NEW YORK — Debra Taylor has had a busy year or so: She’s going through a divorce while in the process of retiring — and she’s moving to Portugal from Southern California with one of her daughters.
After deciding her next home would be outside the U.S., she narrowed down her choices based on tax burdens (Spain was out with its wealth taxes), climate (no Costa Rica, too hot) and ease of travel within Europe, one of her favorite parts of the world. She then toured Portugal with a relocation company, Expatsi, and found her new home, Aveiro. It’s a striking city on the country’s west coast with lovely canals that earned it the nickname the Venice of Portugal.
It’s all logistics from there. Taylor signed a year lease on an apartment (a requirement for moving forward), hired the company Viv Europe to navigate bureaucracies and paperwork, signed up for the necessary FBI background check and has an appointment in late September to move ahead with visas.
Her youngest child gave her the idea to leave the country.
“After our current president was elected, my 18-year-old transgender daughter came to me and said, ‘I want to get out of this country ASAP,’” Taylor recalled. “That was just fine with me.”
Her oldest daughter, who’s 20, will stay in the U.S. to complete college.
“None of this means I have to live there forever,” Taylor said. “I’ll use this as my jumping-off point to do more deeper dives, explore the rest of the region. I want to buy a place, but I’m not going to do that until I’m living there and spend more time in different communities.”
According to aging and relocation experts, Taylor has made the right decisions.
The number of people who relocate upon retirement fluctuates, based on such factors as politics, home affordability and cost-of-living rates. While older adults are less likely to move than younger populations, more than 3 million people age 65 and older relocated within the U.S. in the five years before the coronavirus pandemic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
As for moving abroad, U.S. politics is now the No. 1 reason cited by people who use Expatsi, the company’s co-founder Jen Barnett said.
“The one downside is that a lot of countries retirees are interested in don’t want retirees, and that is to say wealthy, English-speaking countries, because they want laborers,” Barnett said.
While most U.S. retirees stay put in existing homes and locales, those who want to age in place face mounting challenges, said AARP Vice President Rodney Harrell, who focuses on housing and livable communities.
Challenges include rising rents or mortgages, costs for home modifications, and a lack of community support services like adequate health care, reliable utilities and