Ten years ago, my wife, daughter and I relocated from the Washington, DC area to Lisbon, Portugal. Living here has been one of the best experiences of our lives, so we’re not surprised that it’s the country Americans want to move to the most.

But once we arrived, we soon learned that some of our expectations before the move were unrealistic. For example, we thought we could fully integrate simply by mastering the language and making a lot of Portuguese friends. Ten years later, we still feel just as culturally “American” as we did when we first landed.

Now that we’ve fully settled in, our friends back home often ask about what living and retiring abroad is really like. Here are the top three myths about leaving the U.S.:

“Laid-back” and “low-stress” aren’t necessarily the same things, especially if you’re used to efficiency and attentive customer service.

It may take minutes to open a bank account in the U.S., but it could take weeks or longer for an American expat to do it in a country like Portugal, where banks require significant documentation and review periods before opening an account. 

And if you’re worried about American politics, moving abroad won’t stop the news cycle. In fact, without the reassuring familiarity of being “home,” moving abroad might make you even more stressed.

So if your motivation for relocating overseas is to leave your worries behind, you may become disillusioned with life in a foreign country. But if your goal is to pursue excitement, novelty and the great unknown, then you’ll have an easier time overcoming the unwelcome surprises that exist in even the most laid-back countries. 

The cost of living in a country like Portugal might be lower than comparable lifestyles in the U.S., but Americans often face extra administrative steps when they live abroad that can result in added costs.

For example, you may need to hire both a U.S. accountant for your U.S. income taxes, plus a local accountant to file your taxes for your country of residence.

Depending on which country you move to, you should consider the volatile nature of currency exchange rates. For example, the euro rose from about $1.03 early this year to nearly $1.14 today, so most things that my family buys in Portugal now cost us over 10% more than they did a few months ago. 

Most importantly, don’t overlook the value of your time. A medical prescription in Portugal might cost a fifth of what it costs in the U.S., but can take five times longer to fill.

If one of your goals for moving abroad is to lower your living expenses, I suggest doing three things:

1. Create a budget of your current spending.
2. Create a projected budget for your ideal life abroad. This way, you can compare costs and see whether (and where) you can save money by moving abroad.
3. The costs of things are never fixed. Ask yourself: Are some costs more or less likely to change over time? If so, how would those changes impact your projected cost savings?    

In Lisbon, there’s a huge number of expat-focused group activities. There are co-working spaces that cater to expat communities and language schools. But as welcoming and friendly as Portugal tends to be, you may struggle to make new connections if you’re based in more rural parts of the country. 

So how can you meet new friends and colleagues? If you’re traveling with school-age children, does the school organize parent activities? Do you have hobbies you can pursue in a group setting, especially groups that meet regularly so you’ll start to see the same faces over and over again?

Also important: What about your “helper” network? If you face a sudden need to take a return trip to the U.S., for example, who will care for your pets while you’re gone? If you get into an accident, who will notify your family back home if you’re unable to do so? 

My best advice is to have a written contingency plan, complete with names and phone numbers for who will stand in for you if necessary. It’s okay if there are blanks in your contingency plan — you can fill those in as you develop new relationships in your new country. 

As for the one belief about moving abroad that actually is true? “You’ll love living near the ocean on a glorious, sunny day.” A picture tells a thousand words.

Alex Trias is a retired attorney. He and his wife and daughter have been living in Portugal since 2015. He writers about tax planning, investing, early retirement and expat living on Substack.

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Growing up, Gabrielle Heyman, 53, did not know what she wanted to do with her life.

“I thought that I wanted to be in film when I was younger because I’m from L.A. and I have family in film,” she says. “But then when I tried it, I found people were just really mean,” especially to those in the assistant positions she was taking.

It was while working as an assistant at CBS in 1998 that she decided to apply for a job at the company doing sales for online campaigns. “It was the dawn of the internet,” she says, “so they were just building their internet ad sales team.” The people were nicer, it turned out, and she found she had a knack for sales.

Heyman continued to build her career with roles at Electronic Arts, Yahoo and BuzzFeed. Today, she serves as vice president of global brand sales and partnerships for video game developer Zynga.

Despite her eventual success, those early days of the World Wide Web were tenuous. Here’s how Heyman survived and her advice for anyone starting in a brand-new field — like today’s budding AI.

