How We Moved to Portugal from the United States: A Step-by-Step Guide

There are a few different visas that allow you to live in Portugal long term. For us, the D7 Visa, also known as the passive income or retirement visa was our ticket to a semi-retirement work life balance that consisted of more life and less work ;-).  This blog post is dedicated to outlining that process and how we made the move to Portugal.

*Disclaimer: Please note that the rules, fees, process etc. can change frequently. This is our personal story and is not the holy grail ;-). It is important to check multiple resources and do your due diligence before making a decision that is right for your unique situation.

THE REQUIREMENTS

D7 Visa Requirements:

• Show proof of passive income equal to or greater than the monthly minimum wage in Portugal. (€820 per month)

• Open a bank account in Portugal and show proof of savings that you can support yourself for at least one year. (Some resources state you need to maintain a balance of €19,680 plus an additional 50% for a spouse and 30% for each child however we know people who have been approved with having less in their account. It’s not an exact science and depends on the agent you get and your personal situation - we had €21,000 in our account and got approved)

• Proof of a place to live – 12-month lease agreement.

• Proof of NIF – This is a fiscal number similar to a Social Security Number in the US and is used for tax purposes. This is obtained after opening a bank account.

• A clean criminal record

Once approved, this visa is good for 120 days. During that 120-day period, you are required to enter Portugal and attend a meeting at the AIMA (Immigration office) where you will apply for a residency permit that is good for 2 years. 

During the first 2 years, you must be able to live in Portugal for at least 16 months. At the end of the 2-year residency, you can apply for a 3-year extension.  At the end of the 3-year extension, you can apply for citizenship (test required).

THE PREP

Scouting Trip – 2021

In 2021, we took 3 weeks to scout out potential locations to eventually call home with visits to Lisbon, Cascais, and Porto.  We fell in love with each area and having made a few connections in Porto and Cascais before visiting made exploring those areas much easier. Although there have been many expats who have moved to Portugal without visiting first, it was important for us to see and explore different parts of the country before deciding where we would settle.  Originally, we had our hearts set on Cascais, but by the time we started seriously looking for an apartment to rent in late 2023, the area increased in popularity driving up population and cost of living, so we pivoted to the quaint beach town of Setubal.

Join Facebook Groups

This is one of the most important pieces to the puzzle. There is a wealth of information on the expat Facebook pages that helped us navigate the challenging and sometimes confusing process of moving abroad.  The most useful page for us was Americans & FriendPT. The admins are very active and organized keeping up with the latest trends and rules for moving to Portugal. A simple search on any topic within the group will bring up 99% of what is needed to gain enough knowledge to help point you in the right direction.  There is even a helpful 27-page PDF guide on how to get your Visa and Residency Permit for those (like us) who decided to go the DIY route vs using a lawyer or relocation service. Although we had some hiccups along the way, the process would have been a much bigger mountain to climb if it wasn’t for these pages and the support of the people in the groups who have paved the way.  Now it’s our turn to pay it forward.

THE WORK

This is a list of things we had to accomplish that were required for our in-person meeting at the VFS office, this does change from time to time and from office to office. Make sure to check your home office for the latest info.

Secure Visa Appointment at VFS

VFS is essentially a document prep middleman. The office makes sure applicants submit all the correct paperwork required by the Portuguese immigration office. They provide a document checklist that needs to be in a specific order. The complete application is then mailed to the Portuguese Consulate. Once the application arrives at the consulate, all pages of the application are scanned and sent electronically to the Portuguese immigration’s office (AIMA – formerly SEF) for approval or denial.

The first step is to secure the appointment on the VFS website. Our research showed that the Washington DC office is much more efficient with quick turn-around times, but with no appointments available we had to book ours in San Francisco which turned out to work well for us anyway. You must apply at the office closest to your state of residency. This appointment can take months to secure so plan in advance.

Appointment Fee: $14 per person

Now that we had our VFS appointment set, it was time to prepare all the other documents needed for the application.

Open a Bank Account

One way to go about this is to visit Portugal and physically go to a bank to open an account. This wasn’t an option for us, so we leaned on the Facebook groups, and we found a tax accountant who helped us with the financial piece to the puzzle.  We were also scrambling to qualify for the Non-Habitual Residency (NHR) tax regime so it was helpful for us to have an advocate in Portugal who could help us navigate the system.  Note that it is possible to visit Portugal to open a bank account and acquire a NIF on your own.  Our accountant introduced us to an account manager and we set up our bank account with Millennium Bank.

Apply for NIF (Fiscal Number)

This was a very simple process. Like many others before us, we used bordr.com to get our NIF. Simple and straight forward process. You can apply for your NIF in person, but if that’s not an option and you need to do it from home, BORDR is a good option. 

