Why I moved to Cascais, Portugal 🇵🇹 in 2022 and why you should consider making the leap somewhere new

I don't play golf.

I'm not old (well, not that old).

And I'm not really into drinking lots of locally produced €1.99 bottles of surprisingly good wine (genuinely cheaper than some bottles of sparkling water in the supermarket).

So how did I end up in living in Portugal for the last (nearly) 3 years and why should you consider Portugal - or Spain - or Italy - or Greece - or frankly somewhere other than where you're living now (especially for those of you reading in the UK)?

I've always considered myself very comfortable as a European. At school I did fairly well at French and took it as a minor at university. In my first year, I lived with a French guy (salut Séb!), a Norwegian girl and a few Brits. My girlfriend was half-Greek (Malaka Marie - I think that's right?) and one of my good friends was German (hallo Jürgen!) and another was pretty much Irish in his blood although the cocky accent would confuse people (hello Dr.Chewy).

Back in 2011 when I was a baller I bought a home in Provence for my family to enjoy and I absolutely loved it (being forced to sell that a few years ago really hurt). I loved the little village of Eygalières where I lived and the lifestyle there. And every year there was a genuine summer - one could be confident that there would be weeks of sunshine and loveliness, surrounded by lavendar and olive groves.

Brexit, Borris and Bollocks

In 2016 I was living in Islington, London - just off Upper Street - and life was good. I remember the day of the Brexit referendum, walking home from Angel tube station and seeing the blue of remainers all around. It was a sure thing - we'd remain in Europe and could then all move on.

Until the next morning we all woke up and realised it wasn't a sure thing. But common sense would prevail and there would be a sensible soft Brexit right?

What was the UK doing?

Fast forward 4 years and we're all working from home in lockdown.

I realised I could indeed work remotely.

I could run a business remotely (clearly until I screwed it all up and the business went bang a few years later - but I wasn't to know that at the time).

If I could run a business remotely from south west London, then I could run it from somewhere else right? Why did I need to be living and paying such high prices to be in the UK?

After the Brexit vote I had become quite disenfranchised with the future of the UK - I had hoped that sane minds would prevail but when the UK fell out of europe in 2020 and starting veering to the right I started to lose confidence in the future of the country and needed to put my family's future first.

I've always been a socially liberal, fiscally literate centralist voter - and I just couldn't recognise the polarisation of the politics of the UK and the lack of pragmatism and nuance in the world.

By 2021 I was having regular business coaching with Eric Partaker, who was helping me through a lot of issues in my business.

One day his background had changed and I asked where he was - and he told me where he'd moved to - a little town in Portugal just west of Lisbon called Cascais.

This video explains it best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSFr6xbbyBw

I liked the sound of it and toward the end of 2021 I did a quick recon weekend with my wife for a few days.

We investigated what was needed - getting visas, getting tax residency (a lot of countries have tax incentives to encourage people to move there - Portugal offered two main schemes - a Golden Visa for investment into property, funds and other assets - or a Non Habitual Resident scheme which suited us) and realised it wasn't hard and was entirely possible.

We returned with the kids in April 2022 on decided to make the move - within a couple of weeks we'd put our house on the market to sell but the London prime market in early 2022 wasn't great. However we rented the house out really quickly and by July 2022 we'd moved out of the house and ready to move to Portugal.

It as all pretty easy if I'm honest - it needed organisation and planning - we had to find out how to do things, but we knew others had done it so it was possible and we'd be able to do it.

Of course - there's lots of excuses we give ourselves for staying put - it's natural to find reasons to make a change in one's life. There were family links to the UK - my parents are getting on a bit, both Octogenarians and it was sad to leave them. But I knew that in the future if my kids told me they were staying around to be with me rather than go somewhere that was best for them and their family I'd be upset and want them to go.

Work used to stop people moving - but now with remote work a viable option, many people can make the move. And if their employer doesn't allow remote work, then with AI it's never been easier to build up a portfolio of freelance roles or small businesses to generate an income anywhere in the world.

So aside from the weather (300 days of sunshine guaranteed or the state gives you free pastel de natas. Apparently) - what are the benefits of Portugal?

Honestly - it's just wonderful.

People are happy. Life is easy. Life is cheap - like, much much cheaper than the UK to live her and enjoy life here.

Entertaining kids is easy - when you take the kids to beach on christmas day and everyone has fun you know you're in a good place.

A lot of countries have tax incentives for people to attract them as well (at least for a limited time).

For example in Portugal under the NHR scheme there is 20% top rate for income tax and 0% tax on dividends (useful if you receive dividends from a private or public company you have shares in).

Other good countries that want to attract "digital nomads" and other people include Spain, Italy, Greece, Costa Rica and many more.

A wonderful site to look at where you could live is Nomads.com:

And if you want to find out more about how you'd get a visa to live in places like this, a useful site is https://www.movingto.io/:

I used Blevins Franks to help with my legal advice (mostly for tax matters) and they have a great guide for Brits considering moving to Europe:

https://www.blevinsfranks.com/services/european-emigration-advisory-service/

There are always reasons to stay put somewhere - if you're happy then keep doing what you're doing. But if you're not happy, then there is a way to change things if you take the steps that others have taken.

Reach out to me if you'd like any advice on this.