• About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
FREE REPORT
BEST PLACES TO RETIRE
*No spam: We will NEVER give your email address to anyone else.
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
    • Our Latest On Coronavirus ⚠️
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
Live and Invest Overseas
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
    • Our Latest On Coronavirus ⚠️
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
No Result
View All Result
Home Retirement/Living

How To Retire To Europe

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Apr 24, 2012
in Retirement/Living
0
Money and happiness doesn't necessarily mean big houses or apartments.
208
SHARES
3k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Too Much Stuff–Some Of It Will Have To Go

Not everyone is interested in a life in the tropics…or at the beach. Maybe you, for example, dream of a cosmopolitan life on the Continent.

I’m going to let you in on a secret: Euro-city life can be more affordable and therefore more realizable than you might imagine, for reasons you might not predict. The key is adjusting your approach.

In the United States, we Americans live big. We reside in three- and four-bedroom houses with walk-in closets, full basements, finished attics, and two-car garages.

We have porches, backyards, and driveways, and we fill every square inch of every room, every cupboard, and every storage shed with stuff. We keep two cars, lawn equipment, garden implements, boxes of old clothes, plastic tubs of mementos, hardly-ever-used appliances, the latest electronic gadgets, and on and on. We expand to fill the available space, and, typically, the space available is a lot.

Not so in Europe. Euro-city living isn’t spacious. It’s compact. In Paris, for example, you don’t live in a house but an apartment. An apartment with no basement, no attic, no laundry room, no mud room, no family room, not a single walk-in closet, and maybe one or two bedrooms.

Under these circumstances, it doesn’t take much to fill the available space. Europeans don’t mind. They don’t buy a new pair of shoes until the old ones wear out. They don’t invest in a new coffee maker until the current one is kaput. Maybe they have a car, but more often they keep a bicycle. No need for a lawn mower or a weed whacker. No room for three or four televisions.

Our move from Waterford, Ireland, to Paris, France, took us from a 5,000-square-foot house on 6 acres to a 112-square-meter (1,200-square-foot) apartment. The adjustment, at first, was a shock. We’d sold much of our furniture and household belongings with our home in Waterford. Still, I had to do some creative organizing to fit our family of four into our seriously downsized quarters.

We squeezed in with not a square meter to spare. Sure, I would have welcomed a roomier closet in the master bedroom or a playroom for Jack. Honestly, though, after a while, we wondered how we’d ever occupied so much space as we had during our Irish country living adventure.

We found, over time, that we didn’t miss the stuff we’d off-loaded during our move…and we didn’t miss the area it had occupied either.

We learned to live not in our apartment, but in our city, as Europeans do. Within a 15-minute walk of our place were five parks. These were Jackson’s backyard, where he met his playmates from school, where he and Lief played catch, and where we enjoyed picnics nearly every weekend the weather allowed. Within a 10-minute walk of our apartment were eight cafes. We’d stop for tea in the morning, a drink on the way home, or a snack after running errands on Saturday afternoon.

Neither did we miss our car. Paris is the world’s most walkable city, and, when your feet give out, the Metro will take you anywhere you want to go for 1.70 euro.

We didn’t miss yard work or spring-cleaning the attic. We didn’t miss reorganizing closets to make room for yet more plastic tubs of things we couldn’t possibly part with. It was an unexpected but liberating side effect of Euro-city life.

And it led to another unexpected benefit that Lief embraced whole-heartedly: We (well, I) spent less money. Some of our fixed costs increased, but our discretionary spending was reduced dramatically. I learned to buy with judgment, rather than on impulse. Every purchase had to pass the where-will-I-put-it test?

Formerly a hobby shopper, I had no choice but to reform.

Though, I admit, not completely.

Leaving Paris for Panama City, we decided to make our apartment there available for rental. When the French rental manager we engaged came to inventory the contents of the place, I walked her room to room, cupboard to cupboard. She grew increasingly quiet, finally noticeably unhappy.

“You will have to get rid of many of these things,” she said at last. “These knick-knacks. All the extra kitchenware. All those CDs and DVDs.

“You have too much stuff. Some of it will have to go.”

Kathleen Peddicord

Tags: 'France''Ireland'apartments in Europeliving in Europemoving to europeParis
Share83Tweet52
Previous Post

Health Care And Safety For Retirees

Next Post

French Presidential Elections 2012

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

Related Posts

Exotic wooden huts on the water, Maldives
Colombia

How To Move Overseas Despite A Pandemic

by Sophia Titley
May 24, 2022
0

One of the biggest lessons of the past two-and-a-half years has been this: We all need to seize opportunities when...

Read more
Rocks in the water next to the sandy beach in Ecuador

The Best Places To Retire In Latina America

May 23, 2022
3 Popular Seaside Towns In Mexico Within Driving Distance Of The States

3 Popular Seaside Towns In Mexico Within Driving Distance Of The States

May 4, 2022
The Best Places To Live Abroad And Launch A New Life

The Best Places To Live Abroad And Launch A New Life

April 27, 2022
The Eiffel tower in Paris from a tiny street

While Away Your Days In Paris

April 26, 2022
A view of Cinta Costera in Panama City, Panama

One Of The Greatest Melting Pots

April 25, 2022
A relaxing Panama shoreline

Is Retiring In Panama Still A Good Choice? If So, Where?

April 24, 2022
Next Post
Sarkozy and Hollande united for presidential opening

French Presidential Elections 2012

A world full of fun, adventure, and profit awaits! Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we'll send you a FREE report on the 10 Best Places To Retire In Style Overseas Today.

Start Your New Life Today, Overseas

LIOS Resources


  • New To LIOS
  • Ask An Expert
  • Media Center
  • Contact Us
  • FAQs

Quick Links


  • Best Places To Live
  • Best Places To Retire
  • Finding A Job Overseas
  • Real Estate

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and get your FREE report: The 10 Best Places To Retire Overseas In 2022

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Countries
  • Budgets
  • Archives
  • News
  • Events
  • Bookstore
  • Newsletters
  • About Us
  • Members Area
  • Contact Us

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

The World’s Best Places To Be In 2022?

Discover Them Here…

WANT TO RETIRE OVERSEAS?

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we’ll immediately send you a free report on the 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE in style overseas. Each day you’ll learn about the best opportunities for international living, retiring overseas, offshore diversification and asset protection, and investing in real estate around the world.