NIF Fee: $150 per person

Secure 12-month Lease

Finding a place to live was a difficult process.  It’s stressful enough just moving down the street, now throw in only being able to see the neighborhood and apartment via pictures and video, then tossing in a language barrier only makes the process much more challenging. For our search, we used two popular real estate listing sites, SuperCasa and Idealista which showcase most of the available inventory in the area.  Just like in the US, there are a lot of rules and it’s not uncommon for landlords to ask for multiple months of rent in advance (4, 6, even 12 months) to secure the lease.  To help us navigate this from afar, we worked with a couple of agents in Portugal who could show us properties and handle the negotiation and contract with the landlords. We were looking for something close to downtown Setubal with ample storage and preferably furnished.  We spent hours looking at listings online and had a dozen or so video walkthroughs with our agent over the course of 3 months but just couldn’t find an apartment that checked all the boxes for us.  Most places were very small with bedrooms that could barely fit a bed, typically without closets, and sometimes no windows!  With our visa appointment just a few weeks away, the stress was mounting that we wouldn’t have a lease secured in time.  Luckily one of the connections we made on the Setubal community Facebook page had introduced us to a couple interested in renting their vacation home long term and we scored a furnished 3 bed, 2 bath apartment with a view and plenty of storage!

Prepare Documents (These are all things that needed to be completed for our appointment)

Visa Application

Printed from the VFS website. Complete the form and sign in person at the appointment.

2 Color Passport Size Photos

VFS will take these at the appointment, or you can provide your own.  We had them taken at Staples and provided our own.

Cost: $22 per person

Passports

Provide a color notarized copy of your passport or submit your passport with the application. The recommendation here is to never leave your passport and this is where we had a little bit of a hiccup in our process. We thought that we could have our passports copied and notarized at the VFS appointment which ended up not being the case, so we had to submit our passports with the application.  If we had provided the color notarized copies, we would have had to mail our passports to the consulate once our visas were approved. This is where things can get tricky, and we will expand on this topic further down in this post.

Personal Statement

This is a simple one-page document stating your intentions for moving to Portugal. We included our desire to live in Portugal, learn the language, and become part of the vibrant community. We also included a summary of our financial stability showing that we met the requirements for the D7 visa.

Financial Documents

The application requires a copy of the summary pages for the past 3 months for all financial accounts, including our Portuguese bank account.

FBI criminal background certificate (Sealed)

The background check can be ordered online HERE. Once you receive your confirmation email, you take it to any qualified USPS location to get digital fingerprints that will be sent electronically to the FBI.  The background check will be mailed to you and must be presented to the VFS agent in the original sealed envelope. The background check is only valid for 3 months so make sure to coordinate this with your appointment date.

FBI Background Check Fee: $18

Fingerprint fee: $50

Permission to obtain criminal records in Portugal

This is a paragraph written in Portuguese essentially allowing the Portuguese government to run a background check after you enter the country.  We had to list our name, our parent’s names, the country we are leaving and our passport numbers.

Proof of Health or Travel Insurance

For health insurance we went with a 3-month travel insurance plan through Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. Once we get established in Portugal we will sign up for private healthcare and can also use public healthcare once we get our residency cards.

Travel Insurance Cost: $113 per person

THE APPOINTMENT

We arrived an hour early to our appointment at the San Francisco VFS office. We checked in and got the current fees required, then walked to the post office to get a money order to pay our application fees.

Visa Application Fee paid to VSF via credit card: $64.05 per person

Visa application Fee paid via money order to the Portuguese Consulate: $99.32 per person. (This fee can change daily so check before your appointment. This is why went early and got the money order same day.)

While in the waiting room, reminiscent of being at the DMV, the next step was putting all our documents in this order per the VFS instruction sheet. No tabs, no paper clips, no staples……Your documents should not exceed 50 pages.

