OUR MOVE TO FRANCE, EXCLUSIVE INSIGHTS INTO OUR MEETINGS IN NICE, FRANCE

In this video, Jeff and I will candidly share our insights from a couple of meetings we had in Nice, recently. We met with Adrian Leeds, the well known US Expat, who has been helping expats from the US find new homes to buy or rent, in France, for a little under 30 years. She is probably one of the most, if not THEE most, knowledgeable expert on moving from the US to France. She understands the mentality of doing business with French people, understands the “system” and knows how to work it and is an excellent resource. We had our consult with her and will share some of our key takeaways. We also finalized opening our bank account in Nice. Come join us for just under and hour of conversation on what we learned, and our next steps!

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Hi! I’m An Scott. I’m a happily retired 70 year old woman with my “golden years” on the horizon, living the “good life”, whatever that is on any given day, with my fun husband Jeff, and our “bossy” little Yorkie, Bella.

In just a few months, in April, 2024, when Jeff retires, we are moving from SW Florida, in the good old USA to Nice, France to live out our “golden years” on the sunny Mediterranean coast of southern France, in Nice France.

Moving from the USA to a foreign country is no small “project”. Through my videos, we’ll be taking you through the process, sharing the steps, talking about what we’ve learned and the ups and the downs.

SUBSCRIBE, FOR FREE, to my channel and as we progress through the steps of doing that, you’ll be able to follow along through each stage of our preparation and then catch up with us, as we settle in to our new life. We might even have some information you’re going to need if you’re also planning a move to France (or the EU)

For now, come with us as we embrace our days and nights living everyday as though there is no tomorrow.

MUSIC CREDITS:
Caught Up In A Dream by Loving Caliber

Most of my videos are shot with my Samsung Galaxy S20 Note Ultra Smartphone and a circular ring light, as needed.

So as you can see our house is in full estate sale mode I’ve set up the ring light there because Jeff and I are going to start our video and we’re going to do it on the backdrop of all of our stuff so have someone coming to pick up

Some furniture today so that’ll lighten the load just a little bit but this is it and we’ve got lots more to sell so if you happen to live in the area and you’re looking for a Furniture household things you know make an appointment these things are all listed on

Marketplace on Facebook they’re listed on Craigslist they’re listed on another website called Next store and hopefully we will sell everything so let’s get on to our conversation Jeff and I talking about our trip to nice I watch you as you drive do you know I’m looking and I can’t help but smile do

You know how much I love you you put my favorite song on I put my feet up and we just sing along and I can’t help but feel it just loving this moment can we stay here forever I’m loving this moment we stay here together hello and welcome to my channel

My name is an and behind me and all around me you see a state sale I’m so happy that you have decided to join me today actually join us because because I’m so excited that Jeff is going to pull himself away from his very busy

Agenda and come and talk to you with me and we’ll talk about how our trip to nce went talk about our meeting with Adrian talk about the bank and uh anything else we can think of so without further Ado here is Jeff coming over here join

Me well hello Ann how are you I’m good darling how are you I’m good so you’re going to give them a little update about our trip um yes now I know there are a lot of people that were very interested in finding out how was the meeting with

Adrien I need to start this off by saying this Adrian knew that I or knows that I have a YouTube channel and one of the first things she said to me when we sat down in her home she said so you know what what are you gonna do

You’re gonna take everything I tell you and go say it all on YouTube and um it wasn’t my intention to do that and it’s not our intention to do that now um understand Jeff and I paid for the consultation with Adrien and our situation is not going to be the same as

Yours or yours or yours or anybody else’s out there so while we’re going to talk about things that we learned it’s going to be pretty much more of generalities that I’m sure Adrian is shared with people in her uh YouTube videos in her edes in nce or in Paris

Things that she says publicly the more private things you’re going to have to pay for your own consultation I’m very sorry to say I just I don’t want to create problems and I hope you all understand and everybody’s situation is different and unique exactly I mean our

Approach was a very strict set of guidelines of what we’re trying to work with here right um so it will be different for every other situation right but generally the jump from America to France there’s a lot of steps involved so the good news is before we get to the

Nitty-gritty about Adrien um we apply for our visas online and we have our appointments in Miami in the middle of February next month we could have gotten an appointment within a week so if you’re looking for appointments uh for your long stay visa and you’re in state of Florida you

Probably have to go to Miami because I think that’s the nearest office so let me tell you that when when we applied a couple of weeks ago online when I went to schedule our appointment we could have had an appointment within a few days of that very date that I was doing