There was a lot of hype around the internet when Heyman started her career.

The 1990s saw lots of investment in internet-based companies, but beginning in 2001, when many of those companies ultimately failed and shut down, the Dotcom bubble burst. As many as 168,395 tech jobs were cut that year alone, according to outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“I was sure I was going to be laid off in the Dotcom crash,” she says. She was working at Electronic Arts by then, which cut 250 jobs in October 2001. “And I wasn’t laid off.”

Heyman believes what helped her hold onto her job was being both good at and passionate about what she was doing. You have to “know your s—” in these moments, she says. “Don’t be a fraud.”

When industries are the zeitgeist, many people flock to them to try to capitalize on the boom. That includes entrepreneurs creating businesses with no clear path for profitability, she says. The draw is the opportunity to cash in rather than their genuine interest in making something that works, she says. When demand for that field levels out and some of those companies fold, “there’s a lot of riff raff cut out,” she says of the people who aren’t genuinely interested — taking many jobs with them.

To survive in a new field — like AI, for example — you have to care about it. That means reading articles, “being up on what clients are doing, playing with the technology yourself,” Heyman says. And be discerning about who you’re interviewing with.

“Look at how the company is investing in long-term talent, infrastructure and leadership,” she says, adding that, “it’s often easy to spot the difference between companies chasing trends and those building for the future.”

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Does your life feel OK? Good enough? Or does it make you feel exquisitely alive? Vibrant, hopeful, fulfilled? Excited for the next day, week, and decade?

If it’s the former, you may be living what, in my research and teaching, I’ve come to call a “B+ life,” which is certainly better than a stick in the eye, but can also be more damaging in the long run.

Because when things are “OK” and “good enough,” we rarely make the effort to make the changes to find something better. For instance, an A+ life, filled with authenticity and fulfillment. 

By the way, and to be clear, the “grader” in all this life-rating is not society. It’s not your family or your boss. It’s you.

Hear me out. As a business academic who studies career trajectories, I completely understand that just surviving in this complex economy can sometimes feel like a victory. I also know that life’s many challenges, like the death of a loved one or a struggle with mental illness, can make achieving a “perfect” life unattainable.

But after working with thousands of early and mid-career professionals, as a professor, researcher, and mentor, I know that for many, settling for B+ is not an imperative — but a habit. We get used to living in a suit that’s a size too big or too small, to use an image that for many, feels uncomfortably accurate. 

We tell ourselves, “The dreams I once had were stupid; no one gets what they want.”

Before I list the more concrete signs you’re living a B+ life yourself, a bit of context and background.

I’m a professor and researcher who studies career trajectories. The culmination of my work is a scientifically-validated methodology taught at NYU Stern School of Business in a class called “Becoming You: Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need.” On campus and in numerous workshops for the public and within organizations, the Becoming You methodology, and its various components, has been used by more than 10,000 people around the world. 

My method is based on the premise that our purpose in life lies at the intersection of our deeply held values, cognitive and emotional aptitudes, and economically viable interests. Aptitudes and interests are usually self-evident, but unfortunately, very few people actually know their values in specific detail. This information has to be excavated, for lack of a better word, with values testing.

But once it is, we can move away from living by default to living by design. There is no easy hack to it, but the end result is the roadmap from B+ to beyond.

To assess whether you are living a B+ life, consider these five signs:

1. You regularly feel drained, even when your life looks ‘successful’ on paper

Despite hitting external milestones — whether at work or in your personal life — your energy is low and you often feel numb, disengaged, or secretly exhausted. This misalignment can show up in what my values testing instrument, The Values Bridge, calls the “Authenticity Gap,” the measure of how much your outer life doesn’t match your inner truth.

2. Your values show up more in fantasy than in reality

You talk about what matters to you (self-determination, creative self-expression, service, community), but your calendar and choices don’t reflect those priorities. 

3. You feel like you’re performing your life rather than enjoying it

If you’re fully honest with yourself, you would have to admit you are curating your image or chasing validation. Dan Harris, an expert on self-awareness and host of the acclaimed 10% Happier podcast, might frame this as a lack of “mindful presence”; you’re so caught in striving that you’ve lost the ability to just be.

4. You experience recurring friction in key relationships

Conflict, resentment, or emotional distance can show up when you’re suppressing needs, boundaries, or truths about yourself. My research clearly demonstrates that not living authentically has a strong tendency to distort how we connect with others.

