Author: Tim

One week ago today, March 31, 2026, we had to say goodbye to Spooner and let him cross over the rainbow bridge. He was 14-1/2 years old so we knew the time we had left with him was not long, but his passing was sudden. He had become lethargic and was not eating much. I (Tim) took him into the vet on Tuesday afternoon to see what was up. The vet did a quick exam and noticed his gums were very pale. She did blood work and all his blood counts were extremely low. She then brought in the ultrasound machine and did an ultrasound of his abdomen and discovered a large bleeding tumor on his spleen.

I (Tim) got Spooner on Thanksgiving Day 2011. A friend’s niece and her roommate had found him abandoned as a tiny puppy. The friend wanted to keep him, but they could not have pets in their college apartment, so she took him home to her parents. Apparently this was not her first attempt at doing this and mom and dad said, NO! My friend Susan sent me a picture of him and I said I would take him. I had lost my nearly 14-year-old German Shepherd, Cheeseburger, 4 months earlier. The issue was that I was visiting Susan in California for Thanksgiving, but I lived in Florida. Completely unprepared for travelling with a puppy, I took a redeye home from Sacramento to Orlando the Friday after Thanksgiving.

When I arrived in Orlando, a nice man came out from the door next to baggage claim holding Spooner’s crate at arms’ length saying, “I think he pooped.” He sure did. A long shuttle bus ride to remote parking and I was faced with how to get this little shit (literally) home. I pulled out a dirty shirt, wrapped him up except for his nose, and held him in my lap for the 45 minute drive home. His first experience upon arriving home was a bath and he has never liked baths since.

Spooner led an adventurous life, traveling more than most people do. At less than a year old he got a ride home in the back of a Lake Alfred Police squad car after having run off on one of his adventures. At a year old he joined me (Tim) for a cross-country drive as I moved back to California from Florida. He would take many more road trips in California.

In early 2014, he gave Jay a thorough sniffing up and down and approved of him coming into our lives. I sometimes think he ended up liking Jay more than me. In 2014, when I took a sabbatical to Fresno State University he became an intrepid hiker in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains.

In 2015 or 2016 he had his first TPLO (tibial plateau leveling osteotomy) surgery when he blew out one of his ACLs. A few months later he had his second TPLO surgery when he blew out the other knee. He was a wild child in his youth.

In 2020, he went on yet another cross country adventure as we moved from California to Tennessee. He was definitely starting to show his age, but he loved farm life and developed a fond affinity for chicken poop. As time passed on the farm, he was often happier standing back and barking as his younger brother Max would run crazy after squirrels. But he still had one adventure left in him, and in December 2025 he hopped a big jet plane for Portugal. He was very happy to be in a house without stairs for the final few months and enjoyed sleeping, eating, pooping and sleeping some more.

Enjoy these photos of Spooner through the years. We will miss you, Spoon.

Today marks 3-months since we arrived in Portugal. In many ways the time has flown by. In other ways it’s been a brutal three months. And as I suspected when we started this blog, I have been horrible at keeping up with it. Since I know some of you aren’t on Facebook and don’t see our updates there, I will try to touch on everything that has been happening since we arrived.

We arrived safely in Lisbon the morning of the 12th, all of our luggage arrived, our driver we hired was waiting for us and we got to our rental house about 11am local time. The dogs arrived the next night and were delivered right to the house. They quickly settled in and we were all happy and cozy in our new home.

On December 17th the real adventure started. We met Chris, our contractor, at the house we had bought to discuss the renovations we wanted to do to the house before moving in. He was onboard with everything we wanted to do and put our mind at ease that we could accomplish what we wanted to do so we set off to draw up some plans so he could get started as soon as possible. And that’s where the good news ended.

As Chris started to dig into things after Christmas he said, “I think there’s been a fire here.” We said yes, the old boiler in the basement burned up. He said, “No, I think it was bigger than that.” Boy was it! December 27, 2023, our house had made the news. As Chris began to look into things in the house we discovered a lot of hidden damage. Our minor cosmetic renovations were quickly turning into a nearly full gut remodel. For legal purposes that is about all we can say at the moment, but we are pressing ahead and we’re finally about ready to start putting things back together.

As if that wasn’t enough drama, then came Kristin on January 28th. Storm Kristin, officially classified as an extratropical cyclone, developed rapidly and came ashore in central Portugal before dawn on January 28th with the strongest winds ever recorded in Portugal! The level of destruction was beyond words. A path about 60 miles wide north-to-south and well over 150 miles from west-to-east was devastated. Countless houses lost rooves, power and cellular service was out for about 1 million people, and 15 million trees were toppled. Total damages in Portugal are estimated to be over €6 billion. Power was just restored last week to the village where the house we bought is located. We have never been happier to be living in a rental.

