In most of the United States, a Social Security check of $1,847 a month is a tight, anxious income for a single person. It might cover rent alone in a modest apartment, leaving little for anything else, and in an expensive city it would not even do that. It is a figure that keeps millions …
A retiree moves five thousand dollars from an American bank to a Spanish account to cover the first months of a new life abroad. The wire goes through, and a few days later the money lands, except it is not five thousand dollars’ worth of euros. It is closer to forty-eight hundred. Somewhere between the …
For a single retiree, €1,200 a month, around $1,400, does not sound like much. In most of the United States it would barely cover rent, and in the fashionable corners of Spain, the Costa del Sol or central Madrid, it would leave you counting carefully. But Spain is a large and unevenly priced country, and …
Two people need to get from Paris to Lyon on the same morning. The tourist books a flight, because a flight is what you book when two cities feel far apart and an hour in the air sounds faster than anything on the ground. The local books the train without a second thought. On this …
You have walked all morning through the Roman heat, and the Spanish Steps rise in front of you, a hundred and thirty-odd travertine steps sweeping up toward a church, sun-warmed and inviting. So you do the natural thing and sit down to rest. Within moments a police officer with a whistle is heading your way, …
The car is reserved, the confirmation is printed, and the family is standing at the rental counter in Florence with the luggage and a plan for Tuscany. Then the agent asks for the International Driving Permit, the American does not have one, and the whole plan stalls at the desk while everyone works out what …
The paperwork to fly a dog from the United States to Europe is not complicated, and it is not especially expensive. Three documents and roughly $450 in vet and endorsement fees cover it, and a healthy adult dog from the United States faces no quarantine and no blood test on arrival. On paper it is …
On a side street off a Roman piazza, a curved iron spout pours a steady arc of cold water into a drain, and has been doing so, day and night, for longer than anyone walking past has been alive. It never shuts off. The water is clean, it is free, and it is the same …
Two American retirees start with the same nest egg: three hundred thousand dollars in savings, plus a typical Social Security check. One settles in Florida, the classic American retirement destination. The other moves to Spain. A few years later, their financial situations look nothing alike, and the difference is not luck or spending habits. It …
Talk to enough American retirees who have built happy lives in Spain, and a pattern starts to emerge. It is not that the ones who thrive are richer, or younger, or better at Spanish, or luckier in their choice of town. The thing they have in common is something they did before they ever committed …
You board in one city as the light goes, have a drink in the lounge car while the suburbs slide past, and climb into a bunk. You wake the next morning pulling into a different country, wash your face, and step off the train into the center of a new city with the whole day …
An American retiree settles in Spain, walks into a local bank to open a simple checking account, and is politely turned away. Not because of her finances, her paperwork, or anything she has done, but because of her passport. She is an American, and for a growing number of European banks, that alone is reason …