And so it begins

Above photo of the Chateau d’Amboise in the town of Amboise on the Loire River. Amboise is one of our favorite places. This is where our adventure started to take shape.

Why this blog?

This adventure started a couple of years ago when Elizabeth and I started worrying about home insurance and increased cost of living expenses. I have to admit, moving to France has not been a lifelong dream of ours. Now it is an obsession.

So how did this happen and what are we doing about it? Well, that story is why I’m writing this blog. I want to share the insights we learned, share the aha moments that brought us to this life altering adventure. Maybe the story of our adventure will inspire my readers to follow the dreams that they don’t even know they have. I’m hoping that after reading about our mistakes and successes you will have the confidence to give your adventure some wings. Maybe this blog will be interesting for armchair adventurers too.

I will be adding some resources that helped us make the decision and we feel have been pretty darn good guides for us.

We get a lot of questions whenever we tell anyone that we are moving to France so this blog will give me a chance to think through my responses and offer them with a bit more clarity and maybe put some more meat on the bones.

Why would we want to leave paradise?

We live in Venice, Florida. I like to say that we live in paradise. The weather is great. The fact that we play golf all year is awesome. We wear shorts, flip flops and a T-shirt most days and if we are going out to dinner, we dress up with a Hawaiian shirt. The white sand beaches and beautiful sunsets are visitor and locals’ favorites. Downtown Venice and the surrounding area have great restaurants and brew pubs galore!

On the other hand, we have those horrible hurricanes, and storm surges. They are no laughing matter and seem to be coming more frequently.

What is worse than the hurricanes and storm surges? Increasing insurance premiums, increasing taxes and skyrocketing car insurance are a close 2nd. Some of my neighbors are getting dropped by their homeowner insurance carrier. We live in a pretty nice area but, I hear more and more concerns about insurance. These are pretty compelling reasons to think about moving. But where to? Where in the heck are we going to move to if we leave Venice?

Elizabeth and I looked around the US. This is a big and beautiful country with a zillion options. We even looked at the Tiny House option. I mean, you can see that we were trying to keep an open mind. We just couldn’t find a way to escape paradise. Especially since Elizabeth has to keep working to maintain her company sponsored health insurance. I’m lucky, I have Medicare. I hope the government doesn’t mess it up. I truly am worried about the possibility of that benefit being messed with. I keep hearing Medicare is on the chopping block. Social security is in jeopardy too. I feel I need to have a plan B.

I know, I’m not the only one with weather concerns, crazy insurance and fees concerns and all kinds of natural disasters threatening. I’m just saying there has got to be a plan B.

Why now?

I get it when people say, “If not now, when?”. My thoughts are that I am not getting any younger and if we wait any longer, I will age out. I’m still pretty mobile so I think we can still travel some and still have the energy to start a new adventure. For me, it is now or never. Luckily, Elizabeth is on board. All we have to do is figure out how she can leave work. How can she retire?

We looked at each other and said let’s set a date and plan around that date.

How did we decide on France?

Unlike many of the folks on You Tubes that we have been watching, moving to France has not been a lifelong dream. That said, moving to France has become kind of an obsession for us now. It started in 2009 when we won a trip to France. We didn’t win it exactly; our bid was the winning bid in an auction sponsored by a charity organization. Elizabeth was a volunteer of the Sarasota County Humane Society. We volunteered and went to a lot of the fund raisers for the humane society and other organizations working to protect animals. It was at one of these events that our bid won the trip. What a trip, all expenses paid to Paris and Amboise.

Of course everyone has heard of Paris, France. Not everyone has heard of Amboise. It is a shame because Amboise, France is magical. The first part of our trip was a bit of a blur as we flew into Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, France and caught the high-speed train (TGV) to a little station just outside of Tours, France, then caught an intercity train (TER) to Amboise. We were jet lagged and blurry eyed when we got off of the train in Amboise.

A quick note about the trains. They are on time, and you need to be ready to get on board as they don’t loiter around the station. I would say that you have less than a minute to board. We had reservations in first class for the TGV and it was very nice. I didn’t have to make any of the arrangements as all was taken care of by the travel agency that sponsored the trip. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that the train station is a couple of floors below the arrival area of the airport. The signage is good, and you just take the escalator down. We were lucky there was an English-speaking lady waiting to catch the train and she noticed that we were a bit confused at how to find where we should stand. She got us straightened out and once we had it figured out, we felt pretty confident.

