Choosing to leave the United States is a pretty big deal. The first step in the process is determining your “why”…
The First Go Around
When Trump was elected in 2016, I told Denise we should leave the country. At the time, my mother was in a skilled nursing facility within minutes of our home in Florida.1 We explored Mexico due to its proximity to the US.
But Denise knew leaving the country would be difficult for me, and Mexico didn’t get us closer to the European cities we loved to explore. So, instead, we moved to California. We enjoyed three years in a mid-century modern house, surrounded by liberal neighbors and LGBTQ+ public officials. At the time, this was the right move for us.2
Origin Stories
In 2020, we thought again about moving out of the country. The first Trump presidency was difficult to watch. It seemed nearly every week, another unarmed black man was being shot. The White House Covid briefings were a shitshow. And those in charge were fueling the growing divide in the country. Yes, politics was a big part of my motivation to leave the country. But it was not the only one!
To help you consider your whys and why-nots, I want to share a few origin stories with you.
Permit me to begin with my own.
Our friends, Carol and Paul Wilcox moved to Portugal 2021. Carol explains why they left the US.
Like us, the Wilcox are retired. But not everyone that moves abroad is. Let me introduce you to Brett and Michael, two gay guys who sold everything and left home to travel the world.
I’d also like to introduce you to two gay guys who recently moved to Porto. Their origin story is spread over several posts…I suggest you start at the beginning.
Write Your Elevator Pitch
I am not suggesting your “why” will be the same as any of those above. I provide them only to get you thinking. If you are going to make such a big move, I suggest you write an “elevator pitch”.3 If you live with a partner or are married, you will want to share your pitches.
Knowing your “why” will assist you when things get tough. You will face more questions and challenges than you might imagine.4 Just a few of the obvious ones are listed below:
Where can we afford to live? What countries are options?
Should we sell our home?5 Will our home sell for the amount we want?
Should we part with cherished items? How do we ship items abroad?
Should we begin selling items before the visa is approved?
Most visas require you to have a place to live…how will you find one?
How long will the process take? What if we aren’t approved?
Will family members and friends think we are crazy? Will this cause irreconcilable rifts in our family?
Any one of these may stop you dead in your tracks. Others will be annoyances that keep you up at night. But if you know your why and it is important enough, you will persist. You will do the research, probably sell stuff, possibly jump through some bureaucratic hoops, and find your way. All these things will take persistence and time!
Not for Everybody
Of course, leaving the US is not for everyone. A few months back, I spoke to an older couple who were just starting to think about moving abroad. When I asked them about children, they proudly exclaimed, “We have 11 children and 22 grandchildren.” I suggested they might want to consider how they would feel leaving so many behind. A few days after our exchange, they wrote and thanked me as they now realized that leaving the US wasn’t for them.
In addition, not everyone can afford to leave the US. While there are many places in the world where the cost of living is less than in America, it takes money to make the move.
Finally, not everyone is retired. While remote work was commonplace in 2020, more and more companies are requiring their employees to come into the office at least a few days a week. Finding employment in a new country will provide obstacles that must be considered.
Working through all of these issues will take time!
It is Horrible…But Easier from Portugal
If you or a family member is transgender, if you are married to an undocumented immigrant, or if your parents are undocumented immigrants … I understand your panic. If you are a woman of child-bearing age or have a daughter of child-bearing age… I get it. If you are a parent who dreads dropping their child off at school in the morning … I understand. It is easy for me to tell you to take your time while I am living in Portugal.
I’ll end Part 1 of this series with a YouTube video I watched this morning that touched my heart.
Next, we’ll address visa-free options.
So high on the “why not” list may be family members you will leave behind. However, there may be alternatives. Friends of ours approached their mother, who was living in a nursing home. When they explained they were moving to Portugal, she said, “Can I go?” She came with them and lived with them. They were able to hire in-home care for less than her US nursing home was charging each month. She spent the last year of her life far happier and better cared for, than had she remained in the US.
If you find leaving the US is not an option, perhaps there is a better place in the US for you to live. Hawaii would be high on my list … it doesn’t even feel like the US.
Your elevator pitch is a brief (30-second) way of introducing yourself and getting across a key point or two that explains why you want to move from the US. It's called an elevator pitch because it takes roughly the amount of time you'd spend riding an elevator with someone.
After the 2016 election, the number of Google searches related to moving out of the US spiked … yet only a small fraction moved abroad. Relocation companies are seeing even more inquiries this month. However, moving out of the country is not for everyone.
We chose to sell our home turnkey during a very hot market. The first offer came in before the open house and was $45,000 above asking. Our realtor told us not to accept it. The second, third, and fourth offers came on the day of the open house, but were not as good. And then the main sewer line from the house to the street broke … you get my drift..
Great post as usual. Our why is almost the same as yours. We came from Texas where summers of over 100 degrees last 6 months and I hated it. Then 2016 came and I was horrified that a person with the character of DJT was elected. And then, his presidency was even more horrifying. Then Covid hit and the way it was handled cost so many more lives than it should have. Every day there was just another horrifying story and I was done. When Covid ended, my husband announced to me he was retiring, so I said that means we are getting out of this hell hole. I somehow had the foresight to know that despite Biden winning, we would have four more years of Trump and his antics and then 2024 would be a shit show. It was as predicted. We made one trip here to check the weather, sold everything we had, bought our tickets and were gone. We have two grown sons who said go and have fun. For so many reasons, we are so happy we made the decision to move to Lisbon. But the biggest one is the peace we feel in our daily lives compared to the way we felt in the USA. We are about to take our last trip there to see our boys for at least the next four years and unfortunately, I fear longer. But there is not one thing I miss about the USA except my children and they’ll just have to fly to us now.
Hi Nancy, I enjoyed your post - I always do. Our story, ever so briefly, is that we both retired, were living in Scotland and felt we had another move left in us. (We have moved a lot over the years, lived in France and worked all over Europe.) So we moved back down to England - originally from Liverpool so we were 'moving back' so to speak. We settled in rural Shropshire, not far from where J.R.R Tolkien used to walk. (He used our part of Shropshire as a model for 'The Shire' and we lived only a couple of miles from Baggins Farm. (Absolutely true! I could send you the photo.)
So, after six years there we got tired of eternal winter, we even thought of changing our name to Stark (Winter is coming!) So we started looking around again. Spain, France, Cyprus but eventually settled on Portugal.
But... and this is your point... we had two kids. (No grandkids at that time) Our son was living in Germany and our daughter was finishing her PhD in Bristol. When my wife asked her how she would feel about us moving, this was her reply...
'Mum. don't stay for us; and don't move to be closer to us. We don't intend to stay in the UK forever and if you moved home to be close to us we would feel like we deserted you.' So that was a huge weight removed.
The why was the weather, not the heat but the light, the blue skies and warm breezes.
The other why was Brexit. How could any country do something so stupid. We chose to be European over British and will in time become citizens of this lovely country.
The bonus is that as we started to fully commit to living here and learning the language we found the people to be so wonderfully accepting and encouraging and we are just so happy to have adopted, and been accepted by, this country.
Wow, that went on longer than intended. Desculpe.