Really Big News

Welcome back to our blog. This is post 23 of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog. This week in North Port the weather has been hot, sunny and stormy. Actually, not too bad.

If this is your first visit, 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 so 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.

As usual I make a list of some of the important stuff that needs done each week. Hopefully, we can report completion of a good chunk of it.

1. Set up Wise account
2. Contact “MyBaggage” to set up pickup of the items we are sending to France
3. A bit about living in the little VRBO in North Port
4. Rosie medication testing
5. Set up car rental for our last week in Florida
6. Traveling mailbox update

Before I get to the list, I want to share the big news:

We got our Long Stay visas!!

When we went for our interview in Miami, we were given an estimate of 15 days for the visa process. Elizabeth got her visa in about 5 days and mine came a week after our interview. So, we are very pleasantly surprised. Once we get to France, we will have to activate the visas. We can do the activation online. This adventure is really happening!

The long stay visa allows us to stay in France legally for 1 year. About 9 months into that year, we will apply for an extension. The extension is usually for 1 year. We will continue this yearly renewal process for 5 years then can apply for a Resident visa. That is how I understand the process now. Of course, things may change. For the resident visa there is a language requirement, but the requirement is very basic language skill. After five years our language skill should be up to snuff. We aren’t worried (and of course, if you are over 75 years old, there is no language requirement)

We are officially one month away from our flight and the start of our new life in France!

Wise Account

Sucess! I got my Wise account set up. I think that I mentioned Wise in past postings, and I got a little irritated that they don’t allow joint accounts even for married couples. That said I decided to bite the bullet and set it up for me. Elizabeth can set up hers at her leisure since we are together pretty much all of the time. I can’t set it up for her since she must take a selfie.

Wise is a company that manages foreign currency exchange for individuals and companies. You can exchange your dollars for foreign currency through regular banks, but bank exchange rates tend to be astronomical. Wise and similar companies do the exchange at much lower rates. Wise also offers a debit card so you can access your euros or whatever currency you need at an ATM. Makes it very convenient. On top of that the fees are lower than your regular bank. There are some limitations, but they are manageable.

In other good news, I got my Wise debit card this week. My anxiety about cash flexibility is relieved.

A Smaller Footprint

As you know we had to find temporary housing while we wait for our Long Stay Visa processing. We just didn’t expect our Grand Palm villa to sell so quickly. Elizabeth found a VRBO in North Port that is pretty nice and doesn’t break the bank.

I walked it off and came up with about 700 square feet. If you subtract the front porch about 50 sq ft, and the utility room another 50 sq ft we end up with about 600 sq ft of living space. That is just under 56 square meters. I do the conversion here because housing space is usually defined in square meters in France. A rough conversion factor is about 11.5 sq ft per square meter. When we are looking at properties in France, we just multiply the square meters by 11.5 to get approximate square feet, so we have a comparison to US housing.

Continuing with the description of this North Port house, there is a nice, fenced yard out back and nice front yard too (with a propane gas Bar B Q). By the way, yards are called gardens (jardins) in France. They are also measured in square meters or hectares. One hectare is about 2.5 acres.

In North Port we have 1 bedroom with king size bed, a bathroom with a shower/tub, a galley kitchen, a living room and a dining area. In the kitchen we have a 4-burner electric stove, microwave and nice side by side fridge freezer. All of the essentials. No dishwasher and no garbage disposal though. Elizabeth is making darn good meals in this kitchen.

A small, stacked clothes washer and dryer is in the utility room which we access by going out the back door. The utility room has its own entry door. Also, going out the back door we drop down a step into a sunroom. It is hot as the dickens by 10:00AM. One big plus for this place is that it is 1 story and it is air conditioned.

As I mentioned in a previous post this place is good practice for the place that we have rented in Duras, France. Except in Duras we will get to climb stairs. Luckily it is only 2 floors. EB says the place in Duras is smaller than where we are now and there is no outdoor space. We will survive. We are learning how to live in a smaller footprint. That is a good thing if you ask me. That said, we will be looking for a place over 56 square meters next time. I’m thinking 70 Square meters minimum. 800 square feet is still a significantly smaller footprint than we have been used to.

We will likely be renting our housing for a while given the fact that our government’s policies are tanking the dollar. Our house buying power is getting hammered right now. Renting for a while is the plan anyway. We want to explore the country a bit more to find where we want to stay long term. Hopefully the dollar will turn around soon. Ok, on to a more pleasant topic.

