Maybe there’s some anxiety about having transferred 500,000 euros to Portugal? Will you get it back to your country without Portuguese government intervention?
I wanted to provide feedback from my recent full redemption, Hope it helps any other Golden Visa investors.
For background, as Portugal started to revise its GV law last year, I decided in 12/2025 the Portugal GV was no longer worth it for me. I waited until 4/2026 to liquidate the funds as I wanted to pay long-term capital gains rates on the profit, a tax savings in the US of about 10% on the realized gain.
Like many of you, I was a lucky beneficiary of surging European markets over the past year. In terms of my actual balance sheet, this is how it came out (in USD terms): I had wired to Optimize US$571,500 in April 2025 and received in return US$766,500 for a pre-tax profit of about US$195,000, 33% return on investment. Part of the profit stems from a weakening dollar, and the profit also includes the 5k euro subscription fee. I assume around one-quarter of my proceeds will go to taxes.
What I hope you find reassuring is Optimize made good on its commitment to return funds to me on demand. The Portuguese government did not interfere or withhold any of the funds. Optimize’s very helpful advisor had predicted the process would take one week. He was close as it took 9 days. For a continental European investment company, customer service was excellent, even if it falls well short of a US firm like Fidelity or Schwab. For you Optimize investors, I hope you find my redemption experience calming as you watch your investments grow toward 1 million euros, hoping the Portuguese government doesn’t intervene or the Optimize owners don’t run off to Panama with the funds.
Needless to say, given the Portuguese Government’s propensity to change the GV at will, without grandfathering those already under contract, I can’t imagine any of the diminishing new GV investors looking at anything but open-ended funds that allow redemption at any time. The Optimize Golden Opportunities Fund is one of the better options, even though, by Anglo-American-Canadian-Australian standards, the fund has an excessively high expense ratio (5k euros to subscribe and 1.8% of invested assets each year). Had I left my money with Optimize, I would have paid about $14k in annual fees over the next year – likely much more in subsequent years. For comparison’s sake, I reinvested the proceeds in a Schwab international fund that has a negligible 0.03% expense ratio. Optimize’s sky-high 1.8% expense ratio is reminiscent of investor-unfriendly funds in the US or UK in the 1970s and not an unsubstantial amount over the 5-year holding period. Along with the disadvantageous tax structure, it’s an obscured but significant additional fee of the GV process – even though Optimize is one of the best, most flexible and most transparent Portugal GV options.
I ran the currency exchange through Optimize back to USD. That was likely my mistake. It was smooth, but I might have gotten an additional $3k by using a service such as Wise. Something to think about for your future resumptions.
I will continue to watch the GV law changes in case it turns more favorable once again. However, given the revised lengthy/costly path until citizenship, I could no longer justify it for myself, based on my age, lack of family beneficiaries and the fact that I already have a widely-accepted passport. Obviously, everyone’s situation is different.
In the end, I’m shocked Portugal did not value my hefty GV infusion of capital into its under-capitalized market. I would have never tapped into the Portuguese health or social system. I only wanted an EU passport for ease of travel. It was a win in every aspect for Portugal. However, governments often do not behave rationally and I’ve noticed the flurry of GV interest in the 1st half of 2025 has really died down.
Anyway, good luck with your GVs.