We left the USA in September 2024, ostensibly to travel the world full-time, but in reality we ended up moving to France. A lot of people, both American and European, assume we left because of American politics, but this wasn’t the reason. We continue to receive comments from Americans, especially, that we must feel lucky to “have gotten out” when we did or that we must be unaware of what is happening in the country because of our location or that we are somehow shielded from it all. We do feel lucky to be living in France, but that gratitude comes more from our appreciation that the French government is allowing us to live here and that the French people have been so gracious to us.

Another frequent comment we receive pertains to whether or not we are asked about the US president or how often we are questioned on our political position regarding US politics. Here, I can’t say never, because it does happen occasionally, but the implication of the question is very American-centric because it presumes that the people of France, and of Europe, are somehow paying attention to US politics, or that they have intimate knowledge of specific cabinet members, senators, governors, or congresspeople. Let me tell you, they don’t, anymore than you do of who the prime minister of France is, or that they have a multi-party system.

When I tell people here that I grew up in San Diego and that most recently I lived in Seattle, most of the French have no idea where these cities are. In fact, we have determined that French geography knowledge is as paltry as the American sense of geography is. They think Los Angeles is close to New York and when Minneapolis was daily in the news, they really had no idea where that was. They know Canada much better, and that’s not surprising given their history. They seem to only know where New York is and weirdly, Florida, but I think that is because if they travel to the US, they go to the theme parks or the beach. If I ask you where Bordeaux, Lyon, or Tours are, can you point them out on a map? Remember that France is about the size of Texas, so it is difficult for them to imagine a country as large as the US. In their minds it is somehow smaller like in Europe.

I can assure you thanks to YouTube and newspaper and magazine subscriptions that we are absolutely up to speed on American news. It should not surprise anyone that we get more well-rounded coverage here because we have access to perspectives from more sources like the UK, France, Spain, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, and Qatar. These news outlets tend to be more even-mannered and less invested to evangelizing as the American sources are. When you get outside of the US media bubble it’s eye opening to look back and see the extreme bias playing out every day. But trust me, when I say that the French know what in the news affects them, like $10 per gallon gas, that’s the current price here, and they have plenty of opinions on the wars in Iran, Ukraine, or whether or not Greenland should switch flags. The most blunt assessment I received was last week in Barcelona from a cab driver, who was probably of Indian or Pakistani descent when he said, “This Trump, he is a very dangerous man.”

I never write about politics in this blog and I don’t intend to start now. I prefer to share my experiences from traveling and to reflect on what makes we human beings more similar than what makes us different. Often my photography explores the idea that we are all alone, but all together in that aloneness. I also like to show photographs that reinforce the beauty of this world and secondarily, perhaps might inspire you to travel. More than these things, what I really hope sharing my experiences has done is to get many of you who are about my age to reconsider what you are doing with your remaining time. Do you need to leave the USA, your families, or the life you’ve built? No. But you might want to think about how fast time moves and if you will have regrets at the end of the ride that you didn’t do the things you’ve always wanted to.

What inspired this thread of thinking was a note I received from a friend, someone who I have known for nearly my entire life. They wrote, “So we’re here and dealing with all things USA, (emphasis mine) and beginning to see a spot on the horizon for us to end the working period of life and turn the page…So my question to you is, if we’re looking at a potential move over euro way (France, Spain, Italy) in two years plus, are there particular actions you’d recommend we do to begin to prepare ourselves, and any sort of timeline you two used to get your thinking together?”

I know they aren’t alone in this thinking, but the way the question was posed, it let me know that the motivation was more likely a desire to get away from something difficult instead of moving towards an entirely new lifestyle, and this is a significant chasm. We have met a lot of expats here who moved to Nice for precisely the same reasons, they don’t agree with American politics, don’t like the tension, the prices, the traffic, the gun culture, the liberal threat to their traditional way of life, or they feel the country has shifted more than they can tolerate one direction or the other.

If you are considering doing something similar, moving to another country, or even snow-birding for less than 180 days per year in another country, then the rest of this blog is meant to give you food for thought.

