Dispatches From Portugal - Or Maybe Not

Pena Castle

We changed gears for a while, talking about moving to Portugal when Jackie retires, which could be as soon as a year from now. This is not, as you might think, a response to the current situation in the United States, but rather a potential adventurous opportunity to travel, live in Europe, and possibly even become an EU citizen.

Why Portugal, you ask? They do have some pretty castles, but the more compelling reason is that they make it easy for foreigners to come and stay and even get dual citizenship within five years.

Requirements are not very restrictive; you have to have a little more than $1,000 income per month, so that you will not have to work. You have to arrange a place to stay before you go. You have to stay in the country 183 consecutive days per year. Cost of living sounds like it's cheaper than living where we live now. We could probably even take Arlo.

However, taking Arlo is one of the logistical problems we would have to resolve. It is possible to take a dog to Portugal, but realistically, it is hard to imagine that would be an easy trip for him. Then, if he were over there, what would we do with him while we travel around Europe? That has to be a big reason why we would go, right, so we could travel in Europe? So maybe we would find another solution for Arlo.

Here is another issue: if we go to Portugal, we will not take any furniture with us, so what to do with it? Well, we could store at least some of it in a storage unit, in case we come back after a few years. I have to say, I really do not like this idea, but if we get rid of everything, it could be expensive to replace it all one day, if the day ever comes when we need it. Maybe we need a good solution for all of our stuff, too.

A thing that this talk of Portugal has surfaced is that we could sell the house and then rent in Albuquerque, because why buy a house if you are going to move overseas in a year? So rent a place, move all of our stuff, put some of it in the place we rent, put the rest in storage, live for a year or more, put the rest in storage, move overseas. Why not skip the Albuquerque step? Because we just still want to move there, and it puts us one day's drive away from Jackie's family.

It is possible, though, that we could skip the Portugal step. We could travel up to 90 days at a time in most European countries, and that might be logistically easier than moving overseas. What about Arlo though? Since we will only be one day from Oklahoma, maybe Jackie's family can watch him. They have the time and a lot of land for him to run around on. Renting and travelling would be more expensive than moving to Portugal, except that in Portugal we would also probably be renting and travelling a lot, so maybe not so different.

One thing that has me intrigued now though is the idea of renting. I never gave it a lot of thought before, but when I started looking at the affordability of it, I realized that living in a house is about as expensive as renting. You pay property tax, insurance, homeowner's dues, maintenance, and more, plus a good chunk of your money is tied up in the house. Take that money out of the house and invest it, and now you have significantly more income, and if you rent, your costs may actually be lower. You lose out on the appreciation of your home, but the way things are going, that looks like it won't amount to much for the near future, and more likely will be negative.

OK, that pretty much games out where things could go in the future, but first we have to sell the house. Someone came to look today, but my hopes are not high. The market is soft right now, and I am reading stories about falling demand and people taking their houses off the market, and that may be us soon enough. All of this trying to shape the future may be for naught, or at least may be put on hold.

We will see.