Stacy: Nothing is perfect, right? There is nothing. There is no place on earth, at least from my understanding that will check every single box that fits for you in your lifestyle, your cost of living needs, your medical needs, your school needs, your cultural desires, your landscape, geography desires, your entrepreneurial vibe. This is. I’m going to talk about this in a minute, but your professional needs. There are so many factors that go into making a choice on where to live and you’re almost always going to need to sacrifice something. It’s important to know what that hierarchy of needs and desires are. I knew what those were when we started looking around and deciding where to move. We knew what our non negotiables were. We knew what things we could bend on.

Stacy: Hello and welcome. It’s just us. Today. I am recording a solo episode that is an update on life and work and largely our life here in Portugal because a lot of you ask about that all the time. So I’m going to run through a lot of things today. I have some notes that I’ve prepared to make sure I hit a lot of the key topics that I would like to cover with you. I’ll be talking about what we’re loving about life here. I’m going to share some of the challenges for those of you who have been following my journey. They’re probably going to sound kind of familiar because I tend to have the same and the same ups and the same downs living in Portugal.

Stacy: There are a lot of things that I really love about living here, but there are also things that are challenging and there’s some things that get more challenging actually as we live here longer. So I’ll dive into all of that in this episode. Now before I dive in I do want to give a little bit of an overview of myself for those of you who are maybe newer or perhaps you’ve mostly listened to guest episodes and you haven’t listened to some of my personal updates and talking a little bit more about me and my life and my family. So for those of you who are new, I am a location independent entrepreneur who lives in Portugal. This is our fourth country outside of the United States.

Stacy: So we lived in the Caribbean and in the Dominican Republic, we lived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and we lived in Phuket, Thailand. And as you probably know, all of those are developing countries. We had so many incredible experiences in those places. But living in a developing country when you’re used to living in Idaho before that is pretty challenging, especially when you have young kids, which we did when were in Thailand. So we ended up moving to Portugal. It will be six years this August. So six years ago, which is just totally crazy for me to think about. It has flown by. And it’s interesting because when we first moved here, a bunch of people said, oh yeah, I plan to be here for one year or two years. And it’s been 10, it’s been 20 years. And I thought, mm, we’ll see.

Stacy: I liked it, but I thought, oh, I don’t know, that just seems like a really long time to be in one place. And here we are six years later and we have no real plans of moving at this point of leaving the country. So all in all, it’s been a really pleasant, wonderful, great place to live. But of course, like anywhere, it’s not perfect. And there’s certainly been things that have been really challenging for us, which I will talk about today. A couple other things to know about me that I think is important to the context. I have two kids, they are ages 9. That’s my boy and 12. That’s my daughter. And my husband is a stay at home dad.

Stacy: He has been home for, yeah, for 12 years because he came home when my daughter was around, I think four or six months old. We tried the nanny thing, he was a teacher, but we just found that every night it was just, were just like falling into bed exhausted and it just made sense for him to come home. So he’s been home now for a while. He does all of the like shuttling kids around, the cooking. He doesn’t really clean. We have housekeepers who are amazing. I love them. They keep our life functioning. And, and he does, you know, he does the school forms and the, all the stuff he’s also an amazing cook. He’s really into sourdough right now. Gluten free sourdough, that’s been his obsession.

Stacy: My contribution to the household is, of course, that I earn the money, but I’m also the parent that takes kids to doctor’s appointments. I kind of orchestrate a lot of the high level of our life and my husband is more of the, like, do the things that I’ve organized. And I also, I don’t really cook that much, but I do our fermentation. So another thing that you’ll hear on this podcast is I’m super into gut health and just overall wellness in general. We eat a whole food diet in our household and it’s really focused on gut health. That’s a big thing that we do. So when I talk about fermentation, that means that I make sauerkraut, kombucha, things like that. Those are the things that I make. We also make our own yogurt. When I’m not being lazy, we make our own nut milk.

