My wife and I are just beginning our Portugal Golden Visa journey. We’re working with La Vida, and so far things are going smoothly. We’re from the U.S., have chosen our funds, and already received our tax IDs. We’re now just waiting on our bank accounts to be opened so we can fund everything. In the meantime, we’re starting to gather our documents to get them apostilled.
I’ve read some of the more frustrated posts about the GV process, and since we’re still new to all this, it’s definitely made me a little nervous—like maybe we made the wrong choice.
That said, we’re going into this with realistic expectations: we’re anticipating the biometrics appointment will take at least 3 years, and we’re not expecting citizenship for another 6–7 years.
We’re doing this with the hope of retiring in Europe someday—still over 10 years away—but we wanted to get the citizenship part sorted in advance so we can really enjoy that phase of life when the time comes. For now, we’re having fun learning Portuguese and trying to stay optimistic.
Looking forward to connecting with some positive folks here—hopefully it’s not all doom and gloom!
Same here, just waiting on our bank account. I’ve also been anxious reading so much bad news here but I feel great about our pending investment (Pela Terra) and we’re not in a rush. We figure, if nothing else, we’re happy to move some funds out of the US and into something we believe in. I feel so bad for those who got caught up in the system the last few years. Hopefully things are smoothing out for everyone and we don’t make it worse by piling on. I don’t know, my husband and I have been planning this for decades and it keeps getting more difficult. At some point you have to just hold your breath and dive in, right? If nothing else, we can commiserate with each other here three years from now as we await an email from AIMA
Hopefully we don’t lose money on the investment. If it doesn’t end up in citizenship and we lose money on government fees that will be really disappointing but not the end of the world.
I guess I’m hoping at worst we learn some Portuguese, get a few nice vacations in Portugal, make some money on the investments.
You are right it forced us into opening a Euro bank account which will be good to have money in Euros. Now if the dollar would just go back up so we can move the money! We actually opened an offshore account too that has USD and Euro accounts!
I would obviously prefer we end up Portuguese citizens in the end.
We actually opened an offshore account too that has USD and Euro accounts!