The scheduling so I know a lot of the offices in the country people have been sharing on forums on Facebook that they can’t get an appointment or they’ve been waiting months for an appointment but I’m happy to say that if you’re looking for an appointment the in-person part of

The application in Miami at least as of now there were lots of appointments available so we had our pick and with the visas the important thing is for two people you have to make two appointments don’t go in with one appointment for both of you it takes each individual makes their appointment

We scheduled ours at the same rough time but each person needs their own individual appointment for long St so well let me tell you about what happened I try to do two separate appointments because it it says it multiple times for two people uh or a family applying together

Each person needs their own Visa so when I went to make my appointment it asked me if I wanted to add another appointment so I clicked on ADD and then it wanted to know who I wanted to add the appointment for and I put Jeff’s name in and what happened was the

Confirmation for one time the same time says both of us so I thought oh my god I’ve heard these other people have gone to Miami they forgot to make a second appointment and by luck the person in the uh office agreed to let their spouse come in even though they didn’t have

That second appointment I didn’t want to have to go through that I thought all right let me get this fixed before I go any further so I called the office in Miami on the phone and I explained that the confirmation I had showed both of us

At the very same time instead of what I was trying to do one appointment after the other and the woman said there’s your confirmation paper at both names and individual passport numbers on it and I said yes and she said okay well as long as it’s got two separate names and

Two separate passport numbers it will show in the system as two different people even though you’re both coming at the same time so if that happens to you don’t panic you may want to call the office wherever in the country you’re going just to be sure but that’s what

Happened to me as much as I tried to do two separate appointments that came out both of us at the same time but you made appointments and added a person and that was the important part right right and the person on the phone said as long as there are two separate passport numbers

Showing even though it shows that you both have the same appointment time both of you can show up and come inside at the very same time and that was the most important part so that’s one of the steps okay so now let’s talk about our meeting with Adrian Adrian first of all

Is a very nice lady and if you’ve seen her on House Hunters International that’s Adrian that’s exactly who she is she’s just exactly the same in person she’s warm and personable and has a headful of information that she has acquired over I guess it’s close to 30

Years 28 29 close to 30 years this lady is an expert and the the one thing well not the one thing and there are many things we like about the fact that we’ve contracted with her all of the people that work for her or with her in Adrien leed’s company they’re all expats

Everybody has gone through the same process that you may go through we’re going to go through and everybody down the road is going to go through so they already know what it’s like coming from the US moving to France being new in town looking for an apartment looking to

Buy something looking to rent something trying to figure out how to get the utilities on how to how to get a bank account so that is a great thing the other thing that I was impressed with is the fact that because they have worked in France with French people with the French

Bureaucracy they know how the French people think and one of the most important things that she stressed and this was after she took a look at the dossier that I brought now a lot of people were asking me you know was she impressed with the dossier quite frankly

She didn’t want us to leave it she took a glance at it she looked at the cover letter and the first first thing that she said was get rid of the picture we had a picture of us with our dog and in the cover letter um we mentioned that we

Were moving with the dog the first thing she said is take the dog out of the cover letter this wasn’t to to hide the dog from landlords this was don’t put it in their face basically right now there is a huge shortage of rental in nce France and in

Paris and the rental laws as you may know if You’ watched some of my past videos the rental laws greatly favor tenants this means that the landlords and management companies that are looking for tenants they can be very very picky and they can look at they can

Look at your picture if they don’t like your hair color they can decide no they’re not we’re not going to rent to these people so she said that you know for example there’s an apartment if if there’s one apartment in this particular area and it’s exactly what everybody’s

Looking for maybe there are 10 people that are filing or completing applications for that very same apartment they’re going to flip through and if they see a mention of a dog they’re going to just put that one aside so the first thing we learned is don’t put the dog don’t put any information

About the dog in the cover letter um they cannot the landlords and management companies cannot forbid you to have a dog they’re not allowed to do that so you don’t have to worry you’ll get that apartment and then you just bring your pets with you cats dogs

Whatever um so that was a big issue but also in the cover letter I had stressed in my cover letter that we were financially capable of affording the apartment and all of this information and she said no French people don’t care about the money part that’s the American approach the

American approach is if I throw enough money at it it’ll come my way and in France it’s a different mentality in France you want to tell the landlord how much you appreciate his property how how much you’re excited about the opportunity to live in their apartment

So we’ve got to redo our cover letter and we have to appeal to their emotions we have to say oh my goodness we love that um but appeal to their emotional side how warm it made you feel inside and how beautiful and how it’s always been my lifelong dream to live