1. National visa application form

2. 2 color passport size photographs taken in the last 3 months

3. Certified notarized copies of passports -or- actual passports

4. Permission for the Department of Borders and Customs to obtain criminal record from Portugal

5. Sealed criminal record certificate from the FBI

6. Personal statement

7. Confirmed accommodations (Lease agreement in English and Portuguese)

8. Proof of health insurance

9. Proof of financial support: 

   1. NIF

   2. Portuguese bank account

   3. Summary pages of bank statements

10.  Any additional supporting documents you would like to include.

We sat for about an hour in the waiting area before being called to the desk to submit our paperwork. Although we applied together, only one of us was allowed to sit at the window and hand over each set of papers as the agent asked for them. When it came time submit the passports, we hit our first snag.  We were told that since we did not have notarized copies, we would have to submit our passports with the application.  The flight we had booked to Portugal was 7.5 weeks after our appointment and our agent told us that we should expect the process to take at least 3 months. We had 2 options at this point, abort the meeting and schedule a new one or take the risk and surrender the passports.  Long story short, and against the Facebook page guidelines, we decided to leave our passports and cross our fingers that the visas would be approved and in our hands before our flight. The rest of the appointment went smoothly, then the agent handed us our receipt which had an email address for contacting the SF Portuguese consulate.  Our agent recommended that we wait at least one month before contacting the consulate to inquire about the status. We thanked the agent; he wished us luck and with a high five and a sigh of relief that we had accomplished our goal we met up with friends for a celebratory toast!

THE WAIT

Although the application process is similar for each applicant, everyone has a different path that gets them to Portugal.  Our situation is unique in that we had been traveling for 2 years across the US in our vintage Airstream (you can read about those adventures on our previous blog HERE), so we didn’t have a home to sell, and we had downsized most of our things into several heavy-duty bins.

With our dog and Airstream on the East coast, and a storage unit filled with our other belongings on the West coast, we went through one last round of downsizing.  While in California we converted our 10x10 foot storage unit into 2x pallets 3x4x6 feet which will be shipped to Portugal at a later date. Then back in Tennessee we consolidated our things into 7 bins, 4 duffel bags, one inflatable kayak bag and a dog crate.

About 5 weeks after our VFS appointment and no word from the consulate, we decided to send an email to check on the status of our applications.  The anticipation and excitement of opening the reply email was like a child opening her first present on Christmas morning. With sweaty palms and a pounding heart, the cursor on my computer screen clicked the email only to read that the application had been received and we should have an answer by May 11, 2024.  Good news – we have a potential date to get our visas, Bad news – it’s about 2 weeks after our flight leaves for Portugal.

Now what? We started playing out several scenarios on what to do next.  To complicate things further, we were traveling with our dog and the USDA paperwork must be completed within 10 days of travel.  Our path could have played out in so many different ways and each one of our decisions could have resulted in failure causing stress, panic, additional costs, and lots of rescheduling. We took an incredible risk and fortunately our plan succeeded with flying colors. The tricky part was determining if we should wait it out in the US and pay double rent or just get to Portugal and wait it out in our new apartment and start our next life chapter abroad.

Here is the reader’s digest version of how it all went down:

14 days prior to flight: Set an appointment to get second passports in Washington D.C.

10 days prior to flight: Vet paperwork submitted to USDA.

7 days prior to flight: Applied for second passports.

5 days prior to flight: Picked up second passports. The office initially refused our application but once we explained to them our situation, we both got approved and within 3 hours our second passports were printed.  This was a crucial step as our original passports were with our visa applications and we would not be able to leave the country without a passport. Now we could make our flight!

3 days prior to flight: Justin sells his truck on Carvana.

2 days prior to flight: Sent USDA paperwork and flight information to Vet office at Lisbon airport.

Flight Day! April 29, 2024

Finally at the airport and on the home stretch – what could go wrong now??  We get to the check in counter and the agent asks us why we don’t have a return flight. The reason, we are moving to Portugal.  Meanwhile, we are sitting there with 7 bins, 4 duffels, 2 carry-ons, 2 personal items, 1 kayak bag, a dog, and crate and there was still a chance we could have been denied at the ticket counter.  With a lot of pushback from the agent, we stayed calm and composed, explained our situation, and mentioned that people do this all the time when moving abroad.  After a 2-minute side discussion with his colleague, the agent returns to the counter and starts checking in our bags no questions asked – whew, major crisis / panic attack averted!

Holy crap – we made it!  High risk high reward and a HUGE sigh of relief that we succeeded every step of the way in our quest to move to Portugal.

Note that we DO NOT recommend going about the move the way we did, it’s not for the faint of heart, but know that it is possible. So many things could have derailed our plan such as – not being allowed on our flight, second passports could have been denied, visas could have been denied (not a scenario we wanted to think about, but we were prepared to handle if it happened), etc. etc. etc.  We could have “what if” ourselves to death but decided to go full steam ahead with our plan and we are thankful it all worked out.

Two weeks after living in Setubal, Justin’s passport and visa arrived in the mail at our address in the US and mine arrived a week after his. The plan now is to leave Portugal and return with our original passports to get our entry stamp with our visas. Next, we have our appointment at the AIMA office in July to get our residency cards and that’s how we made our move to Portugal :-)

If you have any questions about moving to Portugal or would like for us to expand on any part of the process, please send us an email and we’d be happy to help.

-Life Beyond the Leap Crew