We pulled our roller bags along the cobble stones and figured that we were supposed to be on the other side of the river. We crossed the bridge and somehow found the really nice hotel and settled in. I know this sounds kind of corny; we were enchanted by the village. Amboise is on the banks of the Loire River in the beautiful Loire Valley. There is so much history and culture here. As I understand it, the chateau dates back to the 4th century and there are Roman ruins in the area.

We were enchanted. We walked to the village boulangerie and had a cup of coffee and a croissant and then walked up the very impressive ramp to the castle, Chateau d’Amboise. If you close your eyes and let your imagination take over, you might be able to see a beautiful princess smiling and waving to you from her carriage as it is pulled by 4 white horses to the gate. The place is absolutely beautiful and the view from the chateau ramparts of the Loire River and the village is stunning. Leonardo da Vinci was a guest of the king of France in Amboise where the king set Leonardo up in his own villa. There is a fantastic Leonardo Museum there now. We spent 3 days in Amboise and vowed to come back. The rest of the trip was in Paris. We thoroughly enjoyed the Eiffel tower, the Moulin Rouge, Versailles, and the sidewalk cafes. After another 3 days we took the metro back to the airport and had a ton of memories to take back home.

Finally, in 2024 we went back to Amboise and stayed for two weeks. My sister Cindy and her boyfriend, Don, met us there for the first week and we had a great time visiting many of the wineries in the Loire valley. We found a favorite pub on one of the side streets and it became an evening hang out. We had a really nice VRBO across the river from the village with a gorgeous view of the chateau. Cindy and Don left for the remainder of a month’s long trip to Scotland. We stayed in Amboise but moved to a Troglodyte cave for the remainder of our stay. During our 2009 trip we decided that we would stay in a troglodyte cave if we ever got back to Amboise. We did and we did.

While in Amboise on this trip we took a hot air balloon ride, visited more castles and just chilled at some of the little restaurants and sidewalk cafes. All that chilling got us to thinking that it would be nice to live there. I know what you are thinking, “visiting a place is a lot different than living there”. Still the idea started to geminate.

From an idea to a rough plan

I started to research and research and then research some more. You Tube is a great reservoir of information. I will share some of my favorite channels.

I’m pretty sure Elizabeth will agree with me that there are dozens, maybe 100s of towns and villages just as charming as Amboise. We started looking at real estate around France and were pleasantly surprised that it isn’t crazy expensive. Then I stumbled on a You Tube channel that mentioned that we could live in France for half of what we spend in the US. In fact, the Adrieene Leeds Group You Tube channel really did show how it works. No gimmick just simple calculations. I was amazed and when I worked our own numbers it looks like we can do it on my SS and a small pension and the Required Minimum Disbursement from the small 401K that I have. When I showed the numbers to Ellizabeth, she was skeptical of course. I did the numbers again and watched some more You Tubes and became convinced we could do it. The thing that we had a difficult time wrapping our head around is the health care arrangement. This is what makes it all possible. There are minimum requirements for a long-term visa that are a pretty low hurdle. We can do this!!

So, what is the plan? I said it is a rough plan, ok? Here it is: Go on one more exploratory visit to France, sell everything, get our paperwork in order and move to France no later than May 2026.

As we started to understand the process, we decided to hire help. We agreed that we wanted to make the move with as little stress as possible. I first thought that the Adriene Leeds Group would be our team. However, I feel that she is more focused on Paris and Nice and Elizabeth and I are thinking southwest France. The Dordogne River region around Bergerac. With that decision narrowed down we had been watching French Connections HCB You Tube videos and decided that they look like they can help us in the regions that interest us. Actually, they do just about everything.

I must admit that the Baguette Bound You Tuber videos really helped get Elizabeth and I comfortable with the whole idea.

So, there you have it. Our rough plan to move to France. We have a lot of work to do. I will keep all informed as we go. mi plan on posting once per week with updates and answers to the common questions that we get.

Please feel free to contact me with your comments, questions, or concerns or corrections. Thanks for reading my blog. this is my first attempt at something like this so I expect that I will improve as I go.