Latest Articles

The Real Pros and Cons of Living in Lisbon (From Someone Who Lives Here)

A charming street scene in Lisbon, Portugal, with a vintage yellow tram labeled "28" traveling along cobblestone tracks. The backdrop features colorful buildings, including a red one, trees with autumn foliage, parked vehicles, and a quaint urban atmosphere.

I first came to Lisbon in 2012. I paid around €500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment and people thought I had two heads for spending that much – friends here were paying €250 and thought they were being fleeced. I remember reading about this thing called craft beer and wondering when it might reach Portugal. Since then I’ve watched Lisbon go from a city nobody had really hard about, to a tourism and digital nomad hotspot, to somewhere people …

There are places in the world that are genuinely, almost unreasonably beautiful — and then there’s the Azores, which manages to be both of those things while also sitting in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, three and a half hours from anywhere, in a region that gets more rainfall than Seattle and where the inside of your house can feel colder than the outside in January. That’s not a warning. It’s the beginning of an honest conversation. The Azores …

There are a few words that help explain Portuguese culture. One of them is saudade, a word that’s considered to be untranslatable but the closest interpretation is a feeling of longing. You can feel saudade for anything: a different time, a person, a relationship you once had. You can even feel saudade for something that hasn’t happened yet. Saudade is a useful word because it gives some insight into the slightly melancholy, poetic, and philosophical part of the Portuguese soul. It’s …

You see a property for €300,000 or €500,000 or €1 million. But is that how much it actually costs? Not quite. By the time the keys are in your hand, you’ll have paid a stack of taxes and fees on top of that headline price — and for some buyers those extras add more than €30,000 to the bill on a €300,000 property. The good news is that almost all of them are predictable, so you can budget for them …

A quick disclosure before we start: this is opinion, not advice — and I run a site focused on Portugal, so even though I’ve tried not to be biased, there’s probably some there. That said, I have been brutally honest about the pros and cons of the Portuguese Golden Visa and whether it’s even still worth it in the past, so I think this article is fairly balanced. Here’s why I would choose Portugal’s Golden Visa over Greece’s Golden Visa: …

If you’ve been researching Portugal’s HQA visa, there’s a good chance you were not actually looking for the HQA Visa at all. You are probably looking for a cheaper, faster alternative to Portugal’s Golden Visa. The short answer is that the HQA can be a very good option for a very select number of people. But for most people, it is not a real alternative to the Golden Visa at all. It is a different route, based on a different …

The Real Pros and Cons of Living in Lisbon (From Someone Who Lives Here)

The Pros & Cons Of Living in the Azores

Portugal, a Nation of Desenrascados?

How Much Does Buying a Property in Portugal Really Cost?

Here’s Why I’d Choose Portugal’s Golden Visa Over Greece’s (And Here’s Why I Wouldn’t)

Portugal’s HQA Visa vs Golden Visa: Is It Really a Cheaper Alternative?