We were very fortunate to have only suffered minor roof damage to both our rental house and purchased house. However, we lost a lot of huge old cork oak trees, which took out a lot of fencing at the new house and the barn roof sailed away like a kite. It took about two days to clear the driveway of trees. We still have a lot of cleanup left to do so if you want to come visit please do, but don’t forget your work gloves!

Despite all that, we love Portugal and, aside from our friends and family, we can’t say we miss the U.S. at all. Actually, I’ve never been happier to not be in the U.S. I’ve added some pictures below showing damage from Kristin.

I’ll try to do better going forward with more regular posts.

Many of you already know from our Facebook group that our trip has not gone exactly to plan. I started this post yesterday (Wednesday, 10 December 2025) while sitting in the American Airlines lounge in Atlanta awaiting our first flight to Philadelphia. I was about halfway through writing the post when the text message I had been dreading popped up:
“American 258 from PHL to LIS on Dec 10 at 7:05PM has been canceled.”
A national strike had been planned for 11 December in Portugal for several weeks. TAP, the Portugal national airline, had already canceled the vast majority of their domestic flights, but from everything we were reading international flights were anticipated to be largely unaffected. However, as the strike day drew near, more unions and labour groups began to join the strike increasing the risk of broader disruptions. But we are back on track.
We now return to our regularly scheduled blog post.

Today’s the Day!!!

In the words of the late great treasure hunter Mel Fisher, Today’s the Day!!! We left the farm Tuesday (9 December 2025) about 11:20am to start driving to Atlanta with eight large duffle bags, two dogs and one gargantuan dog crate loaded in the largest SUV we could rent… it all barely fit!

Although it costs a chunk of change, we don’t regret hiring this job out, especially in light of the disruptions to our travel plans. I cannot imagine what would have happened had we tried to manage the dogs on our own when our flight was canceled.
The relocation service communicated directly with our vet and walked them through the process, making sure all the documents were in order, all the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed, and everything was accepted by the USDA and properly signed off on. When our flight was canceled they immediately jumped into action, got them extra nights at Pet Paradise, and worked with Lufthansa to reschedule their flights. The dogs cannot travel or arrive before us so they could not keep their original flights. Continental Pet Relocation will get the dogs cleared through customs and deliver them to our house Sunday. (A lot of) Money well spent.

Packing Lightly for an International Move

We shipped most of our belongings that we are taking with us on pallets through the company U Pak We Ship. These will be delivered to us in about 8 weeks. The rest of our things — clothing, shoes, etc. — got packed to come with us as luggage on the plane. We ended up with eight duffle bags, plus we each have a carry on suitcase and backpack (thankfully we had a couple extra days of clothes in our carry on).
I have always stared in amazement at the airport when I see these people with luggage carts piled high, wondering what on earth are these people packing and where are they going? Now I know, I have become one of them!

How Will We Keep In Touch?

This is the question we get most often — how will we stay in touch? Obviously, there is this blog and our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/4064529313765230). You can also email both of us:
JAY at JTPORTUGAL dot COM
TIM at JTPORTUGAL dot COM
And our US cell phone numbers will continue to function so you can text or call if you wish. We will also have Portugal phone numbers and, thanks to modern e-SIM technology, we only need one cell phone for both numbers.
Although our US phone numbers will work as normal, our preference would be to use WhatsApp. WhatsApp is (surprise!) an app that allows texting, voice calling and video calling but it only uses cellular (or WiFi) data, not minutes, so it is very popular for international calling. If you don’t have our phone numbers, send an email and ask.

We are excited to start this new phase of our lives and settle into a slower, more relaxed pace of life. We plan to start on Saturday with a visit to the local Christmas market followed by visits to some of the local villages to see all the Christmas decorations. Watch for pictures to come.

Yesterday, November 3, 2025, was a great day — our visas arrived!!! It was only 52 days from when we applied until we received the visas, but it sure felt a lot longer. Now the very nerve wracking part begins, making sure we’ve thought of every little detail, and there are a lot of them!

Plane Tickets
Check. December 10th we take flight. Thank god for frequent flier miles. Two business class tickets purchased for $71.20. Woohoo!!!
Atlanta to Philly, Philly to Lisbon.

Rental Car & Hotel
Check. We have a large rental car reserved for December 9th to load up and drive to Atlanta. We have a hotel reservation at the Atlanta airport for the night of December 9th.

Transport from Lisbon to Home
We’re working on it. There’s a great service that comes highly recommended by thousands of members of the Americans & FriendsPT Facebook group that we’re working on reserving.

