Bonjhola
The adventures of two American expat entrepreneurs - Aimee in Spain and Rebecca in France. Follow their adventures setting up new lives in these two countries while running their business, Aimee as a nutritionist at Vibrance Nutrition, hosting the podcast Blasphemous Nutrition, and Rebecca as an Interior Design Business Coach, hosting the podcast Stuff Interior Designers Need To Know.
Bonjhola
EP 54: Visa Renewal, Health Insurance, Taxes as a Digital Nomad and Lessons from a Post-Fascist Democracy
The Changing Borders of Europe: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2400-years-of-european-history/
Where to find Aimee:
- Instagram: @vibrancenutrition
- Nutrition Coaching: vibrancenutrition.com
- Podcast on Nutrition: Blasphemous Nutrition
- Substack on Nomadic Life: NomadicNomMom
Where to find Rebecca:
- Instagram and her life in Paris: @beseriouslyhappy
- Podcast for Interior Design Entrepreneurs: Don't Design While Drinking
- Biz Coaching for Interior Designers: seriouslyhappy.com
- Book on Interior Design Psychology: Happy Starts at Home
Welcome to Bonjola, a podcast about two women, Amy and Rebecca, who each moved from the United States to Europe to become expats, Amy to Spain and Rebecca to France. We're here to share the highs, the lows, and the logistics of this adventure, encourage you to follow your own move abroad dreams, and remind you that you're not alone when the going gets tough. Enjoy.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Bonjola, Rebecca,
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Angela, Amy.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:you have, oh, before I start about you, I want to say welcome to all of our new listeners. I don't know What's happened, but our downloads have doubled in the last month or so. I
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Well, that's lovely.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:know. So we now have more than four people listening, which is super exciting.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Well, that's lovely to whomever is listening. We are so glad you're here. And if you are new to us, um, we'll say it usually at the end of every episode, but we are here to talk to you in real life too. So reach out to us. That
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:speak with someone in New York state who's looking to move to Spain. We had a conversation, a zoom conversation over the weekend. Yeah. It's about job prospects and, and what that possibility would look like here, which, you know, short answer is no, that's not going to be a thing. Or a third country national, which Americans are. And what that effectively means for those of you who are confused, because in English we use it to refer to developing nations rather than developed nations. A third country national is someone who is neither, you know, of the country of origin, Spain, nor an EU citizen. So if you're outside the EU, you are not from the country that you're trying to get a job in, you are considered a third country national.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:is such an interesting thing to bring up today because what's on my mind is the renewal of my visa. It's already here. The process has to begin.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:That was quick.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Oh, tell me about it. And I've got a whole lot of feelings around this. But on the form, there's about six different things you could check in terms of. You know why you might be applying for this French, um, residency visa because it changes now to a residency one and it's like because I'm, you know, returning to France or because I live in another EU country and now I work in France or because I married an EU person and now we live in France or like a whole list of European possibilities and then there's other. Which is where I fall.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Yeah. You are in the broad, nebulous category of other.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Yeah, because I'm also not a student. That's a really common one. Um, yeah, I'm just like the leftovers, which is hard to navigate.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:I can't imagine you are the first spouse of a student to come into France. Whether or not there's a category for it, I can't imagine that it makes your situation extremely complicated. Oh,
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:How do I answer that? Agree. Obviously, a hundred percent. Spouse of student is clearly a common situation. Maybe not as common because so many students are pre married. They're young, but clearly a common thing. But be that as it may, there is no Streamlining. There is no partnership aspect to the visa. I am, as far as France is concerned, completely independent from my husband when it comes to applying for my visa, which is really surprising.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:In this situation, I appreciate the misogyny in Spain that treated me as a dependent accessory to the breadwinner of the family.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Wow. No, that wasn't us at all. He is a student on the easiest visa. Like, honestly, if I was going to give people one piece of advice to make this as easy as possible. Be a student. Get a student visa. They really make everything easier. Because one of the things I'm facing now Is that I didn't get around to applying for the social health insurance, which also means I don't have a French social security number. That's because of the housing choices we made. Once you apply, it's several months before you hear from them, which is usually by mail. And we keep changing addresses. And for anybody who's gone back and listened to the start of this podcast, I talked about the mail endlessly. Like I thought I could get like a PO box, like in the United States
