French Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork

Welcome to the 60th weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog.

Week 32 in France 3/8-3/14/2026.

We have been in our home in the village of Chabanais in the Charente department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region of France since the middle of December 2025. By the way, the Charente department is the northern most department of Southwest France.

This week, we will take some walks while the weather cooperates. I will slog through French tax paperwork and follow up on the golf club purchase!! EB will follow up on our long-term visa renewal. Also on the list is the chimney survey.

Our home in Chabanais

Things on the agenda this week:

• Follow up French taxes
• EB to meet a ladies group for coffee and chit chat
• I want to go to a golf store in Limoges
• Chimney survey
• Home and Garden show in Limoges.

Weather forecast:

Sunshine some clouds and a little rain is expected this week with high temps in the 60s and lows in the 30s.

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are “Baby Boomers” that have moved from Venice, Florida to the beautiful French countryside as retirees. After a little over a year of planning and fretting we sold everything in Venice and made the move on 1 August 2025.

We publish a brief update of our adventures every Sunday to share our experiences, tips and mistakes.

If you are thinking about a move to France? We are happy to share our thoughts and answer questions. Just drop a question in the comment section below and we will get back to you.

If you are wondering what got into our head and inspired us to make the move, check out some of our earlier posts. Again, if you have questions about our adventure, drop your questions in the comment section below.

We are learning a lot about the French culture and lifestyle as we make our life here and each week, we include in the blog some thoughts on what we learn. If you have a specific question about France, let us know and we are happy to answer. Other folks probably have the same question. If we don’t know the answer, we will share resource information.

This Week in General

Sunday

After coffee and a small bowl of yogurt with honey and granola we took a walk around town. If you walk 10 minutes you can be out of the village and in the country. I know, I know we live in a village in the French countryside.

Here is a picture for Lisa Burford. I know she loves horses. This pasture is roughly a 10-minute walk from our house in Chabanais. That grass looks pretty tasty actually.

A short walk up the hill and you are treated to these tulips in someone’s yard

Then this view of the village.

And as we walk down this road towards the village there is this pretty little house with blue shutters

I like this picture of the clock/bell tower that is just up the hill from our house.

Monday: French taxes and Long-Term Visa renewal paperwork

Before we got all bogged down in paperwork we took a nice walk. We have some hills to climb so great exercise.

Back to work on the French taxes and frustration. The process is frustrating because you enter your data onto a form, you click on a button that says “SAVE” or “SAVE AND CONTINUE”. For some weird reason my profile and bank details are saved but the income details and actual tax details are not saved. I sent them emails explaining my frustration and I haven’t heard from them. I contacted French Connections HCB and alerted them of my frustration with the recommended service provider. Annabelle at HCB got right back to me and promised to let the tax service provider of the issues. Fingers crossed. WE have a little time before the French return is required. We had to have our US tax information to our tax prep team by March 6.

By the way, EB had all of our VISA renewal paperwork done last Sunday!

Tuesday: Chimney survey

We had the chimney surveys on Tuesday. We are working with a company called Aasgard for the stove purchases and they checked both chimneys and pronounced them okay to continue the upgrades needed to bring them up to code. The one in the dining room will be good for the pellet stove and the one in the living room is good for the wood burner. All is going per plan. We expect the deliver of both stoves on March 23 and the install will happen on the next day. Fingers crossed again. With this underway we will have to plan on annual inspections of our chimneys. It is a French law and necessary for the homeowners insurance.

Wednesday Rain off and on all day

I drove to Limoges to see about golf clubs. There is a sports super store on the outskirts of the town called Decathlon. It is pretty easy to get to.

They have lots of brands of all kinds of sporting goods and lots of golf clubs to select from. I had done some research and settled on the Inesis brand. I had the Taylormade brand in the states and really liked them, but the Inesis is a French brand and pretty good for my level of play (senior, slow swing, and high handicap) and they are lower cost than the Taylormade. I bought the Inesis after taking a few swings and they are to be delivered on Thursday.

EB got our voter registration squared away, and our address change done.

I got a call from the electrician. He told me that he is behind schedule and might be a couple of weeks before he can come over to check out what we need. This is very common among contractors all over the world, I guess. Definitely not unusual in France. Our situation is not an emergency, so I told him to keep us in the loop.

Thursday EB has a ladies coffee get together

Although it rained most of the day and was really cold EB didn’t let it mess up her plans to go to the coffee outing.

EB met a lady that has offered to teach her some basic knitting skills. This lady also wanted to go to the lady’s coffee get together. So, EB picked her up and they drove to the Rocking Horse Cafe for the meet up. The lady has lived in France for a while and does not drive. Sorry, I’m sure EB told me her name, but I forgot.

I asked EB how the coffee meet up was. She said, “It was okay”. A lot of British women that don’t speak French much. It seems that they are not interested in learning French either. There are a lot of reasons that we think it is rather strange not to want to learn the language. EB said that she will probably go to a couple more “get togethers” and give it a fair chance before making a final decision on her future plans.

Unfortunately, I got a message that my golf clubs would not be delivered until Friday. Oh well.

