One of our goals with FinazzoFun is to share our adventures in a realistic way; we don’t want to share the good things, the pretty pictures, and the laughs without also sharing the shitty days, dirty beaches, foibles and follies. Today I want to dig into some of the nitty gritty about the visa application process.

Portugal requires applicants to prove both that they will be self sufficient residents and are committed to moving to the country (in addition to a bunch of other stuff like not having a criminal history in either country). The specifics needed to prove that vary depending where you are applying from – in our case that means the west coast, USA which required us to apply to the consulate in San Francisco (via a company that handles such things, VFS).

The first steps to prove you can sustain yourself financially are straightforward. First, get a tax ID (“NIF”). We hired an accountant in Portugal to help us do that and the process went smoothly. Second, use your NIF to get a bank account and transfer some funds. Getting a bank account was CRAZY and we would have struggled without hiring a Portuguese lawyer. Part of that process included signing about 20 places apiece in a document we printed that was over 100 pages long, then using an international shipper to mail it to our lawyer.

Now it starts to get tricky. San Francisco requires you to have a one year lease in Portugal; we have four pets and most property owners don’t want to delay the start of a rental agreement. Commitment of time and funds really ramped up here. We worked with a realtor and reviewed well over 100 properties, were rejected due to pets multiple times, and had one lease fall through completely after we had signed it. Finally we got our lease in Olhāo, smaller then we wanted, but a quick ten minute walk to the ocean with all our basic necessities even closer than that. We started paying rent in March, which will end up being way less than many expats, (up to one year rent paid prior to the move according to one account online).

Finally, before we can apply for our visa we must show we have a passive income which is greater than the average income in Portugal. For us this should be a technicality since we intend to live off of the proceeds from the sale of our house for multiple years. Technicality or not we had to show this ongoing income which required one of us to retire and start drawing an adequate amount from our retirement funds.

The combination of those last two steps started a proverbial expense clock ticking. We are now on one income, paying a mortgage and a secondary rent, and incurring higher US expenses while we are still here.

And now we get to gambling! Neither of us really gambles beyond the occasional lottery ticket. Casinos seem like a waste of money and just aren’t one of our happy places. Our investment portfolio is very conservative. We spend hours researching and discussing major purchases like cars or home improvements. The last task to complete before dropping off our applications (other than mundane bureaucracy which I’ve skipped past) is to show your specific travel itinerary. What date do we buy our plane tickets for?

A quick digression to mention is that we had one misunderstanding at this point and could have tried a shortcut. We misinterpreted the requirement about traveling to Portugal within 90 days of visa approval. We presumed this had to be within 90 days of dropping off the application since it could technically be approved right away. The reality is that we could have delayed our departure up to about 180 days (but we wouldn’t have pushed things out much more, remember that ticking clock!). The shortcut is that some people claim they have been approved for visas by just printing out a potential itinerary from an airline, not actual tickets. That route sounded like a cheat to us and we were concerned that it could have caused our application to be denied.

Visa applications can take up to 12 weeks to process. San Francisco is historically the slowest consulate in the states to process applications BUT people tend to be approved just prior to their provided flight dates (many people purchase airline tickets with much less than a 12 week window). We left an 88 day gap between our visa drop off and our flight date, technically just a bit over 12 weeks. We had gambled that bureaucracy wouldn’t betray us, a very un-Portuguese thing to do, and as of our first communication from the consulate, it may have been a bad bet. We are scheduled to leave Medford on June 17th and the consulate estimates their visa decision process will be completed by June 23rd (they actually have our passports during this process, which was a choice we made).

We have a plan B and plan C if that scenario happens, it just means a bit of work and some unexpected expenses. Stressful, but not disastrous.

It’s taken far too long to get this far and I don’t want to belabor things further, but we have both been contemplating our bigger gamble. There shouldn’t be any problem with getting our visas approved, but on such a big risk a person’s brain will always “what if” different scenarios. Our house sale closes on the 17th, and even crazier all our personal belongings are being picked up next week by our international shipper. We’ve been furiously packing instead of blogging. What if our visas are denied, our property ends up in Portugal, and we now have to pay large customs fees and taxes, which a valid visa would normally prevent? We can stay in Portugal for 90 days with our US passports, but should we keep our original travel plans with four pets?! If we are denied, how do we make a successful appeal? It can make a person go crazy, but we have placed our bets and are awaiting the results with trepidation. Wish us luck friends.