Can I ask a very stupid question about income requirements?

[Pythone]

I'm asking on behalf of someone else, and really have no idea about this sort of thing, so please don't be too horrified by my ignorance.

If someone wanted to retire to another country that didn't have a specific retirement visa, but instead had an annually renewable long-term residence visa (like I think Greece or Portugal), and there was an income requirement (of e.g. €2,000 a month), could you meet this by always keeping €24,000 in your bank account? So instead of having that amount in income (but having a smaller amount via pension), you just had the amount to cover one year at all times. Is that a possibility? Or does it have to be a specific income from something?

I think income and savings are always assessed separately - if there is a savings alternative it's likely to be higher than a year's income. May depend on the country though.

The idea of proving a monthly income is that you are demonstrating you can cover your living costs in the long term. If you have £24K in savings, you need to demonstrate how you would still have that £24K in year 2, 3, 4 and so on.

(I could be wrong but I believe the income requirement for Portugal is a fair bit lower.)