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:That's great.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:does not exist. And that is now coming to bite me in the butt. So Damien was able to apply for his health insurance through the whole student system, like done in a heartbeat. I'm still mad at him about it. I don't have that option. So now I'm trying to renew my visa. They want to know what my social security number is. They want to know that I'm on the health insurance program. If I'm not, I have to pay for another year of private health insurance.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Right.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Which is what most of these things end up coming down to. None of them really get you kicked out of the country, but man, do they drain your bank account quickly.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Yeah. Yeah.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:And for anybody who's trying to be an entrepreneur like I am, where you have to still pay the bills and make ends meet, it really adds to the anxiety.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Yeah. I think that's another important thing to reiterate is that the mistakes that you make in this process. more than you anticipate, more costly than you anticipate, and often less foreseeable than you anticipate.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Yeah. And I'm not even sure we should be calling them mistakes, despite the fact that I am beating myself up over my choices. Because in many of these situations, there is no good. Answer. There is no easy answer. My situation was one where we were trying to make lodging easier and we did, but it is now having a unforeseen consequence and the number of unforeseen consequences, and there would have been other unforeseen consequences. If I had done it the traditional route, getting a long term apartment, they just wouldn't have been with the visa.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Right. Well, and, and technically you don't have a problem with a visa. It sounds like you have a problem with the fact that you have to pay for another year of private insurance.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:I have not gotten myself into any situation yet. That isn't fixable with money. Thank goodness. Um,
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:how annoying.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:And how, and I, I know I'm like really tired of the money just draining away. Like it doesn't even matter. And I'm trying to like put myself in like an abundance mentality because I am in an okay place. But the, the main thing that I am feeling right now is just that precariousness of that uncertain future. And, you know, I know you and I talk about. America and our culture and like how we all came to be so much. So I'm going to go there again. In this case, it's about the fact, and we've talked about this before, the fact that the United States has only two borders with other countries, really. And we have been established now for
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Almost.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:going towards 300 years. Americans at every social level, socioeconomic level can kind of count on consistency. They can kind of count on what tomorrow will bring. And when you're an entrepreneur, you reduce that reliability. When you're an expat, you hugely reduce that reliability of the future.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Yeah.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:I think it's more honest because I think we're all living a little bit under this false sense of security, but it is a more real sense of security in the United States. Whereas here, you know, we just watched the most. Amazing map. It was this map of the history of European borders since about 400 bc.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Oh, my God. Amazing.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:will put the, I will make sure the link to that is in the show notes because it is absolutely, uh, hypnotizing.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:If you want to see instability
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Truly.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Forward, watch this video.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:So the borders, I mean, they just have been changing constantly, especially in the last 50 to a hundred years. And so that makes me think about all the stuff we've talked about about. Europeans and entrepreneurship and marketing and building things. And it's like, if you don't know that your, even your political borders are going to be the same five, 10, 15 years from now, I think it would make you more hesitant to try and build something big or permanent. Because why would you put all that energy in? If you can't trust that you're going to get a return on your investment.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:I feel like that perfectly summarizes how I'm feeling about My own, my own business, my own practice right now.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Tell us more.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Well, um, so in Spain you have to, if you are, if you are, uh, autonomous or in self employed, you have to pay taxes whether or not you are making money.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:I'm sorry. What? Okay.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Yeah. It's like, it's. It's a fucking scam. Pardon my French. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm the one in Spain, but I use my French way more than Rebecca does in this podcast series. I apologize.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:We'd all like your salty personality, Amy.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:don't know that that's true. I
