Luxury is not the same as jet set.
Living a jet-set life, you’d expect limos and private planes, an entourage and connections that’d get you jumped to the front of every queue.
Luxury is something else.
For me, for a place to qualify as luxury, it must provide access to four- and five-star restaurants with wine lists to match…
It should have boutiques offering internationally recognized brand-name indulgences…
Live theater plus movie cinemas showing first-run and foreign flicks…
An artist community…
Affordable help around the house and a private driver if you want one…
To-your-door delivery services for groceries, restaurants, and anything else that occurs to you…
Specialty food shops and wine stores offering good vintages from around the world…
English-language bookstores…
Spa and salon services…
You get the idea.
In addition, for me, to be considered luxury, a place must offer more than these commercial trappings. It should be historic… which translates to interesting, especially architecturally.
Places developed carefully over time feature parks and squares and plazas… so you can walk and wander while enjoying the passing show.
Finally, for me, a luxury experience requires elements of charm and romance.
Who wouldn’t want a life that could be described that way?
The question is where can you not only find that lifestyle but also afford it?
Whatever your idea of the high life, you can find it in the City of Light and one of the great things about Paris is that some of the best it has to offer comes free.
The sweetest pleasures of life are here for the taking…
Picnics in the Luxembourg Gardens, long walks along the Seine, afternoons lost among the cobblestones of the Latin Quarter…
These things cost not a sou.
Most museums, including the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, forgo admission fees one day a month, and the Métro will transport you from restaurant and café to museum and nightclub for less than €2.55 and even the chicest Parisians don’t mind using it for transport around their city.
Paris is a never-ending feast of openings, performances, exhibitions, and celebrations, many available for little cost. You can join conversation groups, book clubs, and cooking classes. You can enjoy prix-fixe meals for €20 or less, and you can spend hours in a café, seeing and being seen, for the price of but a single café au lait.
The more practical necessities of life don’t come free in Paris, but they are more affordable than you might imagine. France boasts some of the world’s best infrastructure, and it’s a bargain.
For the past 19 years, my husband and I have been living part of the year in Panama and part of the year in Paris. Before this we were in Paris full-time.
About a month before we decided to begin dividing our time, Lief presented me with a budget showing that our cost of living in Panama City would be more or less on par with what it had been in Paris. I suggested that my husband the accountant double-check his figures.
Upon closer inspection, we found that Lief was correct. His ciphering predicted that our day-to-day cost of living would be the same in Panama as it had been in France.
Our experience over the past decade has proven Lief right. For us, Paris is no more costly than Panama.
How could that be?
After more than 40 years covering this beat, I’m reluctant to speak of budgets. They’re so variable and so personal and can be controlled and manipulated. Plus, the longer you live in a place the better you get at living in that place efficiently.
But here goes…
A car is an unnecessary liability in Paris. We spent four years in Paris when our children were young happily auto-free and since we’ve been back part-time we’ve not once thought of investing in a car. We don’t need one.
The butcher, the baker, the grocer, and the wine shop are all less than 15 minutes’ walk from our apartment, as are the Tuileries Gardens, the Louvre, the Latin Quarter, six movie theaters, and at least a dozen cafés and restaurants. When we want to venture beyond our quartier, we duck into the nearest Métro station or take out our phone to hail a ride courtesy of Uber or G7.
Other practical things in Paris can be cheap, too. Our service from Orange includes phone, cable, and Internet and allows unlimited free calls anytime to anywhere in North America, the Caribbean, and Europe. The cost is €42.99 per month.
You could get by in Panama City without a car. Uber is cheap. But one of the best things about living in Panama City is escaping it for a weekend at the beach or in the mountains, both as little as two hours away.
You can rent a car every time you want to explore the interior, as Panamanians refer to the entire rest of their country outside Panama City, but eventually I’d say you’ll want to invest in a vehicle of your own. That means monthly insurance, gas, and maintenance expenses, plus parking and maybe a driver. I drove myself around this town our first couple of years living here but that was all I could take. Panamanian drivers terrify me.
Our phone, cable, and Internet package in Panama City costs $90 per month, not including international phone calls, which, again, are free with our package in Paris.
In Paris, we pay for heat six months a year. In Panama City, we pay for air conditioning year-round. Electricity is relatively expensive in Panama.
In Paris, Lief and I spend €200 a week on groceries. In Panama City, it’s $250 a week. You could spend half that or less to eat in Panama. I admit we shop indulgently. We frequent the big U.S.-style grocery store Riba Smith rather than the more local and cheaper Super 99. We buy steaks imported from the States, wine from France, and butter from Ireland because those items are available and we’re willing to pay a premium for them… except when we’re not.
My point is that, based on my experience over the past two-and-a-half decades calling it home, living in Paris isn’t as expensive as you might fear.
Oh… and taxes? They might be another reason you’re tempted to take France off your list. Au contraire, dear reader, again, the reality is that your tax burden in France would be no greater than your tax burden in Panama the tax haven.
How can that be you might again be wondering? It’s thanks to the bee’s knees of tax treaties that exists between the United States and France. I’ve got a guy who can explain it to you in detail.
For me, life in Paris is as good as life gets. If money is no object and you appreciate the Continental lifestyle, you should have this city at the top of your list.
If Paris is your dream and your budget is fixed, still, take a close look before you write off the world’s most beautiful, most romantic, most luxurious place to be.
If you can afford Panama, I’d bet you can afford Paris.
Until next time,