I will state right up front that our motivation to move to France had nothing to do with Trump, we left before the 2024 election. Nor is it because we have lost faith in the USA, or somehow don’t care for the lifestyle. Being away this long has given me perspective and I say with pride, I am an American. Most of us (Not all, I am aware.) have an amazing life in the USA, and the Europeans know it. We have choice—SO MUCH CHOICE—from where we live, to how we live, where we work, where we go to school, how we raise our children, how much personal space we have, and the sheer, immense, physical beauty of the United States. I have lived in California, Washington, Florida, Arizona, and Georgia and these are all extremely different places, but I had the ability to try them out and make choices about how I wanted to live, or didn’t.

What outweighed all of these glories and motivated us to move to France was two fold for us, plain and simple. One, we wanted to take advantage of our remaining health and youth to see the world and not have to work anymore. Two, was to have world class health care that wan’t employer-based and would not be taken away. Catastrophic health care-related bankruptcy is an absolute possibility in the USA and the only way to avoid it is to, generally speaking, work until age 65. Even then a significant portion of your retirement income must be spent on supplemental health care coverage. In order to retire in our 50s, no longer work, travel frequently, read books, make photographs, drink old world wine, no longer live a car-based lifestyle and instead enjoy a lifestyle based on walking and eating healthier food (I do miss the flavor of American steak, but I also know it’s not nearly as healthy as the meat in Europe, and my God, do I miss Mexican food), we had to go someplace else.

Matt in the Tarragona region of Spain 2025

But it hasn’t been easy. It might look like it from my social media posts or this blog, but no, it’s actually been immensely challenging. So, this is what I wrote back in response to the question:

You pose some very deep questions. You may not even realize how deep. Changing your life so radically, as we did, too, is so chalked full of ramifications that if you knew them all at your current stage of decision-making, you would surely abandon the plan. I almost hesitate to tell you for fear of being a buzz-kill.

I have and will continue to give it all a lot of thought since I read your email and so I have decided, with your permission of course, to answer your questions, as my next blog post. So many people are moving out of the US and a large majority of them are from our generation. Most go to Mexico, which makes a lot of sense. Many are ending up here in Nice, or France in general, but also in Spain, who is actively encouraging it, and other popular destinations for Americans like Portugal, Italy, Greece, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama.

These are some things to consider. Why are you moving? That isn't a poorly disguised way of me saying you shouldn't, at all. Rather, it's a way to help narrow down the ‘where' question by understanding what you visualize your new life to be like. There is such a wide range of lives to choose between. Some Americans come here and fully expect to recreate their life back in the US, but with all of the benefits of being in France. They don't want any of the challenges or difficulties, they don't want any of the culture or immersion, and they hope to stay in an American bubble. They don’t even want to learn or speak French. That is certainly possible here in Nice, but I strongly disagree with the approach. The British do it in the Dordogne region of France or in the Algarve region in Portugal. The other end of that spectrum is total immersion where you place yourself squarely in an environment that requires you to quickly adapt to the language, customs, and lifestyle of a small fiercely local population. I know some Americans who have done that in the small villages of Provence. Their efforts have been rewarded by being accepted and included in the daily life of small village France. They attend the festivals, events, dinners, and have been invited to be part of the community.

When we first arrived in Nice in early 2025

I strongly encourage you to deeply imagine what your retired life will be like. What does a typical day look like? Where would you wake up and what would you see out your window? How will you feed yourself that day? What are you doing to keep your minds active, engaged, and flourishing? A lot can change when you spend all day with another person and both people aren't doing what they thought they would be with their time. When we retire, especially early, our thoughts are focused primarily on the financial part of retirement. Will we have enough? To this I say what is enough? Will you be living the same life at 62 as you will be at 72? If you’re lucky enough to be here, what about 82? (Most American men die by 76, sorry to say.) The timing of how you spend your retirement funds is probably as important as what will you do with your time, energy, and health while you still have it? It isn’t enough to say I just don’t want to work anymore, there has to be something you are moving towards. If I am being honest, I still struggle with this. I have so much time on my hands now and as Americans, we often suffer from productivity guilt. The first six months of doing nothing and waking up whenever you feel like it is glorious and then, just as suddenly, it isn’t.