5. You fantasize about escape, not evolution

You daydream about quitting, running away, or starting over. This is less about reinvention and more about fleeing a life that feels misfitted to who you actually are.

As I said, for some people a B+ life is more than they ever imagined given their life circumstances. It can indeed be “good enough.”

But for others, more fulfillment and authenticity is a yearning that slowly builds, and along the way, causes increasing discomfort, sometimes ending in the kind of disruption that has us starting again, by our own volition or not.

The antidote is understanding your values in their specific detail, and just as importantly, acknowledging whether you are living them as much as your heart and soul desire. Only then can we break out of our comfort zone, to something that can be even better.

Suzy Welch is an award-winning NYU Stern School of Business professor, acclaimed researcher, popular podcaster, and three-time New York Times best-selling author, most recently with “Becoming You: A Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career,″ which is also a #1 bestseller on Amazon. A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, Dr. Welch is a frequent guest of the Today Show and an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal. She serves on the boards of public and private companies, and is the Director of the NYU | Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing.

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Marriage is one of the most rewarding yet challenging journeys in life. While we often enter it with high expectations, the reality is that marriage is a lifelong learning process.

As a psychologist who studies couples every day, I’ve worked with many people who only come to understand the toughest marriage lessons after they’ve experienced conflict, disappointment or a even divorce.

If you can accept these five hard truths about marriage now, you’re more likely to have a happy and successful relationship:

Many couples believe that as long as they love each other, everything else will fall into place. But love doesn’t automatically solve differences in communication styles, personal values or long-term goals.

What truly sustains a marriage is commitment, effort and the willingness to adapt. Love can help keep the spark going, but it’s the daily choices that really make a difference.

DON’T MISS: How to start a side hustle to earn extra money

How do you respond to conflict? How do you show up for each other? How are you continuing to grow together? These are the questions that determine how strong your marriage really is.

One of the biggest misconceptions about marriage is that truly compatible people don’t argue. But not only is conflict inevitable, it’s also essential. In fact, the absence of conflict likely means that important issues are being swept under the rug.

And it’s not the fighting that damages relationships — it’s how couples choose to handle their disagreements. Healthy conflict can bring partners closer by opening the door to deep, meaningful conversations about wants and needs, which can then lead to problem-solving.

My advice is to learn how to fight fairly. No blame games, no stonewalling and no personal attacks. Create a safe space where you can both be honest and open without judgment.

Many people enter a marriage thinking that their spouse will be their “everything” — their best friend, emotional support system, cheerleader and problem-solver. While it’s natural to lean on each other for support, expecting one person to fulfill your every need is unrealistic.

Healthy spouses recognize the importance of individuality. That means maintaining individual interests, friendships and goals. Nurturing a strong sense of self outside of the marriage helps prevent resentment and keeps the relationship from feeling suffocating.

Always remember that a thriving relationship is built on two whole, complementary individuals — not two halves trying to complete each other.

Many couples underestimate how much work it takes to have a healthy marriage.

The honeymoon phase may feel effortless, but over time, life’s responsibilities — work, kids, finances, health — often puts the relationship lower on the priority list.

You need to have regular check-ins and planned quality time together. Just as you wouldn’t expect a car to run forever without maintenance, you can’t expect a marriage to thrive without consistent care.

You can’t expect the person you marry at 25 to be the exact same person at 45. People evolve, priorities shift and life circumstances change.

By embracing change instead of resisting it, you’ll come to realize the beauty and privilege in being able to witness this evolution. 

The most successful couples are the ones who adapt and grow together. While partners drift apart, they find new reasons to keep loving each other every day. This means being open to new experiences and giving one another the space to evolve without feeling threatened by it.

Mark Travers, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in relationships. He holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the lead psychologist at Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides online psychotherapy, counseling and coaching. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org.

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Ten years ago, Tori Simokov says, she was “absolutely terrified” of flying, to the point that she often considered canceling trips. When Simokov entered a long-distance relationship with her now-husband, she was finally forced to confront that fear to travel from New York City to Ohio to see him.

Now, she’s achieved an aspiring globetrotter’s ultimate dream: quitting her job to focus on travel.

Simokov, 33, started Window Seat, a travel-focused Substack newsletter, in December 2023 as a creative outlet on the side of her full-time corporate job. Since then, her newsletter has amassed a loyal readership of over 5,000 subscribers.

