The Real 22nd

Welcome back to our blog. 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, but there is enough activity in the process to report our activities each week. 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.

Correction: I messed up. Somewhere along the line, I missed counted so this post is the real 22nd post of our “Baby Boomers Move to France” blog.

As I mentioned last week we have a full schedule of meetings this week regarding our preparation for the actual move to France. We will update you on the outcome of those meetings and next steps.

In addition, EB is having meetings almost every day to close out her tenure at Tervis and help her coworkers take over her job responsibilities. She will call it quits as of July18.

OMG What a Busy Week!

While we were going crazy getting our visa paperwork organized and Artimis situated and arrangements for Rosie, I was still trying to get the French bank account finalized. I will need a list to keep all of our activities straight. Here is a list of what I’ve got so far for this week to write about. We will get into the details of the list and share just how we are doing.

• French Financial Planner
• French Bank account
• Prescriptions
• Visa Prep meeting
• Artimis and Rosie
• Visa interview
• Rental car

French Financial Planner

So, what the heck do we need a French Financial planner for? Well, mainly because I’m thinking about our finances going into the future in France. France is different than the States and I don’t know what I don’t know. We need to protect our little nest egg. Protecting it is one of the reasons we have decided to move to France in the first place.

I like to think that Social Security will stay viable at least through my lifetime. Assuming that is the case, I want to be sure Elizabeth’s security over her lifetime is okay regardless of what happens to Social Security and Medicare. I think we will be good, but I want to build a relationship with an advisor that is well versed in French law and investment strategies. I’m thinking that we need to protect EB for at least 30 more years.

That is why I think we need a French Financial advisor. We had a meeting with Michael Yuille, who is with one of the many partner companies that work with French Connection HCB. As you know we have hired HCB to help us navigate our move to France and super glad that Mike is part of the team. We had a really good Zoom meeting with him on Monday. Michael is with Hoxton Wealth. He had some good advice, and we felt very comfortable with him. That doesn’t mean that we are leaving our advisor that we have a great relationship with here in Florida.

In fact, we had a very good meeting with our Florida advisor, Sean Farro at Transparent Retirement Group on Thursday and set up another account with him. He has been awesome helping us set up our financial plan for well into the future. I think EB and I are feeling pretty confident about our finances with Sean.

French Bank Account

If you have been following our blog you know that I started trying to set up a French bank account remotely a couple of months ago. I think the engineering brain in me made the application more complicated than needed. With the help of Nathalie Marsollier at French Connections HCB, I’m pretty sure I have all of the necessary documents completed and submitted. I’m hoping to hear back from the bank, BNP Paribas, next week. Nathalie has been super patient with me, and I can’t thank her enough. All of the banking documentation is in French so I needed all the help I could get.

We want to have a French account so that we can manage day to day banking tasks easier. Again, this is me wanting to have all of our ducks in a row before we get there.

Believe me, I don’t have it all figured out yet.

Prescriptions

Prescriptions are one of those things that can get forgotten when you are focused on visas and French housing and flights and the animals and etc. Elizabeth worked with our good friend and pharmacy tech, Pam Cavon to get 3 months of our medications on order so we can take them with us. This will give us time to find a doctor and set up medications in France. I’m sure glad EB thinks of these things, and we are lucky to have Pam as a friend. Could someone else have done it for us, probably, but Pam did it. Big shout out to Pam!

Visa Preparation Meeting and the Visa Interview

As most of you know, we have been building up to the visa interview for months. Gathering paperwork and documents and communication back and forth with Sophie Stevens at French Connections and filling out more documents. I’m sure Sophie thinks I’m a pain in the butt. She has been super patient and professional and helped us every step of the way. She reviewed all of our documents so that when we went to our meeting at the French contracted processing company in Miami, we would have all the documents needed. Then she set up a meeting with another French Connections team member Will Dalton Hall, to go over the visa interview process with us and advise us on what to expect at the interview. Will’s coaching was spot on. The interview was smooth as silk; we had all of the documents in order and were in and out of the interview within an hour and a half. That included a second double check of our documents and the fingerprints and official photo.

Elizabeth did most of the heavy lifting at the actual interview. At the Miami office they do not allow couples at the interview window together as it only has space for 1 chair. Eizabeth went first and I was asked to take a seat. I sat down in a chair less than 5 feet away. EB could call me over if needed. The interviewer decided to let EB do my document review and all I had to do was sign the documents. Life is good!! The only hiccup was that they wanted a letter from Elizabeth’s employer or some proof that she is retiring. That was a matter of sending the interviewer a copy of EB’s resignation letter. She quickly texted her boss Curt and asked him to send a copy of her letter. He did and all is good.

Now we wait. The interviewer told Elizabeth that our passports with the visa included will be back in about 15 days. We assume that is business days. We checked the calendar and figure we should have them in our hands by 11 July.

