# Retiring to Italy



## CarolP

Hi everyone. I'm looking for information and advice. My husband and I are 10 years away from retiring with an expected pension of around $72,000 for both of us combined. We're both professional engineers in the US, and my husband is 6 yrs younger than I. Neither of us have parents or grandparents from outside of the US, so we don't have dual citizenship. We also don't know anyone living in Italy currently.

We visited Italy last year and will be going again for a few weeks in July of this year. We love the country, especially northern Italy, as we are avid skiers.

My question - is it difficult to retire to Italy if we have no other passport than a US passport? And is it difficult for American engineers to find a job in Italy? We can learn conversational Italian in our ten years before we move. I will probably be too old to work at 60 as an engineer when I retire from here, but the husband will only be 54. He may want to work but I'm not sure at this point. We both could obtain international professional engineering PE-equivalent licenses, but I'm worried that we may be too old at that point to be considered by any employer. And is it an option not to work? I don't know the rules for immigration there, but I want to ask any expats what their experiences have been in obtaining some sort of retirement visa without direct connections to Italy.


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## Bevdeforges

You need to take a look at the website for the Italian consulate in the US. They normally have quite a bit of information about visas, especially retirement visas.

The issue you'll run up against is that you have to make up your minds - "retirement visas" (i.e. where you are NOT permitted to work) or work visas, where you normally have to find the job first and then have the employer sponsor your visa application. (If your husband finds a job in Italy, he'd get a work visa and you'd come along on a dependent visa that would not allow you to work.)

As retirees with the sort of income you're talking about, it should be no problem getting retirement visas. (Unless the US dollar really takes a tumble.) You'll be dependent on your retirement pensions and subject to the vagaries of exchange rates, but lots of people retire overseas in Europe on considerably less.
Cheers,
Bev


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