Stacy: And when I say we, I mean my husband makes it for me. It works. You know, we have this life that has evolved into being very focused on eating clean, living clean, and I’m really grateful that we have that life. A lot of what makes that possible is living in Portugal. We are really fortunate here to be able to get, fresh from the farm, organic produce every single week from an amazing farmer friend of ours. He’s become a friend because we see him every single week. When we get our produce, we get our fresh eggs from him. We live in a place that it’s a small town, there’s not a lot of environmental pollutants. We live by the ocean, really clean air, lots of sunshine. Our environment is really conducive to healing and wellness.

Stacy: And a lot of the reason that we’ve been on this journey is because my child, my youngest, has most of his life since he was 18 months, actually no younger than that, since he was probably around eight, nine months. We’ve just been on a whole medical journey, health journey with him. And the thing that has worked for him, for us has been our lifestyle adjustments. And that’s our whole food diet, our focus on our lymphatic systems, on all of the things in our environment. I could go on a whole tangent about that. In fact, maybe I should do a whole episode about this at some point because I’m kind of obsessed with it and I only kind of talk about it on this podcast. But a lot of my friends Know that I’m the person to tap.

Stacy: If they have questions about health or wellness or they want a resource, I’m that go to person. It’s my whole other part of myself that has nothing to do with book writing. But let me get back to Portugal because. And I share that, by the way, because a lot of what makes our life here so good and makes me love it so much is that it fits with this lifestyle that we’ve created. This was not a lifestyle we had before we moved our wellness focus. We were, you know, buying organic, but it was like organic pouches. I mean, we made our own baby food in the. You know, when the kids were little, we did kind of mostly did cloth diapers, that kind of thing. It was like, very kind of light touch on the. On the wellness, holistic, organic stuff.

Stacy: But that really changed a lot when we moved here, and we got more access to a slower life, to being more connected to our food and the environment as well. So the reason I bring that up is that is really at the core of it. A lot of what we love about life is life here in Portugal is that lifestyle that we get to have. It’s the fresh produce, it’s the access to nature. It’s my weekly runs. I go on a run with a friend every single weekend. We explore trails, and we’re often on a cliffside trail with this sweeping view of the ocean. I can’t really put into words how healing this is for me. I work pretty. Into a pretty intense schedule. I care deeply about my work and my team. I work a pretty intense mom schedule, too.

Stacy: I care deeply about my family, and I have a pretty strong social life. I would say I have really good friendships. I’m just like. I’m an intense person. I should say. I’ll own that. I’m an intense person. Being able to get out in these calm environments that are the opposite of me in so many ways. They’re tranquil and, you know, just there, you know, it’s just this presence that I get to experience in our environment here is truly incredible. Now, that doesn’t mean that my intense side doesn’t sometimes prevent me from really appreciating the fullness of this place. Place I can be very, like, focused on what I need to do or where I need to go. A good example of this is that we see an ear, nose, and throat doctor regularly for both of the kids. And we go there.

Stacy: You know, we’re there every few months, and we’re always running late. And it’s in this marina in a town, like I said, it’s near us, but it’s maybe 30 minutes away. So it just. I always seem to be running late and I always am rushing around and I’m like hurrying the kids, like, come on, let’s go, let’s go. Relate. Surrounded by ocean and beauty and not even really looking at it. So I’m not perfect at enjoying and experiencing all of these things. Now, I will say after the appointment, we almost always walk down and say hi to the cats that like to live by the water and look at the ocean, at least briefly. But it exists and I don’t always tap into it.

Stacy: So with all of that said, let me talk about a few things that are kind of going on with us lately here in Portugal. One is that holy macaroni. It has been crazy to watch US life from here in Portugal. I have had huge amounts of people reaching out to me, a lot of friends, but also strangers who are just really curious about our life, specifically asking for legal support. So not for me to help them legally, but who did you use for your legal paperwork? Can you give me a reference? I’m getting a lot of those questions. It’s just a lot of people that are feeling nervous. And I would say, especially my friends who work in, I would say scientific fields or government work, technology.