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Well, those people shouldn't be listening.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:podcast is for, is for all the salty talk.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:What you were saying.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:But I was saying, so, you know, you have to pay to register and then you have to pay. Like quarterly, or maybe it's even monthly, you have to pay a fee because you're in business because you exist.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:So, sort of like having a bank account, in my case, in Portugal, costs a bank service fee. No matter how much money, how little money, whether I use the account, there's a fee. So, it's the same way.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:analogy. Yes. Yes. And. Uh, you know, for instance, for Shane, when Shane bills, he bills the company he's contracted for, he has to pay taxes on that money even if he has not yet received it, right? So you know, when you, when you have a fee for service, you send an invoice. Sometimes that invoice is due 30, 60 days after, right? He would have to pay on the taxes before he even received the money.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:So, he has to pay when he issues the invoice.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Bingo. Not when the money comes in. And so it's like, what the, what the F, like, how do you, and then because, you know, again, I'm working effectively nine time zones away from the bulk of the people that know I exist, I am not secure that my client base is going to stay, um, economically viable and to go through the bureaucratic rigmarole of setting up the business and paying all this money when I may, you know, have half the income I have in three months. I don't even like, I just don't know. That's a lot to ask. Um, and I don't, you know, it's not like, It's not like my private practice. It's a very, it's a part time practice. It's not like it's raking in a lot of dough anyway. So I have to figure out what to do about that. Um,
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:And that's all on top of the daily challenges of being an ex pat. You know, the, I have to go, you know, buy a hunk of meat and use my, use my new language to do it. And that's on top of whatever family stuff that we've got going on. You know, my mother broke her foot a couple of weeks ago and there's not a thing I can do aside from love her from this far away. It's, It's a lot to be an expat.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:It is. Yeah. I know people like we've got friends. Where the husband actually retired because the amount of money that he would be paying in taxes working for a U. S. company as an autonomo was financially stupid. And it was
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:single moms who are like, yeah, I could go back to work, but I'm going to have to pay more in child care than I will make at this job. It's like the math doesn't work, guys.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Exactly. Exactly. So basically he retired. He retired like 10 or 15 years early. So, and, you know, I am in no position to judge how another country does business or operates. Because I'm I mean, I don't have any say here, right? I can leave. Um, and I don't know enough about the history to really make any kind of wise. Discerning assessment about what they should do instead of what they're already doing, but they do have themselves in a little bit of a pickle because wages are low in this country. And so even if you tax high, if wages are low, you're still not going to have enough for an aging population, especially when people who are born and raised here and get an education will go to Germany UK, where they can make more money and not have to pay taxes to Spain, um, because, you know, Spain doesn't have the. Sort of be a situation that the U. S. has where they tax you on what you make, no matter where you're making it.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Right. And just to unpack what you just said there, but this is exactly it. It all starts with which country you're even going to. And then you have to spend, I mean, you've got over a year in Spain now.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Mm hmm.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Yeah. You're still figuring this stuff out.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Yeah.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:We don't listeners, we don't know when this ends. I'm not sure it ever does
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:I, I, I would expect in, in five or ten years there would be, we'd know what to do. Like there, you know, but then, hey, what if the laws change
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:or the borders.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:or the borders
