T minus 44 days until liftoff!
Moving to Portugal sounds great in the abstract, but it’s getting less abstract by the day. And less abstraction equals more logistics.
Fortunately I’m married to a certified Project Manager. Jill has every discrete move-related task detailed in an Excel sheet with owner, due date, and completion status.
Ok, but REALLY how much stuff can that be, you might ask?
We are currently at 102 discrete tasks and climbing…
I was supposed to be winding down at Boundless by now, but the project that I’ve been trying to deliver before I ride off into the sunset just WILL NOT DIE. So I still don’t know exactly what my last day in the office will be.
That means that, until I have line of sight to my Boundess end-date, Jill is carrying more than her share of the load on move related items and I’m focused on a few major things that are in my sweet-spot task-wise.
My current headline tasks include:
- Scheduling cancellation for any subscriptions services we don’t need – Au revoir, Spectrum!
- Getting our US mobile numbers ported off of AT&T and onto a cost-efficient and reliable MVNO (Tello) so that our US numbers continue to work seamlessly in Portugal as backups to our new primary Portuguese numbers from Vodafone.
- Getting our US banking moved to a bank that is explicitly expat-friendly – Pro-tip: You do not want to try to rush this particular transition because just when you think you are through you will find another quarterly or annual automated-debit that you forgot about.
- Getting us enrolled in private health insurance in Portugal, which we are mandated to have from the date of our AIMA residency appointment until we receive our resident cards and are enrolled in Portugal’s universal healthcare.
- Buying a car in Portugal that will be ready when we step off the plane on April 23
- Getting Portuguese car insurance for said car
- Dispositioning our two current cars just before we decamp
- Letting the nice people at USAA know that we will be renting out our Austin house while we are gone and making sure our homeowner’s policy reflects that.
On the topic of buying a car in Portugal… It was a good week. We have secured a 2023 Renault Austral from the very-easy-to-work-with Luis at Santogal Renault in Lisbon!
You may recall that our friend Bruno, who was our guide around the Douro Valley on our second scouting trip, suggested that we look at the Renault lineup because every village in Portugal has a Renault mechanic and Renault parts are always in good supply. His suggestion was to buy a slightly used model with a little warranty left. I thought I understood what he meant by that last bit at the time, but I have since learned what he REALLY meant.
I’m no expert in EU taxes and VAT, but what I can tell you is that the 23% VAT that Portugal levies on “new” vehicle sales feels pretty onerous. But it turns out that there’s a life hack – and that’s what Bruno was trying to convey that I didn’t pick up on initially.
The key to this particular life hack is the definition of the word “new”. It turns out that in Portugal, for VAT applicability purposes, “new” means that a vehicle has been registered less than six months AND has less than 6,000KM on the odometer.
What the dealerships do is register cars from the factory as “Service” cars, which means that that registration starts the clock on the “used” status of a car. The staff of the dealership get allocated Service cars as their personal vehicles knowing that they will take them out of Service status at either the six month or 6,000KM mark. And the dealership personnel are motivated to keep them pristine as these are the cars they will ultimately be selling to the end consumer without the bite of the 23% VAT.
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is how we find ourselves with a “used” 2023 Renault Austral Hybrid that was registered as a Service car September 29, of 2023 has 3600KM on the odometer. We have paid a 20% deposit and will close the transaction in a couple of weeks after six month anniversary of the initial registration. And at that point we will have 30 months of the original 36 month factory warranty remaining.
The other area where we had significant forward progress this week was in lining up the private health insurance we need to have in place at the time of our AIMA residency appointments. Even though we technically only need this insurance for 4-6 months, every expat we’ve spoken to has kept their private heath insurance in force for the duration of their stay in Portugal. From what we understand private insurance has a couple of discrete benefits:
- With private insurance you set up your relationship with your doctors directly vs the public system where you get assigned doctors somewhat randomly. Being able to select doctors, at least initially, that speak English seems like a major plus to us.
- With private insurance there are no waits for non-emergent situations. Not that Jill or I plan on any hip or knee replacements any time soon, but those kind of elective surgeries can have a waiting period in the public system based on capacity and availability.
None of the above is a knock on Portugal’s universal healthcare scheme, which seems to do a good job overall while struggling with the same challenges around wait times for elective procedures that are common to universal healthcare schemes the world over. And if anything emergent or life threatening happens you get right in to the public system, which is better equipped than the private system for major trauma and complex care. Here’s an interesting assessment of worldwide healthcare that we ran across in our research. And for those of you scoring at home, at 82.42 years, Portugal’s current life-expectancy is 2.5+ years longer than that of the United States, which clocks in at 79.74 years.