Stacy: I’ve had a lot of my friends who are in high level leadership or really in demand consultants and contractors. They’re just seeing a lot of things that I would never share on this podcast because it’s their information to share. But when I hear about it, I’m like, okay, well, that’s interesting and that’s a little scary. And I understand why you want to leave. This is not to say that I think that all Americans should flee the country. I don’t feel that way. But I will say that for certain people in certain fields, I really understand that desire to leave. I am happy that I am where I am. I don’t anticipate returning to the United States, at least in the next three and a half years.

Stacy: I think that the next election cycle will give me either more anchoring into our European life, or perhaps we will consider splitting our time more. A big challenge that’s coming up for us right now is schools. And this is why I will never be closed off to coming home to the United States. In my life vision, I’ll split our time. I really love our life here, but I really love my friends and family and I love my hometown. I’m from Boise, Idaho. It’s a cool place. Have you been there? It’s amazing. It’s mountainy. You can go hike in the mountains. We have an incredible trail system. It’s a very down to earth place. Although it’s very privileged and wealthy people are not flashy. You don’t see the same vibe as like LA or New York.

Stacy: Not to hate on those places, they’re cool too, but it’s just a very natural place. People tend to be more subdued in how they display their wealth and privilege, whereas you don’t necessarily see that in other places. Of course not everybody in that town is. Is wealthy and privileged, but it is pretty high, does have a pretty high concentration of wealth and. And it’s just a cool place. So. I like my hometown. I’d like to spend more time there. I’d love to go back for a couple few months a year and really be there. At the moment it doesn’t feel like a great option. It doesn’t feel safe. I’ve shared in past episodes some of the things that I witnessed on our last trip home. Some of the things that made me uneasy. That was two summers ago.

Stacy: And I think things have just gotten more tense in our little blue city inside of our red states. So it’s hard though because I would like that option. I’d like the option to go home, to be home, to spend more time with my family, to split our location, or even to return if that’s what felt right. It doesn’t feel right now. Even if the political climate was different, it’s still not really in my life plan at the moment. But I’d like the option. It doesn’t feel good to not have the option. And certainly let me just be clear, there’s always an option.

Stacy: I’m not saying that I’m not prevented, but I think when I think about my kids safety at school, when I think about my own safety, when I think about medical access, when I think about tension, the feeling was so different in Idaho than it is here. It really. It’s hard to even put into words. It’s like a different energy and it didn’t feel great. So I’m pretty happy with our trajectory right now. But again, I just would like things to improve so that we could really keep it on the table as far as options go. Probably also when I look at the things that are challenges for us. I’ll go back to the schools in a second, but it’s just hard to be away. This is a theme that’s carried across every country that I’ve lived in every place that I’ve traveled.

Stacy: I love my family, I love my friends. I love the people that I have curated into my life. They are incredible. I have been friends with a lot of my friends I’ve been friends with since I was 14 and even younger. I have one friend I’ve been friends with since I was 6 years old. I’m a very loyal friend and I’m very caring and connected with the people who I’ve claimed, like there’s certain people that I meet and if you’re one of my friends listening to this, you probably had a moment where I like claimed you into my life. And when I meet somebody that I really think is cool and I think is a good person, I’m like, okay, we’re friends forever. So I have a lot of friends that I really love and that I miss terribly.

Stacy: And that said, one of the things about this life that I’ve chosen is I have friends all over the country and all over the world. I have good friends in Canada that I’m going to meet, hopefully in London next month. I have a good friend in Germany that I miss terribly. I have good friends here in Portugal, good friends all over the US and it’s just hard sometimes. I just miss them. I terribly miss my mom and dad. I terribly miss my sister and my brother in law and my niece and my nephew. It’s the hardest thing actually about this life. It’s the hardest thing. I miss my people. A few of my friends are talking about moving here. I’m so excited. One of my friends supposedly is going to come to my town, at least temporarily.

Stacy: And until I get my hooks in her to stay forever. Yeah, that makes me really happy. It makes me feel like maybe I can like have my cake and eat part of it. You know, I have like some of my people here that would be incredible. I have some really wonderful friends here. So don’t get me wrong, but there’s some of my friends that I’ve known for so long and I love so much. It would be incredible to have here. So that’s a big challenge for us. The other thing, as I’ve mentioned, is school. I’ve talked about this on past podcast episodes, but what do I say about schools? It’s been honestly one of the most challenging and frustrating parts of living here has been navigating the school system in primary school. It’s fine, it’s great actually. There’s really good schools here.