Our lifelong dream well it turned into your lifelong dream but it was mine long before it was yours but appeal to their emotions the money part will come so the first thing that we have to do is we’ve got to rewrite our cover letter and say how much we love France

How much we want to move there how much we’re look forward to the French lifestyle to live life and enjoy life in our retirement right so we also have to sort of fine-tune it towards the apart that we’re trying to rent so it may be too soon to rewrite the cover letter or

Maybe we rewrite parts of it and then once there is an apartment that they show us that we really really like we tailor that um cover letter to that very specific apartment we love the balcony we can have romantic dinners outside with candles and blah blah blah so there

Is that piece of it and one of the things to mention is it’s in proximity to the train station we like to travel a lot we’re excited about being there or it’s close to the water we’d love to go to the water so those are the kind of

Things that tell the landlord how you appreciate his apartment exactly how beautifully furnished it is if it’s a furnished apartment we love your choice of furniture even if the furniture looks like crap if you really want that apartment you need to say that worry about the furniture after just add a few

Accent pillows that’s all well I think if it looks like crap we’ll have to add a lot more than accent pillows but we’ll cross that bridge but we have to look at the bones and not worry about the the furniture like when we shop for apartments and and houses here in the

United States exactly you can always refurnish or add add Furniture to an apartment once you find what the right location and the right apartment exactly so the next thing we talked about Was a guarantor now we thought that if we did a dosier with all kinds of financial information copies of every single bank account and an investment account that we have and presented that we thought that would be great because landlords are not allowed to ask for that

Information by law they cannot ask to see your bank accounts or statements or that kind of information so in in France it’s not the money that impresses the French people it’s the person that impresses they want the impression of you as a person me as a person that’s

What they’re after not the financial necessarily but that being said typically when you rent an apartment in France when you’re coming to the US or coming from the US they want you to have a guarant tour now a lot of people don’t have a guarantor in France or somebody

Somewhere who is willing to guarantee that if you don’t pay the rent they’ll take care of it no worries I mean if you’re coming to France to work I would imagine your employer is going to guarantee that they could be the guarantor we don’t know another living

Soul we have no family in France we have no friends um that we could ask to be a guarantor but Adrien basically said that without a guarantor of some kind they can’t show our dosier or our Application standing underneath the lights look each other’s eyes tired snowflakes are coming down collaps into water when they hit the ground I hear the sound of empty streets yesterday has gone to sleep so what we did is we applied with garant meat and even though it costs a little bit of

Money uh I I we hav’t started paying for it yet because it’s going to be based on what the rent is right but it’s I forget whether you pay it annually or monthly that’ll be a bridge we cross once we have an apartment right but I we

Suggested before we even got to the guarantor Jeth had suggested well what if we just pay the whole year’s rent up ahead in the in front and that’s the American way and that did not impress the French at all so the guarantor is basically a party that backs you up it’s like co-signing

On your rent agreement with you right the other thing that um we learned is that when you rent an apartment you have I think it’s up to three months to decide you don’t like the apartment so if you get into that apartment and if you prepaid a whole year

Ahead the likelihood of you getting all of that money back without a hassle is pretty slim so you if you don’t have to put all that money out why bother I mean what if what if you move into that apartment and the neighbors are terrible and the landlord can’t do anything about

It or the management company can’t do anything about it you’re stuck in that apartment for the entire lease so you don’t want to offer a full Gear’s rent I’ve even heard from some people setting aside conversations with Adrien I’ve heard some people saying that in France

You’re not allowed to do that I I’m kind of doubting that because I think Adrien would have told us if French law doesn’t allow you to do that she simply said it doesn’t impress anybody that’s not the approach to use right when finding a French apartment it’s you have to take

The money thing out of your mind that’s an American thing y French people are not that they’re not impressed by money they’re impressed by the C character of the person the kind of person um they want to obviously know that they’re not going to get stuck for the lease right

So that’s why signing up with garant me or finding a guarantor is a good way to do it because that way they know if they see that you have signed up with garant me they never have to worry about the rant right uh if you drop dead both of you drop dead in

The apartment you can’t pay the rent that no the landlord has no money out of pocket they won’t lose anything on it right so we feel real good about the fact that we were approved for garant me I think it was within 24 hours we each

Got an approval you apply as a couple but you get two separate approvals um even though the application is as a couple and we’re looking for an apartment a two-bedroom apartment um in specific areas of nce um um where the rent could be anywhere between 1,200 or500 EUR maybe even as