Way back when we started this process, Jill got us connected with the medical concierge team from Serenity in Portugal. Michael who owns Serenity, and is awesome, has been patiently guiding us through the ins and outs of picking a private insurer.
Michael connected us with, Ana Rita, our new insurance agent in Portugal who got us quotes from multiple insurers. And Michael and Ana Rita tag-teamed our slate of questions about how private health insurance works in Portugal.
My experience with the US healthcare system has jaded me and, for that reason, I’ve made the conscious decision that we will be over-insured in Portugal. For anyone interested in insurance costs in Portugal, we got quotes for various coverage levels from the two largest local private insurers in Portugal and the best option from one carrier was going to have a combined monthly premium of €204.91 (roughly $220) for me (age 59) and Jill (age 54). Because it included dental and vision and a couple of other “just in case” provisions I decided to go with the best option from the other carrier which will have monthly premiums of €325.20 (roughly $350). We have a call with an English-speaking nurse that works with our new private health insurer on Monday to go through our medical questionnaire for enrollment.
One interesting thing about medical insurance in Portugal, it generally doesn’t cover prescription drugs. That freaked me out a little bit, but I learned from Michael at Serenity that’s because all residents are eligible for the prescription drug coverage of the universal system. So if the doctor you see with your private health insurance prescribes you something that prescription is registered with the national system and you access it on your phone. Then you go to any pharmacy, pull out your phone and they scan the QR for your prescription, fill it, and update the national registry. What that means is that you can fill your prescriptions anywhere in the country at any time, not just at the pharmacy where your prescription is registered as it is in the United States. And Michael assures us that the first time we go get a prescription filled we will be very pleasantly surprised at the amount we are charged compared to the US.
And in the middle of all of the health insurance back and forth, we secured our car so Ana Rita is now our agent for auto insurance as well. I also consciously chose to be over-insured on the auto front. In Portugal, auto insurance goes with the car so that anyone who drives that car is insured. Perfectly adequate insurance on our new Renault Austral was going to be €365.16 (about $400) per year. The most comprehensive auto insurance available is going to set us back €778.86 and that’s for a zero deductible. Another nice thing about Portugal is that ALL auto insurance covers roadside assistance and towing. So in the event of a mechanical failure the minimum required auto insurance will rescue you and get your vehicle to the repair facility for the low low cost of FREE.
While I’ve been having fun with buying cars and getting insurance lined up, Jill is doing a dizzying array of more complicated things.
When she’s not busy finding loving homes for all of the possessions we are not taking with us to Portugal – which is basically anything that won’t fit in a suitcase – Jill has been getting Woody and Bulleit’s travel plans squared away. We have engaged petrelocation.com, whose CEO is a friend of a friend, to give W&B the white glove treatment while getting them safely from Austin to Lisbon. Kristina, at petrelocation.com, is our person and will be on point from now until we have proof of life on the other side.
Jill and Kristina are working through the checklist to get the boys ready for their big adventure.
One of the things Kristina needs us to do is figure out what size kennels the boys need for the trip. That has been a comic endeavor. It turns out that neither dog understands the command “Please hold still while I measure you in multiple dimensions.” So at Kristina’s suggestion we’ve devolved to blue painter’s tape on the wall so that we can send pictures to her. That’s only slightly better, because the dogs don’t understand “Please stand in front of this rectangle of blue tape” any better than the other thing. Needless to say they are both getting an extra ration of treats with all of the attempts to lure them into position.
At any rate, assuming we can ultimately get the boys’ measurements to Kristina, the general logistics are set:
Kristina’s team will ensure that boys will board a nonstop Lufthansa flight from Austin to Frankfurt that departs at 3:40PM on Monday April 22nd. They will spend the night of April 23rd at the pet hotel at the Frankfurt airport, where they will hopefully be able to share a room, and the staff will send us photos and videos.
Once we hand the boys off on Monday we will head for the airport and board our own flight from Austin to Lisbon (via a connection at Dulles) which puts us in Lisbon at 10:30AM on Tuesday April 23rd. We will use that day to pickup our car and visit our local pet store in SMP, where Jill has already befriended the owner who will have a bag of our preferred food ready for us to pick up (also on the project plan).
Then the boys will be on the first flight from Frankfurt to Lisbon that arrives after Customs opens on Wednesday April 24th. The petrelocation team will be there when they get off the plane and walk them through Customs in Lisbon. And we will be waiting for them on the other side!
Lots still to do, but we are getting through the major items.
Adventure is out there…
Jill and Todd in Portugal 