I’ll add to the discussion as an American immigrant living in the EU.

first, don’t need citizenship to live here. But you do need a visa. You can come in for 3m on a tourist visa (which you don’t have to apply for) and then you will have to go out for another 3m before you can’t start the cycle over again. I do know a handful of people who do this. Technically you can’t work while here, but people do it for US companies…

If you were to create a business plan, you could set up shop here with a business visa. Best would be to do so through a partnership with someone already here (I’d almost say “me!” but I’m currently dealing with health issues… for the moment. Hit me up in a year or two and we could legitimately talk though. Graphic design/communications/PR background and LN survivor who really wants to see change in the gym community).

For France specifically, you get our universal healthcare after being here for 4m. I guess they figured it’s cheaper on the system to do that than leave people without basic universal healthcare (go figure). But even without healthcare, most doc appts are 27€, specialists around 60€, meds are a usually just a few bucks (without insurance). So even paying out of pocket here is less than cobra.

Spenser’s annual physical would literally have cost 27€.

Anyway, since you are both location independent and your work is, too (or just requires you to travel), it’s not impossible. And when you compare to CA cost of living… you could literally buy a French château I’m pretty sure. And you would be able to access most European competitions by train! Yay for lower carbon footprint! 😉

I moved here largely because my life in the US was not sustainable (paying 1800/m for cobra +35k out of pocket a year for health stuff), and I haven’t looked back! Been here 7 years and I’m now eligible to apply for citizenship.

Hi @melissa-vigogne <waves in French>  ! I split my time living/working between 2 EU countries, France being one of them 🙂 

I actually just moved my wee business out of France to my other EU 'home', as the costs in France were so high in comparison, and there was v little state support.  There are better places in the EU to set up a business than France - it just depends on what company structure you want/need.  For example Estonia offers the best deal for digital businesses - in fact a lot of my UK-based peers who were going to face issues as a result of Brexit moved the businesses there.  Belgium/Netherlands are good for organisations for whom the not-for-profit structure is best: I'm on the Board of one that was originally based in France but after research we relocated to Belgium.