Bastille Day (Fete de la Revolution)

Hello everyone, welcome to our 25th post of the Baby Boomer Move to France blog.

Coming up on Monday July 14th, is Bastille Day, the commemoration of the day the French people stormed the Bastille. The Bastille was a prison where people that the king didn’t like were imprisoned. They were jailed without any recourse. Bastille day is a day on which the French celebrate independence from a tyrannical king. This was a revolution led by the common people of France. Much like our own revolution that we celebrate every July 4th, our Independence Day. Some say that our revolution inspired the French revolution. Maybe, but it seems to me that it had been boiling up for many years. The French actually call it Fete de la Revolution. Basically, a party to celebrate the revolution as well as French unity. It is celebrated all over the world, even in the United States.

You might remember from American history that Benjamin Franklin had gone to France to ask for financial and military help during our Revolutionary War. It helped that France and England were not on friendly terms at the time. The French sent supplies, arms, ammunition, naval support, millions of livres and even uniforms. French General Lafayette volunteered to join George Washington. Something like 63 war ships, 22,000 sailors and 12,000 French soldiers came to America to help the revolution. According to the Jamestown -Yorktown Foundation in Williamsburg, Va, “Without direct and indirect assistance of France, it is doubtful that Americans could have won the war for Independence.” By the way, I had to look up what a livre was. It was equivalent to a pound of silver. There is a pretty interesting history there. Oops, I got off on a little tangent.

Welcome

If this is your first visit to our blog, I hope that we keep the ongoing story of our move to France interesting enough to bring you back each week. We publish each Sunday. Long story short, we are a couple of “Baby Boomers” on an adventure to move to France permanently. It sounds easy enough.

As we shared our plans with friends and family, we were asked questions about who, what, why, when and where, I figured that there is enough interest to share the experience. So, we started this blog. Our plan is to publish every Sunday even after we get to France. After all, that is when the real fun starts.

Wow! We met “the group” for dinner on Monday at the very convenient Anna Maria Island Oyster Bar restaurant. You will remember, “the group” are our good friends from the Thirsty Thursday days that we met at the neighborhood pool. Just super people. I play golf and go fishing with the guys, the ladies are beautiful and sweet. They all surprised Elizabeth and I with buying our dinner and a very nice card. Totally unexpected and very much appreciated. We will miss our neighbors and friends for sure.

This week we will be pretty busy. Oh, that’s right, it seems we are busy every week. Some things to follow up on include:

• Disenroll from Medicare part B. I didn’t know disenroll was a word.
• Follow up on cancelling the Wellcare prescription drug plan.
• Follow up on our new cell phone number carrier, Tello, to make sure our numbers are ported over. (Box checked!)
• Follow up on the French bank account
• Continue French used car research
• EB getting ready for retirement and getting her work 401K rolled over to another existing account.
• EB continue to research potential houses

Medicare and the Prescription Drug Plan

I won’t need Medicare in France so I can cancel Part B. That will save a chunk of money by cancelling it. I called my agent, and she thought it would be a good idea to keep part B for a while, but after thinking about it and talking it over with EB, I think I can opt out. I had United American Insurance Company (the HDF plan). I called the phone number and spoke to a very helpful person and easy as that I was able to explain that I’m moving to France and want to opt out of the program as of July 31. No problems.

The Wellcare drug plan required a little more work. I called the number on the card and talked to a nice gentleman that explained that I would have to write a letter and mail or fax it. Very old school but I guess they need a handwritten signature. The gentleman gave me the fax number and the information they would need. I wrote the fax using the Microsoft template on the laptop, printed it out and signed it, I had to go to Costco to get my hearing aids cleaned anyway, so afterwards I went up to Wellen Park and had the UPS store fax the letter to Wellcare for me. Hopefully I will hear from Wellcare soon. Another task done, woohoo.

Speaking of the prescription, we need our doctors to write them again so that we have proof just in case customs ask about prescriptions. Another last-minute thing to get done.

New Cell Phone Carrier

I mentioned last week that we are transitioning from Xfinity/Verizon to a low-cost carrier called Tello and will get hooked up with their eSim card. That has been done and pretty painless I might add. This outfit uses the T-Mobile network. Elizabeth has ported her number over to Tello. For some reason we hadn’t paid off my old phone so I couldn’t port over my new phone. We thought the old phone was paid off. Seems crazy that Xfinity didn’t say anything about this until now. Finally, after another trip to Xfinity and a two hour wait, we talked to a service person. The only thing he could do was tell us to call customer service. I thought he was customer service. Well, long story short after spending time with another Xfinity guy on the phone we got my phone ported over. Next step, we will get a tourist plan eSim from Orange the week before we actually leave so we will be all set for when we land in Paris. We will change over to a regular plan with Orange once we are settled in France. This is a recommended course of action so we will see how it works.

French Bank Account BNP PARIBAS

Whew! I think I got this squared away finally. The money transfer took a long time and was a source of heart burn for both EB and me. I think future transfers will be easier now that I kind of know the steps. EB still has to go online to get her app set up. I got some emails with a bunch of boiler plate information all in French. I did translate some of it to verify that it is boiler plate. I didn’t get through all 56 pages though.

French Car Purchase

You may be wondering why I’m searching for a French car? Why not German or American or Italian? Well, I want to keep the cost low, gas milage high, and keep a relatively small footprint. While the big highways in France are indeed big, from our experience, most roads in France are narrow and parking is at a premium. A small low-cost car makes for a good choice. France has some good candidates that fit those criteria. I must say that I am leaning toward Renault. Once in France, we will be able to get a closer look at Renault, Citroen, and Peugeot. Maybe a hybrid, but a little more research is needed to get me over the line on hybrids. Mostly reliability data are my question marks.

EB’s Tervis 401k

Getting this right is important to us as we want to get more control over managing all of the investments. She already moved part of it to our Schwab accounts, but she had left a chunk in the Tervis 401k account. Now she wants to move it as she is about to retire for real on July 18. To be honest, it seems getting the final balance moved over isn’t too tough. EB can tell you more.

Speaking of retirement, EB will have to get used to the idea of slowing down. She is usually up by 6:30 in the morning and fires up her work computer first thing. She is looking forward to Friday 7/18 when her workday will consist of turning in her computer gear and saying goodbye to the friends that she has made over the 14+ years that she has been there.

Until Next Week

Stuff to get done next week:

Address changes

• IRS
• SS
• Voter registration
• Bank

New Prescription from our doctors

Cancel credit cards and close the PNC bank account, Gonna have to cancel Costco. We will miss Costco. I hear there is one in Paris.

Thanks for visiting our blog, Next week we will have new updates of our plans and how we are progressing on the many tasks needed to make our move complete. Until next week take care and stay safe. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please feel free to share in the comment section below.

Many of you will be taking vacations in the coming months. We look forward to hearing about your adventures. If you don’t mind, we will add a note to our blog about your trip.

Until next week, Au revoir.

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com