned to DC or New York. There are only a few of them so that is another expense.

Last Bit of Advice

Don’t take anyone’s advice for gospel. Including mine. Get different opinions and ask questions. At times, I have gotten questionable advice even from the experts. And you will get different advice even from people who have completed the process. But in the end it will be worth it. Just remember that it will probably cost you more than you expected (not a fortune, though) and will take longer than you thought it would (but not forever).

Good luck on your journey and wish us luck with ours!