Ok so here we go. We’re doing it. But how? The first thing we need to figure out is what visa we can get to enter the country. This all started because we heard about the D8 Digital Nomad visa, which allows people with remote jobs to work from Portugal. My job is 100% remote so I thought this would be simple, right?
With the decision made, we exchanged our February vacation plane ticket to Florida for tickets to Portugal, just two weeks away. We needed to see it in person, and if we like it we need to find a school for the girls. There was so much to do and the planning started immediately. I didn’t think much about the visa because the D8 visa seemed so easy.
In the days leading up to our trip, I started to question exactly how it was going to work. Stacey started to question whether it would be approved. Doubts were creeping in, so I thought I would just go talk to someone in HR about the logistics of working from abroad. So I reach out to them and schedule the first available appointment to speak with the rep in person, which turned out to be just hours before we boarded a plane to Portugal. Well. It turns out it is not so simple. In order for this to work, your employer needs a tax presence in Portugal OR you must be a 1099 contract employee… and HR did not see either as a possibility. Back to square zero. Maybe we couldn’t make this work.
But we headed to Portugal anyway. And knew right away it was the right place for our family. Of all the countries we’ve visited, Portugal felt the most comfortable and welcoming. This is where we wanted to be. We were determined to find a way. We researched blogs, facebook groups, forums, legal websites, and asked around. Eventually we found a way.
The D7 visa, also called the Passive Income visa, allows people to reside in Portugal for 2 years, which the option to renew for an additional 3, if you can show that you have enough money to support you and your family for that time period. There’s a baseline you must surpass and the formula is described on the Portuguese government website, but it is extremely low compared to what we pay to live here in the US. And once we are legally in Portugal, we can look for jobs, or buy or start a business to make the money we’ll need to stay. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re selling just about everything we own, stock-piling the money, applying for a visa, and moving to Loulé or Faro Portugal. This time, we hired an immigration lawyer to make sure we can meet the requirements of the visa. We met with her shortly after returning to the States and she agreed that we are very good candidates for approval! I can NOT wait!
Is it risky? Maybe. But so is staying in this crumbling democracy. I believe it’s going to get real bad. And if I’m wrong about that, and it turned out that the US is fine and Trump’s leadership boils down to childish antics, then what did we lose? We’ll spend a few years living in and traveling through Europe, which is something Stacey and I have dreamed about for years. And such an amazing and living changing opportunity for our children. And that just doesn’t seem bad at all. In fact, it sounds better than staying here with or without Trump!
So the Behans are Out. We’re done with this shit. How’s it going to go? I have no idea. Follow along and find out with us. We’ll share it all here.