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:like anything. And it does. That's another aspect. You know, everybody's so eager to get out of the, well, not everybody, half the population is eager to get out of the United States right now, or at least they're playing with it in their minds and their fantasies. But there is a lot happening here in Europe too, and stuff that could be happening because of us choices. And so this isn't a sure bet either. Nothing. I mean, nothing is, that's the thing we have to really learn to embrace. And that is the thing that being an expat is helping me. Learn to embrace is how do you live a life that makes you happy? We are not constantly riddled by. Anxiety while accepting the reality that so little is in our control.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:yeah, you know, it's interesting that one, I, I actually kind of disagree with what you said about things being rather dependable and stable in the U. S. I don't think that's true for a lot of people, um, and I don't think that's more true there than here in Europe because here in Europe, nobody has to worry about medical bankruptcy. That's not on anybody's mind as a possibility. That's very real for many, many, many Americans. Um, Homelessness too, like it's much harder with the inherent social structure here, and the community base here, and the support of the community here, it's much harder In a lot of Europe to end up in a tent on the streets than it is in the U. S. So I think the instability, particularly for those who are living on the margins of total poverty. Is very real and very chaotic. I think that we have more, I mean, my armchair psychologist assessment is that we have more anxiety in the U S because we are putting far too much faith in what the headlines are telling us in any given moment and accepting it as truth, and we have had. A total absence of major crisis on our soil for 100 years. I would say the last time we had major crisis on our soil was during the Great Depression.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:I agree with that.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Because even Pearl Harbor was isolated to Hawaii and we acted quickly and the war never came on, you know, it never stayed on our soil. Um, whereas here in Europe, I mean, shit's going down every 15, 25, 50 years, depending on what area of the continent you're on. So there's an inherent understanding, I think, because chaotic history is close history, not far away
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Yes, exactly.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:your parents are telling you, it's stories your grandparents are telling you, and they are not as quick to forget and move on, even when, as in the case of Spain, the government has a policy of let's just pretend none of this ever happened. Um, which I actually kind of want to segue, because it's a very fascinating note, historical note, that I am just utterly, what's the word? Impressed by, I think I'm impressed. So Spain is the only country that I know of that has emerged from a fascist dictatorship to democracy without war. They did not, when Franco died, they transitioned to a democracy without extreme violence and war. Now, there was the Basque separatists, right, who had the ETA terrorist organization, but they were very much fringe outliers. The way that they did this Was they agreed both sides committed crimes. Both sides have been victims. We're going to basically let this be water under the bridge and move forward. So people who were in jail, um, you know, anti Francoists who were in jail were released. People who were pro Franco, who murdered others, never were prosecuted. And it was kind of a, we're going to live and let live because we have to, in order to make this transition peacefully. And they managed to make it work. That is not to say that there is bitter resentment on both sides. Because people don't forget, people can't forget, but they did something that I don't think has ever been done before.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Yeah, that's remarkable. Yeah. And from, it's interesting cause there is, there's the government policies and government choice, and then there is the human individual and individual family experience, which are two different things. It takes, um, boy, there's not even words because you can see how impossible that would be to live with and how impossible any other choice would be to live with.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:exactly.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:think you're right. I think it does sum up what we're talking about here. And then part of me wonders, is this all because we're living here in Europe and exploring our existence from this lens and then, you know, plus the election.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:This is a great place to have a midlife crisis, folks.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:That's so true, but that's exactly my point. Or is it because we're, you know, nearly 50. And this is simply what one does at nearly 50. We could be in the middle of a farm in Minnesota and having the same conversations, exist, existential conversations. I think that there is, I think it's probably a combination for me, that this is the time in, in the life when one does this and that. It's almost like I plunged myself into hot water. I was like, okay, we're doing this. Go ahead and peel the layers away. Cause I'm going all in on my midlife crisis, but it's a nice way to do it because as hard as it is, I think it's hard no matter what, when you find yourself at this place in life. So why not make it an adventure? It's going to be hard anyway. Why not make it an adventure?
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:I like that.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:It might be a nice place to leave this.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:I think we should. Let's just wrap this up.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:Dear listeners, we wish you all a, an adventure in your midlife or wherever you are in your life right now, reach out to us. I'm on Instagram at be seriously happy. And Amy is at,
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Vibrance Nutrition.
rebecca_1_11-19-2024_131158:so until the next time I'll push in.
la-chingona_1_11-19-2024_041158:Que te vaya bien.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Bonjola. If you did, the best thing you can do is share it with another person brave enough to move abroad. See you next time!