High as ,800 EUR a month so 10% of that would be €180 EUR for The Grand Tour you mean for the garant tour gar tour okay somewhere somewhere though the figure of around a th000 is in my mind I I can’t remember where I got that figure but but we’ll

Know more once we actually find an apartment give you the update on that right so now everybody wanted to know so did we find an apartment how do we like it here’s the other problem we don’t have our long stay Visas so we can’t prove that we have the

Legal right to stay in France for even the minimum term of a oneyear lease right so even though we have contracted with Adrien Leeds to start looking for us as of January 1st we have to be able to prove that we have the legal ability to stay in N so

As I said we have applied online we’ll go for our appointment in the middle of February and typically it takes maybe two weeks to get your visa back uh stamped on the passport get your passports back and then we can leave any time after that Although our plan is to leave

For France during during the first week of April and we’re hoping that we will have an apartment uh significantly ahead of that but if that doesn’t happen right the other option would be to go to an Airbnb right and be in an Airbnb for a month or two which gives you a little

More leisurely schedule right to search for the right apartment what we did on this trip was we sort of looked at what neighborhoods we want a newer building with an elevator because the steps four or five flights of steps can be a lot of workout for us so as we move through the

Neighborhoods we found a neighborhood that we think is close to what we are looking for and air conditioning an elevator and a number of different things are on our checklist so when we go back we’ll try try and narrow it down and find a neighborhood where all those

Things fit together right well when you contract with Adrian you if you decide yes I want to move forward with this she sends over a contract and included with the paperwork on that is a list an apartment search list basically and it has certain categories the first one is

What must the apartment have in it and you have to list everything that any apartment they find for you must have this what what are the things that um would be nice if the apartment had so you list all of the things that okay if

It doesn’t have it not not a killer deal or not going to kill the deal but it would be really nice if they could find us a place that has all of these things and then there is the other list and that is I will not accept an apartment

Without X so or I’m sorry no wait it was um the apartment cannot have these things so we sent all of that information back to her before we even left nce pretty much the same day that we got the paperwork we sent that back to her and we’re hoping that while we’re

Here in the United States selling all of our stuff and packing things that uh they’ll start looking for an apartment they’ve already been made aware of the fact that we have our appointment so that we know or they know that we’re not just playing a game here we are serious

The process is moving along and if they find us something wonderful we’ve already given them power of attorney so that they can in fact sign a lease for us and that personal knowledge of the city becomes so helpful for people from America who are moving there I mean we

Are we’re not familiar with the traffic patterns or the noise or the different neighborhoods but hiring a local person in nce to help you right is invaluable I mean it it will help us not make the first couple mistakes that you do when you move to a new place without any

Background right and both Adrian and her assistant Patty who if you contact Adrien for an appointment typically Patty is the one who responds they both live in niece they both have apartments in niece so they live the life they know the neighborhoods and um I mean who better

To get advice from right so when we were there there were a few neighborhoods that we were considering one is the neighborhood that we stayed in at the Airbnb called n santra which is the center area of n it was no more than about a 15minute walk to the prominade

Deang which is great there was a tram stop that was what 7 minutes away from us very close yeah the train station was what 10es minutes about that about 10 minute walk from us may maybe there was a tram in between do we have to take a

Tram to get to the next stop to get to the train station you could walk all the way to the train station but once you got to the tram that took you right to the train station so right so we walked 7even minutes and we’re at the train

Station which is perfect if we want to travel anywhere by train um let now the other thing to know is the trains that are coming in and out of nce are sort of local trains I mean they take you to Monaco Monte Carlo they take you locally you have to actually

Switch trains to go to Paris you would take the local train to Marseilles probably to get the highspeed train to go to Paris there’s no I don’t believe there’s no direct train that leaves n that takes you right to Paris I think there’s a slow train oh you don’t want

To take the slow train up that’s I I I seem to think that that there is a train directly from n to Paris oh man but pack a pack a lunch cuz it’s going to be a long ride I think we’ve taken it from Paris to

N nonstop we didn’t get off the train and change trains okay I I’m like pretty sure I don’t remember that it was the high no it was a highspeed train the tgv yeah yeah I’m pretty sure um so we were looking at santra there was another neighborhood that we looked at um Le

Musici musici um that was a really nice neighborhood uh and then the last one was the flower the garden the Garden District I forget what the X yeah maybe it was Jardine I I’ll put it in on the screen when I remember what the name of

