How this American retiree moved to Portugal

Intrigued, Luckie started researching what it would take to pack up and move abroad. All things considered, it wasn’t that hard—if she was willing to give up a few things.

The most difficult: Her home of 15 years in Phoenix, Arizona, which she had recently remodeled.

“My granddaughter said, ‘Nana, your house is exactly the way you want it and you’re leaving?’ It was a lot of emotions,” says Luckie. “But I said the one thing we can’t get enough of is time. And it’s time for me to go and see the world.”

Luckie put her home on the market in May of last year; it sold in less than two weeks. She gave some of her belongings to family and friends and gave the rest to the woman who bought her house. A few weeks later, she packed for a month-long trip to Portugal to get a feel for different towns she might like to live in.

Luckie is used to “jumping into things,” she says, including moving. Throughout her life, she’s lived in Chicago, San Diego, Austin, Charleston, and Phoenix, among other cities. So the thought of a new location didn’t scare her, and after visiting Portugal, Luckie decided she liked it enough to make the leap. She came back to Phoenix, traveled to San Francisco for her visa, and three days later she left for Europe. She thought she’d give it a year; with those first 12 months now behind her, she’s extending her stay at least another 12.

Luckie acknowledges that saying goodbye to her home, family, and friends was harder than she expected; the first few months after moving to Portugal, she felt deep sadness.

“I worked so many hours and was constantly gone, and when I got here, everything got quiet,” she says. “When everything got quiet I was able to hear myself, and I felt that I was alone and I was lonely.”

Courtesy of Joyce Luckie

But that abated once she was able to find an expat group in Setubal, where she moved, and even make friends with some of the locals. The expats check in on each other, she says, and help each other make the most of their new home. They walk together three days a week, hanging out together after at local watering holes and cafés.

“We walk around, head home, and there is always music, there’s always a dinner somewhere,” she says. “There’s a lot going on daily.”

Another difficult aspect of the move was the bureaucracy. Luckie lives in Portugal on a retirement visa; when she moved, it took over six months to get her resident card. Things just work slower there than in the U.S., she says. You have to be persistent—but also patient. To make sure everything was in order, Luckie used a service that helps Americans move abroad, operated by two other expats; they were able to organize everything for her, and even suggested places to live, which is how she discovered Setubal.

“Their red tape, I’ve never seen anything like it. Going to the bank, it may take three hours,” she says. “Well, I’m not working, I don’t have anywhere to go, so I just sit back and wait. I reduced the wrinkles in my forehead, because I don’t get frustrated.”

The cost of living and easier access to traveling elsewhere around Europe and Africa makes the move worth the effort. Since getting her resident card, Luckie has traveled to England, France, Gambia, Ireland, and Senegal, among other places. She doesn’t need a car to get around, and she treats herself to massages once a week and frequent lunches and dinners out.

She qualifies for free public health insurance, which she supplements with a private plan costing $650 a year.

“I went to get X-rays for my knee, that was 112 Euros,” she says. “You’re not going to pay $112 for treatment and medicine in the U.S.”

Luckie’s apartment costs $1,200 a month, which is her biggest expense (the price of rentals there has increased fairly significantly in recent years as more expats move there). She can walk to the beach, and a grocery store, laundromat, restaurants, and bars are all within blocks of her home.

Those aspects of life are far different from living in the U.S., but ones Luckie has embraced as she’s made an effort to engage with the local community and push herself out of her comfort zone. The biggest adjustments have been eating dinner after 6 p.m. and the absence of small luxuries like American television and Lawry’s seasoning salt—but the good far surpasses those drawbacks of life abroad.

“You’re not coming here to make this Little USA,” she says. “You’re in Portugal. So honor their culture.”