Dogs
This is my biggest concern, especially since Spooner is a senior at 14. We have decided to contract with Continental Pet Relocation to move the dogs for us. It’s not cheap, but at least we saved money on our tickets. They work with our vet to make sure all the paperwork is in order and in compliance with USDA and EU regulations. Each dog needs a European compliant microchip and up to date on all shots. Max is good, Spooner needs to get a new microchip which we’re doing this afternoon. Then 10 days before departure they each need a vet exam and a health certificate sent to USDA APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service). Fortunately since this a fee service the shutdown is not affecting it… yet. The USDA then signs off on the health certificate and returns a copy to us (Continental Pet Relocation) and sends a copy to the vet at the airport in Lisbon. Upon arrival in Lisbon the vet confirms all the paperwork matches and scans their microchips to confirm they are the same dogs. Then we can pick them up.

They will be flying on Lufthansa from Atlanta to Frankfurt and then on to Lisbon. We are paying for the premium services for them at the Frankfurt Animal Lounge for their overnight layover, which includes sending us a picture. We’ll arrive the morning of December 11th and they’ll arrive the morning of December 12th, so we have a day to get ourselves settled before retrieving them.

Christmas in Portugal
Then there’s nothing left to do but celebrate Christmas in Portugal!

We are having a successful visit to Portugal working on getting a lot of little things ticked off to make it easier to settle in when we return for good in December (fingers crossed).
We spent our first day (Thursday) getting a bunch of the necessities for living in our rental — sheets, towels, toilet paper, basic groceries before crashing hard mid-afternoon since we got virtually no sleep on the plane ride over.

Today we spent the afternoon getting car insurance and renters insurance. Thanks to a recommendation from our friends Bill and Marcus, we found a fantastic agent who made the process simple.

You can now sign up to receive email alerts whenever we write a new blog post. Just enter your email in the box at the bottom of the page you’ll get an alert only when there’s a new post. Don’t forget you can also follow along on our Facebook group.

This evening (Wednesday, October 8) we are off to Portugal again, hopefully on our last trip as tourists. This trip is a bit of a practice trip for our actual move, which we are still hoping to do around December 10th. For this trip we are flying on TAP Air Portugal direct from Newark, NJ to Lisbon. This will likely be the route we take for the move since we’ll be traveling with one or two dogs and cannot take a U.S.-based airline. (U.S. airlines no longer accept dogs in the cargo hold except for military and state department employees with transfer orders.) That aspect of the move will probably be a post unto itself. Suffice it to say, that it is my biggest concern with this entire process.

A main objective for this trip is to get our rental house setup so when we arrive with dog(s) in tow we have a place to go and don’t need to worry about finding a hotel for a night or two. We got very lucky that the owner of the brokerage that is selling the house we will be buying had this rental available with a fenced yard!
We already have electricity turned on in our name and will meet the landlord when we arrive Thursday morning and get the water switched over. Then we’ll go shopping for the basic necessities to live in the house. Thankfully it is fully furnished.

Also happening Thursday is the inspection by the local camarra of the house we are buying. If all goes well with that, they should be able to issue the habitation license within a few weeks and then we can close on our new house!!! (When everything is done I’ll write a post about real estate in Portugal to explain all the crazy details.) In anticipation of this, we’ll be meeting with our realtor to sign a power of attorney so she can handle the closing for us, which will most likely (fingers crossed) take place before we head move in December.

Watch our Facebook page for additional updates during the trip to see what adventures we get up to on this trip.

Patience.

And more patience.

Maybe a little more patience.

While that is somewhat said in jest, it’s mostly truth. Moving to Portugal, or probably any foreign country, is not something that happens quickly. For us, from first thoughts of moving to our arrival in Portugal will be right at a year.

Visas
Once you’ve decided where you want to move you’ll need to explore how you can legally do so. That’s most likely going to involve getting a visa. U.S. citizens can travel to Portugal (or any other EU country) for 90 days as a tourist without a visa. Beyond that a visa is required.
For Portugal, there are numerous visas that one can apply for depending on why you are moving. Will you be a student, opening a business, investing in a business, seeking a job once you move, do you already have a job lined up, or maybe you’ll be retiring? Each of these options, and more, require a different visa.
We will be applying for a D7 retirement visa, more accurately a passive income visa. This means we are showing we can support ourselves in Portugal without a job, although we are not prevented from working if desired. Rather we will be supporting ourselves with passive income — money from a retirement account, pension, social security, rental property income, etc.

Applying for a visa
Once the type of visa you need is known the fun really starts. Now you have to compile all of the necessary documents to prove you qualify for the visa you are requesting. In our case, this includes:

•Visa application
•Personal statement about why we want to move to Portugal
•Documented housing (a lease or deed for a purchased home)
•Número de Identificação Fiscal (NIF) – this number identifies you within the Portuguese bureaucracy for tax purposes
•A funded Portuguese bank account (more on that later)
•Proof of income and assets
•Most recent U.S. tax return
•An apostilled FBI background check
•A signed authorization for a Portuguese criminal background check
•6-months of travel health insurance that will cover repatriation

While getting all of the required documentation together we had to get an appointment for our visa interview where we will turn over all of our documents for processing. Unfortunately, except for people living around Boston who can go to the Portuguese consulate, the visa interviews are all done by a third party company called VFS.
This adds another level of complexity to everything because VFS doesn’t always know what they’re doing. Sometimes they ask for documents that are not required by the embassy and sometimes they don’t want to take documents that are required. It just depends on the day, the VFS employee and the VFS office. We chose to hire a Portuguese-based relocation consultant to help us navigate all of this so we’re prepared to deal with VFS.