It was now we weren’t familiar with that one but uh uh Adrianne told us where it was and we went and we walked that area we walked it at night we walked it in the daytime we just wanted to get a feel for it so these areas that we’re

Considering I mean niss santra is like a sort of a shopping district right but the other two they’re they’re not necessarily tourist areas that last one the J Jardine or Garden District right that was really more of a residential area I mean there were some cafes but you had

To walk a little bit not far 5 10 minutes to get to cafes and bonger and patier and a grocery store whatever but it wasn’t like a heavily populated tourist area uh that we could see when we were there now keep in mind we were there in early December

Win time yes yes so there there was that so I’m trying to think of anything anything else about our apartment searching before we move on to the the bank thing I think that pretty well covers right our initial glance at how do we get an apartment

Right the best thing to do if you want to get a feel for it is walk around in the areas that you like right now one thing Adrian did say is she doesn’t recommend people go all over France and we’ll stay here and we’ll stay there and

We’ll try this we’ll try that well then we’ll go stay there we’ll go stay there now now the real story is yes two years ago we did that yes we drove from Paris to every little town in the middle of France and when we ended up at n we

Finally said this would be the right spot we went to Avon we went to many places but we feel that n is the right spot for us but basically to figure out what the right spot for you is is you need to do what we did before we even

Went to look at anything right A couple of years ago we made a list what are the things that are most important to us as seniors retiring Denise so we wanted a walkable town we wanted a town that doesn’t go to sleep at dark 9 o’l um which you know although the provance

Area was beautiful nothing’s happening at night there may be like one restaurant in town and that’s it at 10:00 the party is just beginning not that we’re up that late but but we wanted to be able to Avail ourselves of it if we feel like being up that late we

Wanted to be near a train station that can go all over Europe right so that’s there we wanted to be near good health care where there isn’t a scarcity of doctors no problem there it’s a hospital very close by uh let’s see International Airport International Airport we could

Take the tram if that tram is 7 minutes from us if we get on the right tram we can take it all the way to the airport and be at the airport in like 15 20 minutes right um so there’s that we don’t need cars that’s we’re thinking no

Car right saves us and will depend on public transportation and we found the transportation to be very convenient clean ran on time easiest way to get around town exactly um and if we want to rent a car we found out that you can rent a car at

A grocery store I mean it doesn’t get any better than that and I we heard that you can rent a car for as little as $9 a day at like a car Flor or there are a few different stores that rent cars and then then you pay so much a mile but

Usually you’ll be short trips when you’re in town like that so right very reasonable car rentals right so if we just want to rent a car and go off for a day trip or something or we need to go shopping we need to buy things that we

Don’t feel like lugging around on the tram or walking around town with a you know giant big thing we don’t have to worry about it right so that answered all of our needs um so let’s get on to and and most of the apartments that we’re looking at will not have a garage

With them most most of the in town places it’s a pedestrian area right and parking is difficult and expensive so not having a car is going to be a plus for us yeah the first time we went to ni we had a car and it cost us close to 100

Us a night to park it in the municipal garage and then when we came up with the idea to park it on the street with meters you had to like get up like at the crack of dawn to beat the meter made so definitely you don’t want to have a

Car unless you’re buying or renting something comes with a garage right so and maybe if we end up renting something something that has a garage maybe someday we’ll want to buy a cheap car who knows but it’s not on our our preferred would be an apartment near Transportation right yeah

Right so now let’s talk about the bank experience so as a lot of you may know if you’ve been following my channel I applied for a bank account for us back in May somebody had said to me a friend had said you know why don’t you contact

BMP parabus they have a branch in the Miami area maybe you can open your account there it’s a French Bank maybe you can open your account there and then you can start putting money into that account so I went online and I contacted them and said that we’re moving to

France and that we’re looking for a bank account we want to start putting money in it here in the United States and we’d be happy to come over to Miami and meet with them to open the account well because we said we were moving to nce they transferred it to the international

I guess nonresident account manager in so she contacted us and she sent us like I don’t know F 50 pieces of paper so we’re now joined by Bella who just was dying to be in the video so anyway we were talking about the bank so we completed the application sent all of

These forms back to the lady in niece and it took a month for her to review everything and then she finally got back to us and she said great okay when can you come into the office and we said well at that point this was at the

End of June we said well we’re not coming back to nce until November so she said okay all right let’s set up an appointment so we set up an appointment for when we were in niece right after Thanksgiving right and we went to meet with her turns out she was