Stacy: The public system I did, I haven’t experienced, but I’VE heard good things about it. The private system is great if you can get in. It’s not so great if you don’t have like a connection or you’re. You haven’t been on a waiting list long enough. It’s very hard if you’re trying to get into school right now. But the schools are very good and we’ve had a really great experience with the school systems here in primary school. Middle school for my daughter has been challenging. We didn’t have a place that felt like the right natural step for her in the private system, mostly because of location. The place that she would have gone next from her primary school is just really far away and the commute just wasn’t working.

Stacy: And so we moved her to the public system also motivated by the fact that she wasn’t fluent in Portuguese. And that just seems like a basic thing that you should do or like be able to do when you live in a foreign country if you’re planning to stay there. And we really felt like as much as the private system was really good for her, it was inhibiting her ability to succeed in this country. And our daughter is so smart, she is so gifted. Actually, she’s a very gifted child. And I know I’m her mom and I’m very subjective, but this is the kid that taught herself how to read. I mean, she wasn’t like 3, but she was reading by age 5. Big books, not chapter books. But I never sat down and taught her how to read, ever. She just started reading.

Stacy: And since age 7, she was reading. Well, she read the Chronicles of Narnia like I did at age 7, or little twinsies in that case, in that perspective. But she literally reads encyclopedias for fun. And like, legitimately. She listens to this like, cat science podcast that’s for adults that goes into like genetics. And she’s just a very academic, very gifted child. And we thought, well, if she had a different learning style, we wouldn’t have made that move for her. But she’s been continuing English education through online learning. And she’s actually, even though she’s in sixth grade, she’s now doing eighth grade English on her own. So we’re still continuing that side of her education at home. But we thought, wow, what a loss for her if she’s not learning the language and she’s not fluent in this language.

Stacy: Portuguese, by the way, is an incredible base language for Spanish, French, Italian. If you can speak and understand Portuguese, you can understand a lot of languages. Not perfectly, but you can Understand a lot. So she’s now been in that public school for the school year. Our intention is that she will have at least one more. Well, probably one more year in the public system so that she really can fully step into that fluency that we know is possible for her. And then we’ll put her back in the private system. But here’s where it gets tricky because we don’t know where that’s going to be. The school we want to send her to is an hour away. That’s a really long drive. And there is a bus.

Stacy: But we would have to drive to the bus like 20, 30 minutes in the morning, and then she’d take the bus for another 30 minutes. And I don’t know, that just seems like a lot. But then I’m like, I remember, didn’t Michelle Obama do that? I think she did. She did something like that. So, like, I don’t know, maybe. Maybe I can look at it through that. I feel like I need to go back to her first book. But I think she did, like an hour bus ride every day to go to a special school. Okay, well, now I need to think about this a little bit differently. Regardless, I don’t think we would want to stay here if we had an hour commute.

Stacy: Because also, you know, if she has sports or birthday parties or school events are all going to be an hour away. Every single thing we do is going to be an hour away. So probably in that case, we would need to move. My son’s really happy at his school, so I don’t know if that means we move halfway and they Both are like 30 minutes away or if we end up moving him to that school. I don’t really know how that all looks right now, but overall, it feels like an impossible problem. It’s possible to solve. I know it is. But we love our town. We love our life so much. We love our friends, we love our community. There’s so many things that I love about our life here.

Stacy: And the idea of uprooting and moving to a place that doesn’t seem more attractive to me, doesn’t seem exciting. That’s not a great feeling. Every time we’ve moved, we’ve done it out of choicefulness. We’ve done it because we’re excited about the move. And it feels right. And it just is not my ideal scenario to be moving because we don’t have something that we need that doesn’t feel great. So at the moment, we’re just taking it day by day and hoping that we can figure out the best solution for this. I’m hoping a school comes around. There’s a school that we would love to send her to that’s right now too far that may move closer to us. We’ll see. We’re just keeping hope that maybe a good solution will come about.