The next thing you should really do now if you are going to leave the USA is to begin the process of getting rid of things. You have lived in your house for a long time so you have accumulated a lot of detritus. The process of letting it go is very difficult for a lot of people. It will be difficult to accept that the things you value are not valuable to anyone else, either monetarily or sentimentally. Nor are they worth the cost to ship to another part of the world. You can buy everything you need when you get there and often for much less than you are used to paying back home. Without sounding too new-agey, you are being reborn to a degree so you should approach it with the cleanest possible slate you can. Get comfortable with the idea of giving things away for free. The lightness that you will feel once you divest yourself of your stuff is one of the great and pleasant surprises for people who leave the US. This will seem anathema given our consumer culture of acquisition and storage.

The next thing you should do but will find hard to do without knowing where you are going is to start taking language lessons. This is the single most important thing you can do to make your new life easier. I know it's kind of a chicken-egg dilemma. But here is the reality of all of that. Depending on where you end up, English is much more widely-spoken than you will be led to believe. In Europe, if a person is 35 or younger, they will speak very good English. If they are over 50 or our age, they may not, especially in the smaller towns. The Portuguese speak excellent English. Anywhere they receive a lot of tourists, they will speak very good English. You will ask the French if they speak English and they will say “non!" and then proceed to speak to you in English. (That's an entire email.) As widely as English is now spoken in Europe and elsewhere, the reality is that if you don't dedicate yourself to mastering at least the basics of a language, it will impact your degree of happiness. You will always feel left outside the window looking in.

The easiest language for Californians to learn is Spanish. We have been surrounded by it our entire lives, and it is a vowel-consonate-vowel-consonate language with no silent letters. Then Italian, which is very similar to Spanish. What you see is what you get. French, on the other hand, is torment. Half the language is silent. However, other than the UK, France is most similar to the US in terms of life, rules, culture, etc., which is why so many Americans move here.

The French will reinforce the idea that being French is the most important thing there is. There is no such thing as hyphenated heritage concept here (e.g., African-American, Vietnamese-French). They don’t even keep any records of ethnicity in this country because as far as they are concerned, there is only French. This is why they have issues with hijabs, or other displays of ethnicity, in far right parts of the country.

You can start easy with language apps. I am over 1500 days in my Duolingo streak. It has been a huge help. Chien practices for hours per day using other language programs. I take a weekly private lesson for an hour. Two years of practice there in the US will be nothing but good for you.

Make sure you have your birth certificates, valid passports, marriage certificate, medical prescriptions, your valid drivers license that isn't going to expire anytime soon, access to all of your financial statements. You are going to need them and eventually you will need to get them officially translated. Don't sweat that right now, just make sure you have them all, and if you don't, now is the time to order new copies. Dealing with the French, or any other European country’s official bureaucracy, will require a kind of patience you didn’t even know you had in you.

Finally, if you at all have the possibility to acquire another country’s passport because of family heritage, then do it. It’s worth the effort. My family have been in the states for so long that I no longer qualified, but I know somebody here who obtained their Austrian passport and they can move about France or any other EY country freely. Another friend from Seattle had an Italian grandfather and he was able to get an Italian passport and now actually lives in Italy. Far less bureaucracy as a result.

After living in France full-time for a year, we have our permanent resident cards, our health care cards, our social security numbers, and we are finally starting to feel like we belong here. I even made a joke in French today at the grocery store and the clerk laughed. We are still finding our way here and I can’t say with absolute certainty that I will live out my days here, but for now, it has been an absolute treasure of an experience. I have traveled so much in the past 18 months, and in fact we leave on another trip to Bordeaux, Nantes, and Angers this week. I even made a photography book. The printing and binding are complete and it’s beautiful. The boxes of books are on a container ship and will arrive in the USA in the next couple of weeks. They will be available soon and I will have news on how to order shortly.

IF you are seriously considering leaving the US, I encourage you to do it, but not because of politics, the price of gas, or some other short-lived pain point (as hard as it is to be there right now). Do it if you want to experience what it’s like to live inside another culture and experience what it is to look back on your own from a distance. You’ll be surprised by what you see. And do it while you still have the physical and mental ability to navigate small spaces and climb a lot of f’ing stairs.

The 18-month mark: Here’s what you need to know about moving out of the USA

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The 18-month mark: Here’s what you need to know about moving out of the USA

Siena and San Gimignano

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