I worked on the French tax paperwork. I was happy when EB returned from the coffee and gave me an excuse to stop the tax paperwork effort. We have French class anyway.

At French class we learned that there is a nice golf course in Rouzede, a town about a 30-minute drive away. I might be getting my driver sooner than later.

Time for a glass of wine.

Friday another cold day.

I stayed home and waited for my golf club to arrive while EB went to St. Junien to do some grocery shopping.

WooHoo the clubs arrived! To clarify, I just bought an iron set including a pitching wedge, and 5 through 9 irons. I’ll spring for a driver and fairway wood after I get my swing back.

EB had made dinner reservations at the Barrier restaurant for 7:00PM (19h). Delicious and lots of food. I tried the Armagnac too and EB ordered Creme Brulee to share. Good stuff and I highly recommend the Armagnac.

I have been looking forward to taking a picture of this bush in our garden shown below. I love the vibrant colored flowers on the bush. Camellias I believe. Tons of buds cover the bush.

Saturday: a trip to Limoges to attend a Home and Garden show

We have a number of projects in the garden that we wanted to get some ideas on. It was a gorgeous day with bright sunshine but chilly. We bundled up and were fine. We left Rosie at home. After we got to the show, we realized Rosie could have gone with us.

The show was at a convention center, and we found the site easily. We saw some interesting booths, made some contacts and agreed to schedule meetings with a couple of vendors to quote projects for us. They will call EB to set up meetings at our house within the next couple of weeks.

Back on the French tax work. I figured out what I was doing wrong on the website and used the secure site to enter our data. The French government requires details of all of our US financial accounts. Most of it is pretty straight forward except we are supposed to list the exact dates that those accounts were opened and closed. We have a rough idea, but not exact dates. I’m going to have to see if I can resurrect that data. Perhaps I can get some help from the institutions. Fingers crossed again.

So that was our week.

We had some rainy weather off and on but managed to dodge the rain and got a walk in on Sunday, EB joined a lady’s coffee clutch on Thursday, dinner at The Barrier restaurant Friday and we got to visit the Home and Garden show in Limoge on Saturday. I got my golf clubs on Friday and talked with Ron about going over to his house to join him in 18 holes of golf at his in-home simulator. That will be fun.

French Lifestyle and Culture

Croissants

I’m sure that I talked about croissants in a previous post. I just have to mention that we have found there is a marked difference among boulangeries that make croissants. To us the best croissants are made with butter, lots of butter.

Those that are made with margarine or vegetable oil don’t match up to those made with butter. I guess some people like them made with margarine or vegetable oil, but I don’t care for them as they are not as flaky. Butter all the way baby!

By the way you can tell the difference before you buy them. If they are straight, they are typically made with butter. That is some kind of law or something. The curved version (crescent shaped) is made with margarine or vegetable oil. As I understand it, that rule is not exactly carved in stone, but is traditional. Artisanal boulangeries make the buttery straight version. They look a little like a football.

By the way, the French consume around 25,000 tons of croissants every year and is probably the most popular pastry in France.

In case you are wondering about what is called chocolate croissant, in our local boulangeries they are called Chocolatine or Pain au Chocolat. They are delicious and made with the same dough as the buttery croissant with bits of chocolate included. Now, I’m not a baker, but I sure know they taste super good.

I’ll want to do a little research on how much bread the French eat. I must admit that we have turned into baguette junkies. We didn’t eat much bread in the states but the bread here is sooo good. Maybe because we buy it fresh just about every day.

How is the US and Iran war affecting us?

Iran is roughly 3000 miles from France. (distance from Los Angeles to Miami, Florida is about 2700 miles). That said, there are concerns here about terrorists. We live far out in the country so not likely to be a target. Gasoline prices while already high here haven’t been affected too much yet. I’m hearing that the US may be harder hit gasoline and terrorist wise than us here.

Ukraine is about 1300 miles away. For a little perspective, the distance between San Diego, CA and Seattle, Washington is about 1244 miles. The cost to the EU over the course of the Russia/Ukraine war is over 350 billion Euros (over 411 billion USD). This of course impacts taxes for all EU countries including France. The cost of refugee support is roughly 150 billion Euros. The cost in lives and emotional impacts is unimaginable.

I didn’t mean to end this post on a downer. I made a brash assumption that you might be wondering how the wars are affecting us. To be honest not too much. Yes, we read the news daily and cringe on what is happening but like most of the world our little piece of it is not too much affected. Life in the French countryside is beautiful, simple and not too complicated. We are so happy to call Chabanais, France home.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

• Ron and Michelle come over for dinner
• Maybe a little yardwork
• Walks around town and more photos
• Follow up VISA renewal
• Follow up on Wills
• Continue work on French Taxes

Weather forecast for next week

It looks like we have another nice week of mild temperatures ahead. Highs in the upper 60^o F and gets to 71^o F on Wednesday. Mostly sunny with more chance of rain over the weekend.

Signing off for the week

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you.

Wishing you a good week (Bonne Semaine)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com