Stacy: A couple other things that come up for us that are like pros and cons. One is that is healthcare. The pro of our healthcare is wow, it’s so affordable. I was at the doctor so you won’t be able to see this on the screen. Well, I don’t know if you will. You can kind of see the remnants of a bruise. I showed it on my Instagram stories but I smashed my hand on Easter and it was in a moment of Easter egg hunting fun. It got smashed in a sliding glass door. Thought I broke it, didn’t break it. But I’m still having pain. So I went to go see an orthopedist and first of all I got in to see the orthopedist pretty quickly. It was within to I think. No, it was within one week from when I requested it.

Stacy: Went to see the orthopedist. Really good doctor. He was running behind because he spent a lot of time with all those patients. Love those kind of doctors. He spent a good time with me. He examined my hands, he ordered an ultrasound and an MRI for me. I went out to pay. First of all, the MRI got booked within two weeks and it should be covered by insurance in large part because it’s. I have a prescription by prescription for it. But I went to pay and she said okay, that’s going to be €90. And I thought that’s pretty good. €90 for a specialist. And then she handed over the payment thing so I could tap my phone and it said €19. I know, I’m sorry for the Americans listening. It’s.

Stacy: I know it’s painful to hear that because I have been on the other side of that with just jaw dropping medical bills that made me sick to my stomach. I’ve been there. I know what that feels like. And we had a huge deductible because I’m self employed, I have my own business so it’s really amazing to have access to specialist care. That’s not. And even just regular an emergency room visit is €50. They’re not exactly equivalent. But just for simplicity, just pretend like they are. They’re pretty close. So yeah, that’s pretty awesome. On the downside, we live in a relatively rural area, small town. It’s at least a 25 minute drive to the nearest private ER.

Stacy: The public ER is always so busy most of the time it can be many hours to wait, like 4, 5, 6, 7 plus hours depending on the severity of your emergency. And so that’s frustrating. The pediatric care is very spotty. I’ve talked about this at length in previous episodes. Now that my kids are older, it’s gotten better because we can go to the general doctors. They’ll see kids 8 and up I think is the age. And so unless it’s like a really serious situation, we can go into the private hospital that’s 25 minutes away. So that’s improved a little bit. But if I needed surgery, if we had a life threatening situation, the Algarve is not equipped, in my opinion, to save a life. In like a very serious, complicated situation. You would probably need to be life flighted to Lisbon or to Porto.

Stacy: That’s my understanding. If you have something that’s really unique or really needs a specialist, you probably are going to have to go to Porto or Lisbon. That is annoying to have to do that. It’s hard to just not have access. And the closest that you’ll probably be is about an hour if you’re on my side of the Algarve. If you live in the eastern Algarve, it’s not so bad. And specialists do come down to the Algarve hospitals about every month. But then that means that you are either needing to travel or you have to wait quite a long time to see a specialist. So that is frustrating. And it’s like I always say, nothing is perfect, right? There is nothing. There is no place on earth, at least from my understanding that will check every single box that fits for you in your lifestyle.

Stacy: Your cost of living needs, your medical needs, your school needs, your cultural desires, your landscape geography desires, your entrepreneurial vibe. This is. I’m going to talk about this in a minute, but your professional needs. There are so many factors that go into making a choice on where to live. And you’re almost always going to need to sacrifice something. It’s important to know what that hierarchy of needs and desires are. So we knew what ours were. I’ve talked about this again. I’ve talked about this at length in previous episodes. I knew what those were when we started looking around and deciding where to move. We knew what our non negotiables were. We knew what things we could bend on. For example, I would love to have an airport a lot closer. It’s an hour away. Okay. I can deal with that.

Stacy: It’s annoying, but I can deal with it. One thing that I am kind of struggling with a little bit is, as I mentioned, the entrepreneurial vibe. There are a lot of entrepreneurs in the area, but not as many who have kind of my type of business or mindset. So there are a lot of solopreneurs, a lot of people who are running very small businesses. And then there are people that run like physical businesses. They have a restaurant or a hotel or a product. So there’s a lot of those kind of business owners. And I have friends that own businesses in town, multiple businesses, sometimes properties as well. But I’m yet to find my kind of people when it comes to the entrepreneurial community.