A Note: Miami traffic is horrible. I mean seriously horrible. I thought that I was going to have an anxiety attack. Luckily EB is a good navigator and has learned how to communicate with me in these tense situations. We found parking easy enough at a cool $35.00 for 3 hours. I assume the locals know how to beat the parking system. It has been a while since I have been in a big city. I sure wasn’t expecting the cost to park to be through the roof.

Artimis and Rosie

The cat and the chihuahua story.

We are going to miss Artimis. I had contacted Cat Depot and set up a meeting with them to see about having them take Artimis. He is a really good boy, but we felt it better for him to find him a new home. As you know our house sold much faster than we had expected so we needed to move into a VRBO rental for a couple of months. While this VRBO is very nice, it is very small. Artimis was going stir crazy. At our house in Venice, Artimis could go out onto the lanai whenever he wanted as we had put in a cat door. At this little VRBO there is no such door. We know our place in France is going to be even smaller with no outdoor space. We will be there for 3 months, and we don’t know where we will end up after that period. Artimis would be miserable. It is a very hard thing, but we are sure it is for the best.

While Rosie is going to France with us, we had to leave her at Bayside Pet Resort for the day while we went to Miami for the visa interview. She got a bath and bow for good behavior. She did fine but missed us. Okay, we missed her too. In France Rosie will be able to travel with us so she will retain her Princess status.

By the way, we set up the all-important appointment with the vet to have Rosie checked out and once again confirm she is good to go to France by an USDA certified vet. We have an appointment at Bright Cross set for July 21. This gives us the required 10 day window before we leave for the airport and fly to France. The vet will send the documents to Tallahassee, and they bless it and send it back to us. The vet office said they will send our paperwork by courier to reduce the time. You would think that in this day and age all of this could be done over the internet. No wonder that I throw my hands up when they talk about efficiency. This isn’t rocket science people! But, I guess we need to get used to slow bureaucracy as everyone says that France is the king of slow bureaucracy!

Rental Car in France

I only bring this up because I thought this task was done. I rented a car for our first month in France. After a month we will decide if we should buy a car. As I mentioned we will have the option to buy the new car we are renting. I wasn’t quit done though. I had to send some additional documents. I did get the final confirmation and all of the insurance documents. I now have the details on where and when to call the agency and the location of the pickup area. They will send a shuttle for us and take us to the rental station. We will load up our bags and Rosie and off we go. I think that I mentioned that we have a year before we have to get a French driving license. Can you believe it, a Florida driving license is accepted in France without a driving test? LMAO. Not all states have this agreement.

Cash

I added this topic because it has been keeping me awake at night. I ordered some folding cash from Bank of America. We wanted to be sure that we had some Euros when we land in France despite the high exchange rate. Yes, yes, yes there are money exchange places at the airport, but I don’t want that to get in the way and waste time before getting our car and heading to our new digs. It’s a long drive and we will want to get some lunch (dejeuner) along the way. Traffic around Paris is crazy too. We managed the drive back in March thanks to EB at the navigator post.

Okay, I have cash so what is keeping me awake you ask. How do we get cash once we are in France without paying ridiculously high exchange rates. We can get cash at many ATMs, but with high exchange rates. When our French bank account is settled, we have a waiting period before we can access our deposits there. This is another complication of closing on our house sale so quickly. I’m thinking of getting an account with a company called Wise. the reviews are good and it seems to be a popular way to move money. This arrangement allows you to have your bank deposit US dollars and Wise converts it to Euros (or just about any other currency) at significantly lower exchange rates. Then we access our money with an ATM card. It seems easy enough. I will let you know.

Thanks for reading our blog

Thanks for reading our blog and joining us on our little journey. As always there is more to come next week. Belos is my list of To-Dos for next week.

1. Set up Wise account
2. Contact “MyBaggage” to set up pickup of the items we are sending to France
3. Arrange to get all of our medical records
4. Follow up on French bank account
5. EB doctor appt
6. Zoom call with our French financial advisor
7. A bit about living in the little VRBO in North Port
8. Follow up with Sean regarding setting up an investment strategy for the proceeds of our house sale.
9. Verify that our pet carrier for Rosie is acceptable with the airline
10. Set up car rental for our last week in Florida

Thanks again for reading our blog. As always, take care of yourself and family and stay connected.

We are enjoying sharing our adventures and hope we keep it interesting. We go through moments of anxiety but then we are excited about the future and about taking a leap of faith in this move and the strength of our relationship with each other. We can do this!

If you have any questions or comments, please jot them down in the comment section below. Send us notes on your coming trips or adventures. We love to hear about how others tackle taking their own leaps of faith.

Until next week,

Mark and Elizabeth at Baby Boomers Move to France