Housing
Moving to Portugal requires that you prove you have 12 months of housing lined up when you apply for your visa. This can be a lease for a rental (house or apartment) or the deed to a purchased house or apartment. It cannot be an Air BnB or other short-term rental. If it is a lease, the property owner must register the lease with Finanças, the tax authorities. This ensures the property is a legal rental, the landlord will be paying her/his taxes, and both parties are legally protected.
We have both a registered lease and a contract to purchase a house. Because the house we’re purchasing has some paperwork that needs to be squared away before we can sign the deed, we needed to secure a rental to ensure our application will be accepted.

Portuguese Bank Account
It’s not enough to show that you have assets sufficient to support yourself in investment accounts or bank accounts in the U.S., you need to have euros deposited in a Portuguese bank account. This proved to be a rather significant challenge.
In 2014, Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo (BES) collapsed due to funny business by the Espírito Santo family that owned the bank. Portugal’s central bank had to intervene, creating Novo Banco (New Bank) to absorb the healthy assets of BES. As a result, all of the Portuguese banks came under more scrutiny and each bank tightened their rules to ensure new accounts are legitimate and not being used for funny business.
Long story short, we have accounts with two Portuguese banks, Novo Banco and BPI. Unfortunately, due to strict security measures we cannot access the Novo Banco account from the U.S. so we haven’t been able to transfer funds and actually do any banking. Fortunately, our BPI account works perfectly and is fully funded to show we can support ourselves once we move.

So how much does it take to retire in Portugal?
The bare minimum required to get a “retirement” visa is the equivalent of the Portuguese minimum wage in passive income. The 2025 Portuguese monthly minimum wage equates to €1,015, about US$1,200. Not too high of a bar (unless trump really keeps fucking the U.S. economy). Of course, more is always better both for showing authorities on your visa application and for living comfortably.

Affordability
As more and more U.S. citizens look to escape the turmoil of tRump 2.0, Europe is becoming more expensive, but Portugal is still relatively affordable in terms of housing, day to day living expenses, and especially healthcare.
On a recent visit, we stopped at a cafe with with two other people. We all had an espresso or sparkling water and the bill was €4.95 (about $5.60). You couldn’t have had one espresso in the U.S. for that price.

Quality of Life
Portugal has a very relaxed pace of life. No one is in a rush, no one works 24/7, and lunch lasts 2-hours. Someone told us that a major faux pas in Portugal is to ask someone what they do because Portuguese people do not define themselves by their job. To say that the Portuguese have a healthy work-life balance is an understatement.
The 2024 Global Peace Index ranks Portugal as the 7th safest country in the world. The U.S. ranked an astonishingly bad 132 out of 163! Only one spot above Iran. The Portuguese people are welcoming, kind, and treat visitors with warmth and respect. How refreshing!

Climate
Although it’s a relatively small country, the climate in Portugal is diverse. It is generally classified as a Mediterranean climate, characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. However, the southern coast along the Mediterranean Sea is much drier and sunnier than the north coast along the Atlantic Ocean. Central Portugal is influenced by both the Mediterranean and Atlantic with mild winters and warm summers.

Healthcare
Although it was called out under affordability, healthcare deserves its own mention. Portugal has universal public healthcare available to all residents, including expats who register as residents, and services are free or require a small co-pay. Many people describe the public system as overburdened and slow, but this generally applies to the major population centers — Lisbon and Porto. In the more rural parts of the country, the system works very well.
In 2024, the Portugal healthcare system ranked 23rd overall in the World Index of Healthcare Innovation. For quality it ranked 11th. In comparison, the U.S. consistently ranks last among high-income countries.

Food, Culture and Heritage
Portuguese cuisine is known for freshness like most Mediterranean countries and is famous for seafood. Everyone still grows a garden. Even in the cities people find little plots to grow on or grown in containers on their patios. The country also produces a wide variety of outstanding wines.
Portugal has a long and varied history, having been occupied by the Romans, Germanic tribes, and Muslims. Modern Portugal traces its origins to the late 9th century and the Kingdom of Portugal was established in 1128. In the 15th and 16th centuries Portugal was a major colonial power. This has resulted in Portuguese being the second most spoken Romance language after Spanish, with an estimated 250 million speakers, and the 5th most spoken language in the world. Portuguese is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, and Equatorial Guinea.