Why I Became a Part-Time Expat
This week I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Karen McCann, an American travel writer dividing her time between Seville, Spain and California. She’s the author of the blog Enjoy Living Abroad and several books on travel. In her post, Why Become a Part-Time Expat?, I share some of the how and why I began my part-time expat travel adventures.
Her questions had me reflecting on the five years I spent living part-time in my home in Portland, Oregon while spending three to five months a year living as a digital nomad in Canada, Italy, Spain and the UK. I thought I’d share more about my journey to become a part-time expat, to buy a house in historic Brittany and to make France my full-time home.
Since my first trip to the UK in the late 80s, I have wanted to live in Europe. But work, the recession, family and caring for two elderly cats kept that dream at bay. In 2016, my mother passed away just shy of her 100th birthday, and two weeks later my last kitty passed at the age of 22. The next year I turned 60, and after realizing 16 years had gone by since my last trip to Europe, I vowed to make traveling a top priority for at least the next decade.
To make traveling for a significant part of each year affordable, I knew I'd have to downsize my life. I sold my beloved craftsman home and bought a smaller and less expensive house. I moved in two weeks before taking off on a three-month trip to France and Italy. I was determined to “slow travel” my way through Europe. I’d rent an apartment, a room or small cottage, and spend a week to a month in one place living like a local. It was the next best thing to actually moving to Europe. And it avoid all the hassles of obtaining a visa and dealing with bureaucracy.
I traveled with friends for the first five weeks. After our initial week in Paris, we headed to Brittany where I fell in love with the French countryside. The rolling green pastoral scenes, castles and charming stone houses were like a fairy tale come to life. After a road trip through France and a week in Lake Como, Italy, I returned to Brittany, spending a week in Rennes and a week in each of three charming villages: Moncontour, Josselin and Dinan.
Determined to spend more time in Europe, I decided to build a 700-square foot, one-bedroom, accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on my property in Portland. The following year I moved into the ADU and rented out the main house. Much as I loved Brittany, I thought I should explore other areas of France. I flew into Toulouse, spent a week in Albi studying French and traveling through southwest France before meeting up with friends to explore nothern Spain and the Basque region of France. Yet nothing compared to Brittany, and I felt the call to return to this magical land.
I spent my last month — all of November — in a small Breton village with no car, and I never got bored. I met people walking along the river and at the village café. I met British and French locals at the weekly English speaker’s group. I was pleasantly surprised by how warm and welcoming people were to this American who barely spoke the language.
That when I realized I could manifest a long-held dream of owning a second home in France. A small house in a village with good transportation links would be the perfect base for exploring Europe. While I’d planned to return in a few months to look for a house, two months later the pandemic hit. I spent the next two years researching and learning as much as I could about the real estate process in France, which is quite different from the US.
In late April, 2022, I returned to explore more of the area and look for a house. While I’d seen hundreds of houses online, I’d only viewed a few houses in person before I found the one that met my criteria and my meager budget. It was perfectly located on the edge of a small village with a boulangerie, a train station and riverfront walking/biking paths that go for miles. I already knew the realtor who was representing the property, and the house was in the village where I’d arrived on the train two and a half years before. Everything happened with such synchronicity and serendipity, I knew it was meant to be.
It took five months for the house purchase to finalize, and in November I returned to sign the final documents and move into my French home. I soon discovered the house and gardens needed way more work than I initially thought. But transforming this 880 square-foot, three bedroom, two and a half bath house, and over 16,000 square feet of neglected gardens, has been a multi-year labor of love that is still ongoing.
Over the next two years I spent two months on Vancouver, Island in British Columbia, six weeks in the United Kingdom, and several months in France working on my house and gardens.
I’ve met so many warm and welcoming people. I have great neighbors and friends. And there is a strong sense of community and looking out for one another. This type A, city girl had fallen for the countryside, and the laidback French lifestyle. The more time I spent in France, the more I came to realize this is the life I wanted to be living all the time.
There are many perks to being a part-time expat, and I’ve loved having the opportunity to travel and live in different places. I highly recommended it. But there are also pitfalls to being a part-time expat. I think the hardest part was never feeling fully settled in one place or the other. Just as I was settling in, the 90 days would be up, and it would be time to go. Plus, it's hard to commit to activities when you won’t be around half the year.
Living full-time in France lets me be more involved in the community, deepen my friendships, and do a lot more traveling throughout Europe. The French culture, the affordability of travel and the overall lower cost of living creates a better quality of life in France. For more reasons I made France my home, read Why I Am Leaving the US.
With everything that is happening in my home country, I am more motivated than ever to inspire and help Americans who want to move to Europe, whether it’s as a part-time expat or full-time resident. It’s never too late to make your dreams a reality.