My Baggage

We got My Baggage set up. They will send us labels and customs forms for our boxes in a couple of weeks. They will pick up everything and deliver to our French address. You may recall that I mentioned this company in a previous post. The company gets very good reviews, and the cost seems reasonable to me. We have the boxes all sealed up, but we found out that there are a few items that we packed that are not allowed. Opening the boxes and clearing out the prohibited items is a project for the next few days. Also, my banjo costs a little extra to ship because the box is a little bigger. I put the banjo in the case and the case in a box. Double protected, I hope. We packed a couple of pictures in an oversized box as well, so a little up charge on that box.

About the banjo, no I don’t play all that well. I won’t tell you how long I have had a banjo and still make a mess of playing it. The thing is, I really like it. In my little mind I will take more time to enjoy it once the dust settles after the move. For now, the strings are de-tuned, and it is packed for shipping.

Rosie Medication Testing

A few weeks ago, we started testing medications for Rosie to find a medication and dosage that will keep Rosie calm during the flight to France. Pam made a recommendation that is working. We think we have found the medication and dosage now. We picked up the meds from the vet and EB figured it out and tried her dosage and it worked pretty well. Of course, we don’t know how it will work during the actual flight. We will keep our fingers crossed. You probably remember in a previous post I described how Rosie almost got us kicked off of a flight to California.

Set up car rental for our last week in Florida

This is not a big deal but still has to be done. We will need a car the last week of July as we will sell the VW to one of EB’s coworkers that week. I went through Enterprise and will pick the car up at the North Port facility. Originally, we were going to go to Sarasota Airport for the car because we had the thought that it would be less expensive to rent there. Not so. North Port will be much more convenient too.

Traveling mailbox update

I promised to update you on my thoughts regarding the Traveling Mailbox plan after a month or so of testing it. This is the plan where we can have our mail forwarded/delivered to a processing location and have it forwarded to us wherever we end up in France. Once settled we can terminate the arrangement if that makes sense. I can tell you that the service is pretty good in my opinion. Unfortunately, it is not cheap. That said it gets us our mail while we are moving about. This and similar services are used extensively by long term travelers.

We started the service early so that we could get a feel for it before we move to France. We were told that mail delivery in North Port is not the greatest. So, we allow the mail to build up at the Traveling Mailbox facility until we build up a reasonable pack then have it all forwarded to us via FedEx. This system works. I like how we can ask for the items to be opened and scanned. We can review the scanned item and print it if needed. Then they will shred it if we want it to be shredded or we can have it delivered to us. All in all, a pretty cool system. In addition, we don’t have to deal with junk mail.

Coming Up

Thanks for reading through our blog. As I always say, writing the blog is a fun part of the week. We will finish this week by celebrating the arrival of our visas. We are meeting friends at Coopers Hawk. Coopers Hawk is one of our favorite restaurants. EB is a member of the wine club there. Sadly, she will have to terminate the membership in July.

What else will we be doing next week?

• Follow up with My Baggage. Confirm labels and customs paperwork.
• Open and clear prohibited items form our shipment then reseal the boxes.
• Zoom meeting with the French financial advisor.
• Meet with our US financial advisor.
• Follow up with French Connections HCB regarding a car purchase in France
• Ask French Connections about setting up our French driver’s license.

Alright, until next week, take care of yourself and family and stay in touch. If you have any questions or concerns or if you have an idea that you might be moving forward with an adventure let us know. Feel free to share our blog with your friends.

Speaking of adventures, Leif and Lisa are on a trip north from southern California. They are used to big adventures. They lived aboard their sailboat for years and sailed the west coast south to Mexico, Central America and I think they went to South America too.

When we were kids, my dad liked to take the family on drives north. One time we went all the way to Washington state and stayed. What an adventure that was. We lived in a farmhouse and rode a bus to school and had cows and our neighbor’s horse stayed in our little pasture. Then we went back to southern California and another adventure.

My siblings tend to be adventurers. Cindy traveled to Costa Rica, Cindy and Don traveled to Italy and other parts of Europe a couple of times and we will meet them in France next year. Larry goes to Thailand a couple of times a year and is talking about moving. Dan and Rhonda rented a sailboat in the northwest and sailed the area with the girls, I think they left out of Puget Sound. That is a bucket list trip for sure.

Maybe traveling is in our genes. I’m glad Elizabeth has a good measure of wanderlust too.

Have a great week. We will be back at you next Sunday.

BabyBoomersMovetoFrance.com

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley