# Retiring



## Sam58 (Dec 30, 2016)

I will be retiring at the end of June 2017 (currently living in Ridgeway, Ontario, Canada) and for years have planned on spending 3 or 4 weeks in Portugal. We love the water and I'm an avid golfer...not very good...just avid. Our plan, while visiting, is to hunt for a retirement home for at least part of the year and, quite possibly, most or all of the year. 
Anyway...just registered with Expat Forum and using my first post as a chance to say hello.


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## Labronia (Dec 28, 2016)

I also joined this forum recently as I hope to move to Portugal in about three years time. At the very early stages of research so unfortunately not able to help you much at this stage.


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## JohnBoy (Oct 25, 2009)

Welcome to the boards Sam58 and the best of luck with your planning. You will find plenty of folk willing and able to help you here, so just ask away.

Happy New Year.


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## Strontium (Sep 16, 2015)

Sam58 said:


> I will be retiring at the end of June 2017 (currently living in Ridgeway, Ontario, Canada) and for years have planned on spending 3 or 4 weeks in Portugal. We love the water and I'm an avid golfer...not very good...just avid. Our plan, while visiting, is to hunt for a retirement home for at least part of the year and, quite possibly, most or all of the year.
> Anyway...just registered with Expat Forum and using my first post as a chance to say hello.


Welcome! It is good that you like water here is a quote from a blog by a foreigner who moved to Portugal 

_*The rains have started here in Portugal. It's funny, when I first moved here two years ago, all I kept reading about was how good the weather was and how much the sun shines here. Once the rains start it just gets damp, humid and grey and it rains for days at a time. Most apartments don't have central heating or very good insulation, so it is always cold. Last year my clothes got mouldy in the closet from the damp humidity. I am dreading the upcoming winter and I have a strong urge to run away to somewhere warm, where my bones don't feel cold.*_ 

If you are going to attempt to live somewhere here then better to spend as much time as possible at many different areas in different seasons - what looks idyllic on a spring day can also be arid hills of burning trees in the summer or in accessible quagmire in the winter - Portugal has a varied landscape from mountains, rivers, lakes, rocky hills, flat fertile valleys, rough pounding waves of the Atlantic on remote inaccessible beaches, relatively low wages (980euro a month compared to next door Spain 1720euro a month) serious unemployment in the bucolic countryside. Amongst immigrants who do not assimilate there is often a sense of social isolation which is exacerbated by living in expat enclaves - search for the quote above and read one honest account of someone moving here. Portugal is a lovely country and the people wonderful but it is not paradise, have a picture of Santa Filomena slum before it was bulldozed. 



http://www.vladsokhin.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/filomena_slum_01.jpg


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