Matthew2020

Hi there,

I'm considering moving from London to my place in the Algarve and trying to take advantage of my golden visa investment. All that aside, I'd like to find out more about your experiences as an ex-pat. What are the most significant challenges that you face on an ongoing basis as an expat?

Working life? Finances? Finding products? Finding reputable suppliers? The language?

Thanks.

MrBife

One of the biggest challenges I found was acquiring a good level of language skill, until you do so its difficult to integrate fully into the lifestyle and appreciate the culture and history. Too many locals want to reply to an attempted Portuguese language conversation in their (much better) English. You have to be tough with them and insist you don't speak English and tell them you need to practice and learn.

Working life? Some great business opportunities as long as you research that they really are opportunities and they haven't already been done. Due diligence research in Portugal needs to be done carefully in Portuguese.
Finances? Lower levels of income but lower costs and better lifestyle. For me it balances
Finding products? Most things exist here or if not can be brought in very easily - this is civilised Europe not Chad.
Service suppliers - same as UK and every other country in the world - some excellent, some crooks and some in between.
I can be in Madrid, Berlin, Rome, Paris or London in a little over two hours - In UK I sometimes spent more time than that travelling from London to Cardiff.

Best suggestion is to not burn your bridges, rent out your UK property, try Portugal for a year or two, then decide where you prefer

Shanorme

Not fully in Portugal yet but I'd agree with the above. I would add though that we struggle with internet data limits. We are very rural & the telephone line is highly unreliable, As a result, we have a 4G internet contract BUT the largest data contract we can get is 100GB. Sounds big? It's not. 5 days a week of Teams video calls equals 11GB a day. The solution? Take out several contracts - I kid you not! Vodafone, in Portugal does nothing bigger than 100GB, you can'y get an add-on, you literally have to take out another contract... or two. So think carefully about where you are based, whether you need to work from home & what that entails.

nigel.b

I agree with Mr Bife that even if you try to learn Portuguese your attempts at the language will often be replied to in English. Young people in particular are (rightly) proud of their English, and no doubt mean well, but it's irritating.
If you have financial affairs in the Uk and in Portugal it gets very complicated. Tax of course. Where is what taxed? Does everything have to be declared to both sides? You need a good advisor. It's simplest if you end up with no interests in the UK at all, or perhaps only pensions.
11GB a day downloads probably won't worry most people. I remember (5 years ago?) when all providers in PT had a strange agreement that "unlimited downloads" mean max 15 GB a month!

Shanorme

It's become an issue as working from home becomes the new normal. Teams video conferencing chews up data.

Red Eric

Assuming that one is actually resident in Portugal (as per the implication of the thread title), then everything income-wise certainly has to be declared to the PT side, wherever it comes from or is paid into.

MrBife

Don't know where you guys are getting your information. All the ISP's / data providers, and Vodafone are one of the biggest, offer a selection of unlimited data plans. We live in 'terra salvagem' and have had 100mbps speed and no cap on the monthly gigabytes of data for years. (I use around 2.5gb per month) Whichever provider gives you strongest signal at your home location is the one to go for.

https://www.vodafone.pt/en/press-rel...data-plan.html

If you are in a MEO fibre area and you sign up for their TV package then data is also unlimited and has been since the rollout of fibre began about five years ago.

Portugal appears way ahead of UK in terms of availability of high speed internet options

liveaboard

I'm on a Meo asdl line for 11 years with unlimited data; 30gb a day is sort of normal.
Speed is good even without fiber.

coleio

I'd suggest, as different people have different priorities and experiences, that the best is to spend time here and discover what you need/don't need and if life here is what you want. If covid rules relax, and depending where you live, it's possible to get here from London for long weekends and set up internet, mobiles, TV, find builders, accountants, lawyers, transport, see the local area, fish, surf, hunt restaurants, meet people and you get a better idea from your own experience then second hand from others. You end up sort of living two lives but If you decide here is not what you want then the options are still open.

Shanorme

I have been to the Vodafone shop in Tavira twice. I was told the only way I could have more than 100GB data contract per month is if I have 2 contracts because 100GB is the largest data contract they do. I asked if I could top it up online and I can't and yes, I have tried. There's simply no option on my account. Fibre is not an option for us - very rural.

dingg

If you can get meo 4g in your area and take on the tv package its also uncapped and does not get throttled, we used it for iptv before we got fibre installed.

Shanorme

Thanks - it's probably worth looking at even though we don't have/watch TV. I'll need to check when we get back if MEO are in our area.

MrBife

Sorry but so many of those shops are just some kind of franchise outlet staffed by eager kids that did a half day training course. It would seem that they exist primarily to sell tourists a SIM card. Even the most basic Vodafone TV package has to have unlimited data because IPTV uses a lot of it - so, even if you take the offered TV package and don't watch their TV at all; you still benefit from the unlimited data. With 5G on roll-out for the past year the possibilities are going to be even more incredible but it won't replace the superb 4.5G LTE service we all have available to us right now because the coverage is different (5G transmission is more local). Its clear that its easier for operators to expand on the GSM network rather than go to the trouble of digging up roads to lay fibre. No problem actually as it works really really well.

Three years ago I contracted for 50mbps (in reality it measured around 45'ish when I did a speed test but that's pretty close*). When the contract expired I was offered 100mbps for the same monthly cost (and it measures always 90+ when I do a speed test). I could have elected to pay more for 300mbps but frankly 100 is plenty for someone that still remembers the joys of using an acoustic coupler on dial up. All TV packages from all operators include unlimited data and there are other possibilities and packages if you ask the right questions in the right place.

* I did add my own diversity antenna to the back of the Huawei router that the phone company provided - bought from Ebay for £7.95 it did improve signal and speed by over 10%)

EU.flag

https://www.vodafone.pt/telemoveis/tarifarios/red.html
or
https://www.vodafone.pt/internet-movel.html

Shanorme

Thanks, I will have a look.