Stacy: And when I say that, I guess I mean people who are growing a business beyond themselves with a team, with a big vision. Surely there are people like that here. I just haven’t found them yet. And I haven’t tapped into that. And it doesn’t seem to be very visible or accessible from what I can tell, even after being here for six years now. Go to Lisbon, go to Porto. That’s there. It’s there. It can be found in coworking spaces. It can be found in entrepreneurial communities. In fact, the organization that I’m part of, Entrepreneurs Organization, they’re chapter is in, is outside of Lisbon in a town called Cascais. So it’s there in Portugal. It’s just not, as far as I can tell, it’s not here in my town.

Stacy: And I have connected with a few business owners actually through Entrepreneurs Organization eo, but they don’t actually live in my town. They’re kind of scattered across the Algarve. So I do miss that. I wish that there was some kind of place that I could go every week where I could just cowork with people and brainstorm, talk to people. Just have that feeling of community around my business. I have solved that through becoming a member of eo. And actually today, just about an hour after this recording, I’m meeting with my group for eo for Entrepreneurs Organization. It’s online. So it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a good solution. It helps, it makes a difference. I would love to be able to see people every month. We meet every month in person or every week in more of a community atmosphere.

Stacy: But again, nothing is perfect and largely we are really happy here. So to answer the question that I get, I try to answer this every episode that I do about Portugal. Are you going to stay there? What are your future plans? Like I said earlier, at least for the next three and a half years, I don’t see us leaving Europe, and I really don’t see us leaving Portugal. I probably always want to live in Portugal in some capacity. I don’t think that I want to live here 100% of the time forever. I would really love to have split residency in Idaho and in Portugal. And actually, if I could really have my dream, I would also spend part of that in Ohio, where my sister lives and her family. Right now, with the kids in school, that’s not so possible. I mean, it is.

Stacy: I guess we could leave for the summers, but it’s pretty disruptive to their routine. And then we also feel like we miss out on a lot of travel opportunities in Europe because we can drive to so many cool places here. I mean, it really is just an incredible place to get to explore. So I guess, you know, probably that dream of really truly splitting locations probably will be when the kids are through high school. But it’s in my vision, it’s on my heart. It’s how I, you know, it’s the life that I eventually end up, will end up living with my husband. For now, I’m just trying to stay open to the life ahead of me. I don’t know if that makes sense. I don’t know if that made sense totally to me. I guess remain open to how life will unfold.

Stacy: Let me say that. And hoping that some solutions will come to some of the challenges that we face here. The medical access, the school access. The area is really growing. It’s improving day by day. So I’m hoping that some of those things will be solved. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my runs. I’m going to eat my amazing food. I’m going to appreciate the calmness of this place. I’m going to appreciate the fact that I can fly to London in two and a half hours, as I do about every three to four months. I’m going to appreciate the space that I feel mentally and physically in this landscape. And I’m just going to keep enjoying life here. Yeah, I think that’s where I am right now. I hope this episode was interesting for you and useful in some capacity.
Stacy:I always enjoy giving you updates. I hope you enjoy them, too. If you have a moment, if you enjoyed this episode. I always ask this at the end of my episodes, but maybe you haven’t done it yet. If you haven’t, please could you take a moment to rate and review the podcast. We have a huge goal of growing the listenership of this podcast. And whether you’re listening in Apple or in Sports, Spotify or whatever listening app you’re using right now, it truly makes a difference to just rate and quickly review the podcast. It means a lot to me and it helps me reach more listeners with the message of living a life that’s not just better, but beyond better. And with that, I want to thank, as always, Rita Dominguez for her production of this podcast.

Stacy: She, as I say, every week is the reason that all of this gets out into your ears and in front of your face. If you’re with me on YouTube and I am grateful, I appreciate this time with you today and I look forward to being with you next week. I will be back with you before you know it.