Why France?
Welcome back to our blog. This is our 7th post (3/9/2025). Can’t believe it has been 7 weeks since we started our “Baby Boomers Move to France” blog. Who would have thought that we would have that much to write about? I guess I did, but it still blows my mind. This week we are going to write about why we actually picked France.
A popular little village in France. I took this picture in May 2024. This is an hour or so drive north of the Dordogne department.
Options
Last week I ended with a couple of the most common questions that we are asked when we tell friends and family that we are moving to France. Probably the most frequent question is, “Why France?”. My answer is always a discussion about why France is economically a good choice for us, but I don’t discuss why we picked France over all of the other great options. In this week’s post we will try to get our own thoughts in logical order to explain why we have picked France and not Thailand, Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain, Albania, Panama, Portugal or so many other options.
If you start researching favorite places for Americans to retire, the above-mentioned countries, among others come up. In fact, France is not in the top 5 of many of the polls. You can check out You Tube videos and find lots of information on the top American retiree choices. Your choice will depend on what you are looking for and what matters to you. Things like leisure activities, health care, safety/security, cost of living, weather, and amenities. Elizabeth and I have traveled to a few countries outside of the USA. We haven’t lived in any of them for more than 2 weeks, but I think Elizabeth will agree that we found all of them pleasant and enjoyed our time there. Of course, living in a place is a lot different than vacationing in a place. I admit that we are pretty easy going and take most things in stride without much complaint. This makes life in general pretty satisfying for us.
So how did France become our pick? For me, cost of living is very important. That said, if cost of living was our only criteria, all of the countries mentioned above would beat France. So here is our take on some of the other criteria that came to our minds and how the French option fits us.
The French Option
I might have named this blog the “French Option”. However, it was important to me to include Baby Boomers in the title. We will address each of the criteria and the options in turn below.
Leisure activities: Our leisure activities will mostly be walking, kayaking, golf and traveling. Since there are so many hiking areas in France walking won’t be hard to schedule. We are going to the Skechers store to get some hiking shoes that won’t break the bank. We are hoping to land in a place that will be near a village so that we can walk to the village to purchase essentials and daily croissants. One goal is to be an easy distance to rivers for various boating activities too. We will have to budget for travel, but since France sits in the middle of Europe travel to other countries in Europe should be fairly easy. To be fair, Mexico, Central America and South America are pretty easy flights to the USA which is nice. Frankly, the flight from France to the USA is not what I call a leisure activity. The plan in our little minds is to travel by train whenever possible since the rail system is absolutely fantastic in France and Europe.
We fully expect to make the flight to the USA every couple of years to visit family and friends.
Health Care: As I have mentioned many times, The French health care system ranks first or second in the world. Spain is essentially tied with France. Panama is pretty good too. If you are wondering, the USA ranks in the 30s. I don’t know what the criterion for the rankings is. I can tell you that what I hear the French system is mostly very good. Of complaints, Elizabeth likes to say, “Some people would complain if their ice cream was cold”. What really is fantastic about the French system is that after 90 days in country we qualify to apply for the French health system. As I understand it, the waiting time is another few months. Once in the system, it is much like Medicare in that you buy an inexpensive supplemental coverage plan, and your cost for health care is really low. There are plenty of taxes so if you are saying, “There is no free lunch” you are right.
Safety/Security: I’m not sure how to quantify this. I do know that in terms of gun violence, the US had a firearm homicide rate 22 times higher than the EU in 2019. In the time period 2013 to 2019, the US had a gun homicide rate of 4.38 per 100,000 people, while France had a rate of 0.4 per 100,000. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation tracks this sort of thing. The US is bad but compared to Central and South America the US is much safer. The details are available online. From what I can find both the US and France rates have come down some since 2020.
Weather: Now we live in Venice, Florida. This is a pretty ideal part of the world for weather. Except it gets pretty hot and humid in the summer, and we do have hurricanes. You can golf most days throughout the winter too. We do not have “4 seasons” here, unless you count the 1 week of winter cold, in the 40s degrees F. A freeze is pretty rare in Venice. France, on the other hand, does have 4 seasons. In the region that we are interested, it does not snow though and that is okay with me. If we decide that we want snow, we can take a drive to the Pyrenees or the Alps. In general, the weather is pretty mild. We can expect some cold rainy days, but for the most part we will get by with an umbrella, amd a jacket and a scarf during the winter months.
Amenities: I’m referring to amenities like close proximity to trains, restaurants, bars, a boulangerie, groceries, markets, hospitals and so on. I mean walking distance. Of course, great food, wine and cheese are among the world class amenities. Can we say France?
There are all kinds of other things that would make a person’s life in any country enjoyable. The above just came to mind. Geeze, I left out what people always say, “The French history and the culture are amazing.”
I include the transportation system as an amenity too. The trains are clean and on time and the TGV trains are fast. Unless there is a strike!
The bottom line
Yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah Mark what was/is the deciding factor?
Well, cue the drum roll please; “we just feel comfortable in France”. That is the bottom line really after we take into account the above-mentioned criteria. We feel comfortable in the small towns of rural France. No, we aren’t looking to buy a little farmhouse in the countryside. That’s a little too rural. Not Paris or the French Riviera either. (Great places to visit) We are comfortable with a little slower lifestyle, a lower cost of living for sure and a stable health care system. These are things that we can find in towns like Bergerac or Limoge or Sarlat or a hundred other similar towns. These little towns are so clean and tidy. Oh, I almost forgot, we are comfortable with learning a new language too. I swear, if you check out You Tube you will see what I mean about these little towns.
Speaking of You Tube
I was just thinking about something EB (you know I mean Elizabeth, right?) and I mention as we watch so many of the You Tube videos of walk throughs of the small French towns and villages, “the towns are soooo clean”. For sure, in Marseille or some of the other big cities you will see some graffiti and even some homelessness. There are shabby areas in every big city, I guess.
Ah, but the little towns and villages and surrounding countryside are pristine.
Another thing that you will run across while browsing You Tube are instances of people who have moved to France (or other countries) and found out that it wasn’t what they expected, or the adventure is just not for them. There are many reasons why they return to the USA. Of course, we see that here in Venice, Florida. People move to the Florida sunshine and for one reason or another find that it just isn’t what they wanted. Some folks do find their place in the sun, but other pressures pull them back home. All that said, I think most newcomers stay in Florida. Elizabeth and I have been in Florida over 30 years. If I get a chance, I might try to do some research on how many people move to Florida and stay versus those that move back home.
A different culture, different language, different rules and even different food are a challenge for those moving to France from the US. Distance from home and even the time change can add up to a sense of disconnectedness and I think you can talk yourself into a funk and head home. Knowing all of this does give EB and I an advantage. We do have high hopes and are keeping our expectations tamped down a bit. Our motivations for moving to France are not complicated as we are not running from home. We are actually running to a new opportunity. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Lucky for us, technology makes it possible to stay connected with family and friends. We are pretty confident that we can make it all work. EB is our tech guru so I’m not worried.
Questions?
Merci Beaucoup (Thanks a lot) for reading our blog this week. As always please feel free to share this blog with others and don’t hesitate to list your comments and questions below. Next week we will discuss some of the things that we have already learned about life in France that will require a little adjustment.
A la Prochaine (until next time)
