Saturday, December 31, 2011

BECOMING AN EXPAT: Making the Decision


In 1998, Cathey and I began thinking seriously about our retirement. What did we want to do during our active retirement years? Travel. Where did we want to travel? Europe. Why not live there?

That’s the flip, short-hand way that I’ve explained the decision that led us to purchasing our vacation home in the south of France as a start on moving there permanently. The deeper reasoning was a bit more complicated than that and we’ve had to re-examine our decision at various points along the way. Perhaps it’s time to update the discussion of our making the decision to live as expats.

Before meeting Cathey, my travel had been confined exclusively to the East Coast megalopolis – Boston to the north, D.C. to the south, and not very far inland. My family never ventured outside the region while I was growing up. I don’t remember my grandmother, who lived next door to us, ever leaving town during the last fifteen years or so of her life. Dad and Nana had moved from the Bronx in the 1930s and, although Nana had walked out of Russia and made her way through Europe to Ellis Island 30 years previous, and although Dad had island-hopped with MacArthur and sailed around the Horn numerous times in the Merchant Marines during WWII, once they had settled on a dirt road just outside of Flemington, NJ, they stuck like glue.

Mom was even more parochial. Born and raised in Frenchtown, just down the road from Flemington but less than half its size, Mom graduated Frenchtown High, went to nursing school in Newark, and lasted only two weeks before homesickness drove her back to Frenchtown. She lived within ten miles of her four older siblings for 70 years, until the eldest brother moved into his daughter’s condo in Boca. The remaining four passed where they had been raised.

Aunt Sara was found on the floor of the kitchen in the family house in Frenchtown. She’d never left. There were whispers that she’d been the victim in a tragic love affair. To me, and later to Cathey, Sara had always been open and welcoming. We visited more often than any of the other nieces and nephews who had moved away, she always had cookies for us – store-bought chocolate chip, and if it was mealtime, maybe a bit of herring?  We liked Sara and I think that she like us. I hope that she didn’t suffer.

Cathey’s back story is a bit different. Born in her mother’s family’s base in New Orleans, she was raised in Brownsville, San Antonio, and Dallas, Texas. Her father was in the hotel and hospitality industry and had an affection for things Mexican. As a result, Cathey spent time in Mexico with family friends, went to college in Mexico City, and had done the Icelandic Airways/backpack Europe thing that was in vogue in those days besides. She was a traveler and felt comfortable in other people’s neighborhoods.

It was pure serendipity that I met Cathey on my first trip outside of my comfort zone. We first laid eyes on each other 41 years ago at the old Dallas airport coincidentally named Love Field.

I discovered on that first trip that I enjoyed the road. It was a doozie of a trip – Flemington to Atlanta to Dallas to Indianapolis to Dallas to New York to Boston to New York to Chicago to San Francisco to Los Angeles to Dallas to New Orleans to Dallas to Flemington in a 1970 VW Beetle – brand new when the trip started. Cathey and I have been traveling ever since, around the USofA, into Mexico, out to the Caribbean, and finally to England and Europe.
 
On the way, I discovered that I enjoyed breathing different air, tasting different foods, seeing different sites, figuring out how to communicate in a language other than English. For Cathey, who’d flown on DC3s when they were brand new and all the women  – passengers and crew – wore white gloves, the idea of living an expatriate’s life was hardly a novel one. She knew many expats personally. She counted some among her best friends.

What did we want to do during our active retirement years? Travel. Where did we want to travel? Europe. Why not live there?

Monday, December 26, 2011

CREDIT LYONNAISE MORTGAGE PRE-APPROVAL

We've had a checking account with Credit Lyonnaise since 2005. We've paid all of our French bills through the account either by check or debit - mortgage (through a different bank), taxes, utilities, property management, the works. We have a Carte Bleu  (French credit card - Visa - tied to our bank account). We have a 'personal banker' with whom I can exchange emails (thanks to Google Translate). We  recently opened a savings account in which we've parked the equity from the sale of our house.

I recently contacted our personal banker to ask how to pre-approve a mortgage. That's how we purchased the house in Cazouls. We'd contacted Banque Patrimoine & Immobilier on the advice of an expat on one of the expat forums. We faxed and FedExed a bunch of financial information. Eventually, we were pre-approved for a mortgage of up to 100,000 euros. It made things simple when we found the house. Put the money down, inform the bank, and away we went.

Credit Lyonnaise does not work that way, I'm told. When we've found the property, we'll let the bank know. They'll decide then and only then. No pre-approval. Not terribly convenient. Oh, well. If these things were easy, we'd all be rich.

EDIT: Credit Lyonnaise crapped out. We found the house that we were looking for in Quarante, called with the particulars, and they simply disappeared. The mortgage company that the real estate agent suggested wasn't interested. We weren't looking to borrow enough to make it worth their while to write the note. In the end, we went back to BPI. Even though we had a history, our age was a problem. We had to fill out endless form, have blood work and an EKG sent to them, and had to have our doctor fill out a four-page form that ended with the question: Will the mortgage holder live long enough to pay off the mortgage? And we had to buy mortgage insurance anyway. But they got it done and the rate of 2.68% fixed for 15 years works very well for me.