In a May 9 post titled “I quit my job to write you this letter,” she announced that she was leaving her full-time job as head of creative strategy at Complex to focus on growing Window Seat.

Quitting her job was a heavy decision for Simokov: “I wanted everybody to feel that weight with me, because it was something that I had just been working on for so long,” she says.

Simokov describes Window Seat’s content as “equal parts editorial and utility,” featuring travel guides, financial hacks, product recommendations and interviews with other travel enthusiasts. Her goal, she says, is to make luxury travel “feel accessible for a new subset of travelers with taste.”

Here’s how Simokov achieved liftoff on her dream of writing about travel.

Simokov made $225,000 yearly in her previous role at Complex, which she describes as “a very, very high-stress job.” She worked 60 to 70 hours each week and rarely had time to travel.

“I felt like I didn’t have time to do anything else in my life besides work, which was really hard,” she says.

After starting Window Seat, Simokov was pleasantly surprised when readers began to pay to subscribe within the very first month. By August 2024, she reached 100 paid subscribers, qualifying her as a “Substack Bestseller.” 

Still, concerns about financial stability held her back from focusing on Window Seat full-time.

“I just kept thinking that this is what I want to be doing, but the money was what was holding me back,” she recalls.

After over a year of juggling Window Seat alongside her full-time job, Simokov had an epiphany: “If I spent 100% of my time working on Window Seat, then how successful could it be?”

“Once that idea took root in my head, I couldn’t think about anything else,” she says.

At the end of the day, Simokov realized that she wasn’t willing to trade “being able to see the world just in order to have a paycheck,” she says.

In April, she gave her notice at work. Since then, she’s planned two major upcoming trips: Menorca in July, and Portugal and Amsterdam in September.

Subscriptions to Window Seat currently cost $7 per month or $60 for a full year, and Simokov makes an average of $930 each month from the newsletter. She hit the milestone of earning a cumulative $10,000 from her Substack subscriptions in April.

Simokov also runs a creative consultancy, V1 Projects, that currently provides most of her income. Subscriptions to Window Seat make up just about 15% of her total income, but Simokov hopes that her numbers will continue to rise: “Eventually, I want Window Seat to be the full-time thing.”

In Simokov’s view, one of the crucial ingredients to her success is consistency.

At first, she posted new content every two weeks, but since quitting her full-time job, she has accelerated to posting twice a week.

Additionally, she lists having a unique point of view and building community as her guiding principles for success on Substack.

“I’m still kind of figuring it out, but I’ve always been a pretty organized person,” she says. “Right now I’m just kind of leaning on the skills that have always made me successful in that area, keeping a tight calendar, my to-do list, things like that.”

For Simokov, the most rewarding part of writing her newsletter is “knowing that what I’m doing has an effect on people.”

After she wrote about her experience overcoming her fear of flying, a reader messaged her to share that Simokov’s story had inspired her to tackle her own flight anxiety.

“She sent me a message, ‘I’m looking forward to a lifetime in the skies,'” Simokov recalls. “It just touched me so deeply.”

Simokov has experienced several other “pinch me” moments since starting Window Seat, including finding out that she has a famous fan.

Last October, actress Hailee Steinfeld reached out to Simokov via Instagram DM to tell her that Window Seat is one of her favorite newsletters.

Recently, Simokov was invited to LaGuardia Airport for a food tasting event hosted by Delta and Uber. (“You heard it here first: airport food is good now,” she says.)

As a longtime Delta loyalist, it was “a dream come true” to meet airline personnel and get a private tour of the terminal.

“I came home and cried because it was such a full circle moment,” she says.

The fact that Window Seat is now her full-time gig “hasn’t fully sunken in” for Simokov, but she’s feeling hopeful about the future.

“The big thing for me, which has been very, very new and something I haven’t ever felt before, is I don’t feel any fear,” she says. “I was very much like, this is the right decision, and I just know that everything is going to work out.”

Are you ready to buy a house? Take Smarter by CNBC Make It’s new online course How to Buy Your First Home. Expert instructors will help you weigh the cost of renting vs. buying, financially prepare, and confidently navigate every step of the process—from mortgage basics to closing the deal. Sign up today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $97 (+taxes and fees) through July 15, 2025.

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