Moving to portugal

[ChildFreeAndOhSoHappy]

Short backstory, we have been in the UK for almost 10 years. I am American and I wanted to move here after some time country hopping abroad together. My husband is british and never wanted to move back to the UK but he did it for me.

Anyway, we were in the process of buying a house here and just had so many issues come up, everything that could go wrong did, and 2.5 years after putting the offer in we have only just now gotten close to exchange. Only, now we are both wondering why are we even trying so hard to be here? We have no real ties to the country (other than his family) but certainly no real love for the uk. So we have decided to move to Portugal. I'm lucky enough to be in a highly paid remote job that will allow me to get NHR 2.0 in portugal. Has anybody else done this and moved their family to portugal? Do you love it? My husband is highly qualified but works in an industry which is less likely to hire full time employees on a remote basis, though contacting is getting more and more popular and this is what he would do. So while we would be moving there initially on my salary alone, I have no doubt he could find work, it just may take time. On the other side of it, the job he would be leaving in the uk is not unsubstantial, he makes well over 100k, although after taxes here its meh. Anyway, can we make this work with one job? The cost of living is lower, the quality of life is higher, the taxes are much lower and my salary is still in the top 1% for portugal. Plus we have a very big chunk of money which we were going to sink into a million pound house in the UK which we won't be now so we have savings. It all feels super doable to me but curious if anybody has done the same and what their experiences were.

@flipflop256 ok so that’s a bit different to your earlier post about making expat friends and not needing to speak the language

I said : “We have made lots of expat friends easily and you don’t need to speak the language “ This is not inconsistent with my other posts

Its easier to make expat friends because they are in the same position as you, often dont have established friendship / family networks, and there are many organised ways for doing so (Facebook and WhatsApp expat groups etc).

However it’s not impossible to make local friends. The Portuguese community can be quite closed. With Brazilians it’s easier as their culture is more open but it helps to speak Portuguese

Personally I would always recommend learning the language. I find it super satisfying and fun. However it’s not easy. The reason mine is good is that I learned it in Brazil where the level of English is generally poorer. The average Portuguese person tends to speak excellent English so it will take years before your Portuguese is better than their English. I still try to speak it as much as possible though and I read all my novels in Portuguese now

The last time (a few weeks ago) I went to the local hospital the waiting time for urgent cases was 3 minutes. For the lowest risk cases it was 1hr 8mins. So the healthcare crisis is not quite as bad as you imply.

I did say hit and miss.

It’s incredibly difficult to get a state health care, named GP here.

Faro healthcare staff were on strike yesterday due to their working conditions.

There’s a general lack of paediatric doctors, and maternity departments have been closed at times due to staff shortages.

Many healthcare professionals leave for other countries where they can earn more.

Have you even been to Portugal, OP ? It seems naive to me to think about wanting to make a life altering decision without first taking the time to get to know the people, culture and geography yourself. Life isn't just a long airbnb trip.

I am already working on learning the language and I speak 3 languages so have no problem putting in the time:)

Lol, yeah we have. We have also lived in 4 other countries so I'm pretty sure we will manage. And yeah, life can be one long Airbnb trip if you want it to be, what's the problem with that?

Thanks for letting me know, will look into it. We would be doing private regardless, just like we do in the UK due to a crumbling NHS.

Thanks for the responses everyone. Got some genuinely helpful advice and some contacts, of course I was also expecting the why leave UK comments, I prob should have prefaced my original comment by saying I am not interested in hearing about how great the UK is, I've been here for 10 years and lived all over, I know its not great.

Also, thanks for the advice regarding husband's job. Yes it is a big salary to lose so he's now finding out if he can just live in portugal and work on a UK contract basis paying both UK and Portuguese taxes, which won't equate to much more than he is paying now due to double taxation treaties.

LOL! My only experience of Portugal before I moved her was a week's holiday in Vilamoura. Which I won in a radio competition.

Once you don't have children and you have a reasonable belief that you can support yourself and/or have a cash buffer you don't have to plan everything to the n-th degree.

Do your research on how it will affect your finances, inheritance tax, assets etc. it’s very different to U.K. so consult a financial advisor, familiar with the tax system in Portugal.

I can’t speak for all Portuguese people but amongst the people I know, there’s a growing resentment that the government are working more for the benefit of tourists and ex-pats that actual Portuguese people.

Hence the growing popularity of Chega :/

I have, thanks for the tip. Income taxes will be lower, there is no IHT and a big chunk of our assets won't be taxed at all which is honestly music to my ears.

Yep :). We have good jobs, money in the bank and no kids, pretty free to do whatever we want which is lovely.

Sounds a better prospect than Spain!

And property prices have soared in recent years, or so I’ve heard from a nephew, who spent over 5 years in Lisbon doing his PhD, but has now left.

After uk taxes, he loses 50% of that

He shouldn't be. On a salary of 100k, he should be taking home 68500 or thereabouts, so just shy of 32% to tax and NI.

I said over 100k, he's actually on 140. I made a mistake about his monthly take home, its 7.1k not 6, it's 6 atm bc he is paying tax on his bonus from last year as well, which, is equally shit. So yeah, he takes home a good amount but is paying about 40% all in. Still less than 20% though and when you factor in that he works 70 hour weeks and pays a fortune to commute to London, less work for less pay at a lower tax rate in a country witn a lower cost of living sounds much better to me, esp when I myself also have a very well paid job and we don't have the cost of kids to deal with.

I think your husband should reconsider his joh it'a not tax which is the issue but long hours. If he is genuinely working a 70 hour week most weeks, so looking at the hourly rate, that £140k is more like £69k (based on an average working week of 36 hours) So he is no worse off if he geta a lower paid, less stressful job TBH.

These are the things we would look into. We would 100% be doing private medical, just like we do here. Regarding schools, it's not something that matters to us as we have no kids so I haven't looked into that but I'm sure someone else can answer that. Regarding moving post brexit, there seems to be a lot of incentives for workers in certain fields as well as the digital nomad visa if you can work remotely. It largely depends on what you for work now I think, but certainly not impossible.

That makes more sense. On 140k, he'll be paying 39% plus the loss of a lot of his personal allowance.

I would move to Portugal in a heartbeat regardless of the finances. Also, I don't necessarily subscribe to the whole "must earn a big salary". I went down that rabbit hole and came to my senses. I'm enjoying life a good deal more despite not having a pot to piss in. If it hadn't been for Brexshit changing the employment landscape for my industry, I would still be stuck in the rat race.

Good luck OP. A few things to watch out for in Portugal:

They lure people in with the NHR but don't mention social security payments, which as a self-employed person (depending what business you're in) can be higher than tax (21.4% on top of income tax). They keep really quiet about that.

There is very little transparency about bureaucracy generally, which results in a lot of frustration. Their websites are impenetrable (I don't mean the language), and you can get different answers depending who you ask. Working out the correct way of dealing with important things can be difficult.

There are no tax-efficient savings incentives (ISAs, SIPPs) such as the UK offers.

They charge CGT on the sale of your house, even if it is your primary (and only) residence, unless you reinvest the proceeds within 3 years into another propoerty in an EU country (which obviously the UK no longer is). You can claim expenses for renovations etc, but only if you can produce very specific documentation relating to it. Builders and suppliers often avoid providing such documents as they are trying to scrape a living by dodging tax. Of course, that might all be very different if you have a lot of money to throw around!

Wildfires! Terrifying and destructive, and (as a PP mentioned earlier) deliberately started. Less likely to affect you in an urban/coastal environment.