Not a French person she was an Italian person who married a French person and spoke perfect English which was great all along when I was communicating with her by email I thought she was French so I was translating a lot of the emails into French but we didn’t have to do

That she spoke to us in perfect English with almost no accent so anyway we opened bank account now with BMP parabus the the disappointing thing is if you’re considering this Bank you have to first of all you have to go in person for any bank account to open any french

Bank account in France you have to show up at that office in France they just won’t open an account unless you’re there in person but now with BMP parabus you have to put €10,000 into a savings account the reason for this is they give you a debit card and the debit card will

Just keep on dumping money out to you you can go to an ATM machine and money will just keep coming out even if you don’t have enough money in your account I was amazed by this so they want you to have a savings account so that if you

Withdraw more than your checking account has in it they have something to draw from So You have to keep the money in that savings account for four years which is kind of frustrating it’s €10,000 that’s sort of Untouchable but anyway we went ahead and we opened so we went ahead and we opened

The account and then when when we came back from nice about a week later we got all of the forms and everything that they uh we knew the account was already open before we left left niece right because she gave us our account numbers and she told

Us that she would then sign off on it it would go to their back office and then they would send the account information so with French banks you pay for the debit card and with French banks you cannot give them currency can’t hand them bills you can’t

Say here’s 100 put it to my account that’s not the way it works with French banks when you deposit money they need to be able to trace where that money originated from so the only way that they would accept money from us is by wiring it from our bank account here in

The United States they want a a uh a trail of where the money came and if you walk in with cash they have no idea where you got the cash right so that was another frustrating thing because when we did finally fund the account one wire was I think $30 because we were

Wiring as Euros so we had to put the money in as Euros so there was a fee that the bank charged first to convert the money into euros and then it was we did two wires one from an account Jeff has one from mine it was $50 for each of

Those wires right so and of course the bank isn’t going to reimburse you but it’s something to keep in mind then the other thing is in order to access that account you have to load an app on your phone so I’m good with apps Jeff is just

Starting but he’s just starting to get into Apps and he very happily uploaded the app on the phone so they send you in the mail they send you a temporary secret code and so you’re supposed to enter your account number and the secret code right by the time they sent the

Paperwork they don’t send it express mail by the time we got the codes the codes had expired so we had to ask for a new code so the lady at the bank in nie sent the new code by text message so it didn’t work the text message code didn’t

Work on either phone right so then we had to request new codes so then new codes came in the mail and Jeff was at work so I was doing this with my phone so I loaded using the new password that came in the mail once again it had

Already expired by the time the paper got to us so that very next day the lady gave me another text message with a new code so that day I was actually able to get into the account and then once you get into the account then it’s logged in well

Then I had to change to a new password yeah and it was longer than typically we would use for passwords here in the US so it was like oh great now I have to remember this extra long number but anyway so my app is set up Jeff still

Isn’t set up because he still hasn’t gotten a secret password that works so I figured I mean I don’t know how he feels about it I figured at least one of us can get in worst case scenario he can just go into the bank when we’re in

Niece in April and he can say look help me get in here one of us can access the money and I’ve already gotten into the account seen our deposits and so we’re good there but when we met with Adrian they have or she told us that they have

Contacts at credit agrial and credit agrial does not require that you keep a minimum in any kind of account so I don’t know whether their debit cards won’t just dump out money even if you don’t have it or what we were trying to get into credit agricult they were

Trying to get us an appointment when we were in these so that we could just open the account there and not even fund the other account it didn’t happen and that’s the difference between Banks Banks in America you walk in the door at 10: in the morning you sit down you open

An account that’s not the way it works in France right you make an appointment for like a week or two away and then you go into the bank and then you sit with them and then they send you mail you something back so it it’s not as quick

And easy as it is here in the United States right so once we are in these in April um the people at Adrienne’s office they will contact their contacts again and get us another appointment so we can get in and then we’ll just withdraw the money out of BMP

Parabus at least we have money over there in case Adrian’s people find us an apartment and we need to be able to um pay the upfronts you know the first month’s rent the security deposit last month’s rent we’ve got more than enough money in the account over there to cover

It so that we can transfer from a French Bank to the landlord or whoever we need to pay once an apartment becomes available right exactly so those were the two main things that we went to France to do we had hoped that we would be able to get to see Apartments but

Unfortunately even though we had the appointment for months with Adrian’s office and they knew basically that we wanted to rent an apartment we had some obstacles we didn’t have the long stay Visa we didn’t have a guarantor and there is a huge shortage of rentals

