Here’s What It’s Like to Retire to Portugal
There are things I’ve needed to get used to. But after nearly four years of living in Lisbon, I’m thrilled I made the leap.
4 min
Four years ago, with my adult daughters gone from the nest, it was time for me to fly, too. And even though I had never set foot in Portugal, I decided to retire to Lisbon.
It has paid off spectacularly.
I was a director of marketing and communications at a public university and 55 years old when I retired.
Around that time, there was a lot of publicity about Americans, especially older single women like myself, moving to Portugal.
It remains one of the easiest places in the European Union to gain citizenship after five years of temporary residency (though a proposed law would double that to 10 years and add other requirements for most foreigners).
Portugal checked other boxes for me, too: It’s safe and affordable, a good base for travel, the U.S. is reachable within six hours from the East Coast, and the culture and natural beauty provide a wonderful environment.
The life I have created here has exceeded all of my expectations. I am more active and have deeper friendships than ever before.
The best part is the vast community of friends I have cultivated—mostly Americans, but also some from countries around the world.
They all make living here a lot of fun. Almost daily there is some kind of social event I can join, whether it is visiting museums or attending concerts, going to the beach or hiking.
I started a hiking group two years ago that now has 65 members. We explore historic and natural sights in Lisbon and nearby, including the breathtaking hills nestling the palaces of Sintra.
Changing apartments
Not everything has been smooth sailing. Before arriving, I signed an apartment lease to qualify for a temporary visa.
But after I settled in, it became clear that lots of nice apartments with lower rents were available.
So, after the first year, I moved to Almada, across the Tagus River. The money I saved on rent helped pad my budget for travel.
There was just one problem: Across the river, I felt a bit isolated from my friends.
Now I am closer to central Lisbon in a comfortable one-bedroom second-floor walk-up in a neighborhood with a lot of stores and restaurants.
There is a park where locals gather to listen to music and have a drink or watch their kids play together. I pay the equivalent of about $1,000 in rent and roughly $160 to $215 a month for electricity, water, gas and internet.
And I have a great view of the famed 25th of April Bridge and the towering Christ the King (Cristo Rei) statue that overlooks the city.
Like many apartment dwellers here, I don’t have central air or heating. The climate is comfortable without either, except for a few weeks in January when I use a space heater.
In the summer, I have a portable air-conditioning unit but so far I haven’t had to use it. There is also no dishwasher and no dryer. I use a clothesline on the balcony and a laundromat nearby in case I have an urgent need to dry things.
Delicious fresh fruits, vegetables and fish are all available from my local shopkeepers.
Frequently, I meet friends for lunch or dinner. I love the seafood here. The sea bass and bream are always tasty.
My favourite meal is gambas à guilho: shrimp sautéed in garlic and olive oil. Meals at a typical Portuguese restaurant can cost as little as $12-$15 for soup, an entree, coffee and dessert.
Sometimes I miss having a car, but it’s easy to get around on public transportation. For a little over $46 a month, I have access to every bus, train, tram and ferry within 30 miles.
To go farther within Portugal and Spain there are inexpensive buses and trains. Flights within Europe and to Northern Africa also are affordable, depending on the season.
I have visited Austria, Hungary, Morocco and Jordan, and I’ve visited the U.K, Spain and Italy multiple times in the past four years.
Next year, I will take my three daughters to Turkey for my 60th birthday! I belong to a pet-sitting/home-swap group, so my accommodations are frequently free; I only have to pay to get to the location.
Most of my airfares have ranged between about $110 and $215.
The price of healthcare
Another important thing I had to consider when moving here was healthcare.
Even with a pre-existing condition, I was able to purchase excellent private insurance for about $1,840 a year, and I have had good experiences with the private healthcare system.
A public hospital, however, supplies free medication for my autoimmune disease.
My life here isn’t without its downsides. Rising rents are an issue and have forced a number of friends to move.
I have considered buying an apartment, but ones that I would consider—those requiring no major work—start at well over $380,000, which is more than I want to spend.
Also, apartments here commonly have “paper thin” walls and floors. Everyone has stories about noisy neighbours.
When I moved into my first apartment, I was so worried about making noise that I gave my downstairs neighbours my number to call if I was ever too loud.
They thanked me but said, “Noise is to be expected…don’t worry about it.” In my current apartment building, two out of the five apartments are vacant and I rarely see my neighbours.
The only complaint is noise above my bedroom in the middle of the night. Fortunately lately, that has become less of an issue.
Learning Portuguese has been a bit of a struggle. I have taken classes for more than two years, and technically, I have passed the B1 level course, but speaking in public is frightening to me and therefore locals sometimes still have trouble understanding me.
Thankfully, the Portuguese people are kind and no matter how badly I bomb when trying to speak, they always praise my attempt and encourage me to keep trying.
And when I greet people in my neighbourhood by name and ask about their day, it continues to make my connection here stronger.
I plan to apply for Portuguese citizenship, though I still consider myself an American and always will. Neither Portugal nor the U.S. requires sole citizenship.
I have only been back to the U.S. twice: for my youngest’s college graduation and for my eldest’s wedding.
My daughters have always encouraged me to live the life I want, and they love to tell their friends their mom moved to Portugal.
My youngest has been here once, and the middle daughter, who goes to college in England, has been here twice.
All of my daughters and my son-in-law will be coming to visit me for Christmas this year, and I am ecstatic.