In nice so our advice is if you want to contract with adrianne’s company soon as you know you want to do that book a console with her you can even do it by Zoom originally we had a meeting planned with Adrian by zoom and when we found

Out that she was going to be in niece right around Thanksgiving we changed the appointment to an in-person appointment which was great great right but you can book in a zoom appointment with her from anywhere in the world basically right so it’s you know it’s going to cost us a

Little bit of money I would say probably in the ballpark of 22500 by the time we’re done with all of the things that we’ve asked Adrian to do for us and that includes that first consult I think it was about $450 us I forget what it was in Euros

But by the time it converted it was about 450 and it subtracted from her total fee to findo the apartment and then we’re going to have her people assist us in getting the utilities put in our name and of course getting that bank account set up we probably won’t

Need to have her help with any of the other things but they do all kinds of things and it’s really worth it to just spend the money for the console and what they explained was the bureaucracy in France you sort of need to know how the bureaucracy works right you it’s not

Like you walk in and throw cash on the counter and everything’s done you make appointments with people you have to set things up ahead of time and many times you don’t hear back right away so local help like that is invaluable we feel right and the fact that they’ve all done

This right they’ve all gone through the entire process of becoming expats from the US I mean and us it’s the first time so we’re very appreciative of the help that they’re giving us finding a spot for us it’s worth paying the extra money for peace of mind they can read French

Contracts they can negotiate leases so we don’t have to worry about getting a contract because everything’s in French over there don’t forget that all the legal documents are in French so they get a lease they take a look at the lease they’ll look at the lease and they

They’ll decide well these are some things that are in the lease we don’t think you should agree to these things and they’ll negotiate with the management company or the landlord on our behalf right so I you get what you pay for there are a lot of people out

There who said oh they didn’t need a realtor and they found an apartment by themselves but that’s probably the exception rather than the rule so exactly we’re looking for the help the local help exactly getting back to what we’re looking for we’re hoping that when we get to nice we will find that

Two-bedroom apartment if we’re lucky to bath too um we were lucky enough to rent an Airbnb not last year but the year before uh that was a two-bedroom two bath and that was a nice Airbnb but the custom with the bath is that you have a

Sink in a shower and a sink in a shower sort of attached to the bedrooms right but just a single toilet oh right I forgot that’s right right there was only one toilet in that apartment but there were two sink there sinks and showers in each one yes but in France it’s very

Common for one Central toilet room a smaller room and the bathrooms themselves don’t always have a toilet in them right exactly yeah a little different than American exactly so do you think we pretty much covered it all Jeff I think I think we’re taking baby steps on our first big

Jump and follow us along we’d love to share our journey as we transition from being United States citizens and changing to expats and headed over to France yes and the one thing that you have to agree if you’ve been following my channel for a while is this move to

France is could not be more researched than what than what I have done we have done I mean there are some people they go over to France they decide they want to live there and they’ve done no research they get their longterm long uh stay visas and they’re sort of like

Wandering around they don’t know about the bureaucracy some people have been there for almost a year and didn’t realize that you have to contact the health system right I forget what it’s called cpam or something like that you have to contact them after you’re there 90 days so you you’ll go there and

You’ll um they’ll check your medical records and give you a physical don’t they yes they do but when you first get there you have to go online to um I forget what you call the term when you let them know okay we’re in France we arrived on this date so that becomes day

One of your your life in France so then ultimately they’re going to contact you to go for an ex-ray and a physical in some parts of France you do that all at the same time in some cities you do first the X-ray in one place the doctor’s appointment in the other but

After you’ve done the X-ray and the doctor’s appointment then after you’re there 90 days you have to go online to the health system the French health system and you have to make application I know of at least one person who said nobody ever contacted me I’m not on the

Health system I’ve been there almost a year they never contacted me well this was another thing we learned when we talked to Adrian they don’t contact you you have to contact them and make application so you you need to do that after you’re there 90 days oh oh I know

One thing that we forgot to talk about is the health insurance that you have to buy you have to buy the prepaid health insurance yes so we have made application we’re waiting to see if it’s approved and we applied because we’re on Medicare here in the United States but

As we leave we’re going going to pause our Medicare we’re both on Social Security at the moment so our pay pay pre premiums come out of our Social Security checks as we leave the United States we’ll hit pause on Medicare in case something Chang deductions on the deduction we’ll put pause on the

Medicare deductions we’ll go to France but we’ll need an insurance policy to cover Us in France well and to get the visa you’re not allowed to get a long stay Visa without proving that you have at least one year of the health insurance that meets the guidelines for