If my daughters lived here with me, I would consider my life here perfect.
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Artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever to build a business without building a team. As AI takes over coding, customer support, marketing, administration, and other day-to-day tasks, a growing number of solo founders are scaling startups to millions in revenue with few—or even no—employees. While the trend is lowering barriers to entrepreneurship, it is also reshaping hiring, raising questions about the future of work and how businesses will grow in the AI era.
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Ben Broca launched a company last December that offers AI tools to entrepreneurs. He’s already added 10,000 paying customers and is on track to bring in $10 million in revenue this year.
One thing he hasn’t added: any other employees.
The 40-year-old is part of a class of entrepreneurs who are launching, and then often running, new companies on their own. Artificial intelligence tools answer Broca’s emails, help write and debug code, field requests from customers, sign up new subscribers and grant refunds when issues arise.
Broca relishes his ability to make whatever decisions he wants on his own, often from his sun-drenched Sausalito, Calif., living room. “I think compromises make lukewarm results,” he said.
Once upon a time, running a business of a certain size required a team. AI is turning that assumption upside down, and more aspiring entrepreneurs are going it alone.
An analysis by the payments company Stripe shows there are thousands of solo operators on the company’s platform that are generating over $1 million in revenue, with their ranks doubling between 2023 and 2025. The number of solo operators crossing the $10 million threshold nearly tripled in that same span.
In the past, people without business contacts or particular savvy might not have known how to get their ideas off the ground, said Ernie Tedeschi, Stripe’s chief economist. “Now, AI can be a built-in business partner,” he said.
AI’s ability to handle various administrative tasks makes it potentially useful for launching solo businesses in many fields. But the technology’s ability to also handle key tasks in tech, like coding, make that field a particular hot spot.
Analyzing Census Bureau data, Bank of America Institute economist Taylor Bowley found that among all industries, new business applications in the information sector have seen the biggest percentage increase—nearly 45%—over the past year. At the same time, the rate of information-sector applicants saying they plan to hire workers has experienced the sharpest decline of any measured industry.
This Census dataset doesn’t track solo-operated businesses. But the numbers broadly show—in tech and beyond—that applications are flat among businesses likely to hire workers, but generally rising elsewhere. Economists say that’s a strong sign that solo operators are on the upswing.
“The bar for getting started has never been lower,” said Julian Weisser, who runs a San Francisco-based accelerator for solo founders working in tech. The accelerator—which offers founders seed money and mentorship in exchange for an equity stake—attracted 4,500 applicants for 10 slots made available in its most recent cycle, nearly five times the number it drew when it launched last May.
Going it alone with AI can still be surprisingly expensive. Broca said he was losing money on many customers’ accounts while paying to access Anthropic’s Claude to run his clients’ requests—that AI company, as well as others, charges based on usage. He has since switched to free open-source AI models from China.
Broca said he has raised $30 million from investors and, at the same time, has saved millions in salary since he hasn’t needed a team of software engineers.
Another risk: If it’s easy for one entrepreneur to launch an AI-assisted business, copying them can be easy, too. This creates anxiety for founders like Troy Johnston, who runs an AI-assisted business alone in Orlando, Fla.
“Everybody has the sword and we all have the ability to unsheathe Excalibur now,” said Johnston, 40, who used AI to code an app that helps people get the most out of credit card benefits. The company makes around $3,000 a month in profit, with no employees, and is continuing to grow.
What one-person businesses will mean for the labor market remains to be seen. Polling has shown Americans are worried that AI will replace jobs, and top economists are wrestling with that possibility, too. But AI is also creating lots of new jobs, and the go-it-alone entrepreneurs show how the technology can both open doors and limit employment opportunities.
“If everyone’s hiring less, but you get four times more firms, what does that do to head count?” said Rembrand Koning, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies entrepreneurship. He co-authored a recent study that found that among 50,000 startups the researchers examined, those focused on AI tended to operate with 25% fewer employees.
Koning also believes a soft hiring environment that’s left some people mired in long job searches has encouraged more to try their hand at launching businesses.
Some founders cite different motives. “It’s a perfect storm of post-pandemic burnout and a re-evaluation of one’s priorities, and also booming AI and a sense of what’s possible,” said Samir Ahmad, 39, who lives in Breinigsville, Pa.
Two years ago, Ahmad decided to leave the corporate job he had worked at Verizon for almost two decades to start a solo coaching and consulting business. He had been seeing social-media posts touting the ease and virtues of AI, which he used to chart a business plan and help with marketing. “It was like my chief of staff, a second in command,” he said.
The business ultimately petered out within months, though, and Ahmad is now back to a full-time corporate role with a utility company.
For Claire Vo, 41, AI helped her turn a passing impulse into a business. She was working full-time as a tech executive when she tapped AI in late 2023 to help code an app that would help her manage documentation and design for new products, with customers ranging from financial services to healthcare firms.
“I was copying and pasting from ChatGPT,” said Vo, who lives in San Francisco.
She put the app online for $1 a month, and within weeks people downloaded it thousands of times. Nearly three years later, Vo’s company—which she ran solo for nine months before hiring an engineer—now has 100,000 users and is on track to make seven figures in profit this year. AI handles the company’s marketing, sales and customer support.
While AI is a shortcut, Vo said her network and credibility in the industry were key. “I think people over-index on how easy AI is and under-index on how much I did to get to this point,” she said.
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