Uh getting that long stay Visa so um we had a number of names that we checked out and the company that offered the lowest price insurance for what we were looking for was a company called Mur and they offered a dirt sheet plan that did not cover any pre-existing

Conditions and there was a limitation on how much of each uh doctor’s bill they would cover plus there was a stipulation that if you’re hospitalized if you go to the emergency room you need to notify that particular insurance company within 48 hours or they won’t cover the plan

And the problem the problem people had was if they’re in the emergency room and they’re incapable of contacting the insurance company they would lose out the plan would reject any bills from that now that was the cheapest plan but there was a second plan and the second plan covered almost everything right and

Covered pre-existing conditions and that was the plan that we decided to get on just to make a peace of mind right now the big difference in price I I’ll give you that the cheap plan was about 500 EUR or $500 or no was it Euros 500 the cheap

Plan was about $500 Euros per person person the plan that we decided on was based on our age so they base it on your age and the older you are the more expensive more expensive the insurance is so for us because uh he’s 69 and I’m already over

70 it’s going to cost us over $2,200 per person for this plan but it covers all existing uh conditions um and it covers 90% of every single other thing and 100% of everything else from first dollar with no deductibles which is fantastic now the only problem is we made application

And you have to list all of your conditions because if you’re going to ask them to ensure that they’re going to cover all those pre-existing conditions you have to give them a list so we’ve been emailing back and forth with a doctor in France our existing conditions what medications we take what

Prescriptions we’re on right and that’s a process proc they do thoroughly check you out for that insurance right so we’ve just returned the responses to the doctor who wanted to know how the pre-existing conditions we have are being treated and what we what medications we take and so now we’re

Just waiting for that to be finalized now if for some reason they don’t approve us we’ll just get the basic plan and we’ll have the minimal insurance and then as soon as we’re allowed to get on the National Health Plan 90 days we’ll make sure that were online making

Application for that there you go so we are sort of on schedule here I would feel better if we sold a lot more stuff but we’ve already decided it started out we were going to sell everything and whatever we didn’t sell by the middle of March we were going to donate then when

I set up the estate sale and started advertising it the next thing was I advertised on Marketplace and Craigslist okay we’re going to do this estate sale through the end of February and then once I set it up and realized how we’re living here you saw it at the beginning of this

Video I thought oh my God I can’t do this for that long so I would say the majority of what’s in the living room if it doesn’t sell by the middle of next month we’re going to box and bag it up and I’m going to contact the Breast

Cancer Society who will send a truck and they’ll come and get everything that we don’t want and even if that’s just the first load we’ll get them to take everything that see in the in the room here and then when we come back from some traveling we’re going to do in

March we’ll bag and box up the rest and any furniture that’s left we’ll have the Breast Cancer Society come and get it and we’ll be done yes I mean at this point we don’t care if we’re sleeping on an air mattress and sitting on the floor

To watch TV the TV will be like the one TV will be the last thing to go we are such Americans you can take everything but leave me me the TV so anyway thank you so much for watching we’re so glad that you have chosen to spend some time with us today

We hope you’ve learned something from what we have shared and we’ll keep on sharing especially when we get tenise every week you’re gonna see Jeff and I and we’re going to do a little weekly Vlog and tell you what’s new what we’ve been doing what we’ve been up to what

Did we see where did we eat and this summer yes the tour to France comes in to nice oh yes en in N en in N so U this will be the first year in a long time that we’ll be there for the end of the tour to France bicycle race

Right we’re hoping to to get there my son is going to be visiting us at the end of July uh right around when that race is going to end so we’ll figure out what kind of tickets we need if anything maybe for Grand stands or something and

Um so if we’re there we’ll take you too so anyway thanks again for watching I will see you next week and show you something else something wonderful I hope I have to come up with it right right as always if you have any suggestions for videos something that

You’re interested in that I haven’t shared with you yet if we have information on it I’m happy to do a video so leave com comments below if you haven’t subscribed Please Subscribe subscribe so you don’t miss our future videos and please don’t forget to give

Me a thumbs up you know it really does help the algorithms YouTube says oh my gosh look at all these people giving this video thumbs up maybe we should show it to more people and they do and I get more subscribers and it’s wonderful so thanks again we’ll see you

Next time bye-bye byebye say bye bye Bella bye bye byebye so all that’s left is you and me I can promise you’re the only thing I say hold my hand and hear the words I say close your eyes and let us Fade Away build a secret place for you and

Me let our minds be caught up in a dream h