#35 – From Someday to Today: Retirement in Portugal With Cynthia Wilson & Craig Bjork

Adam Carrol [00:00:34]:
Do you ever wonder who you’ll be and what you’ll do after your career is over? Wouldn’t it be nice to hear stories from people who figured it out who are thriving in retirement? I’m Ryan Doolittle. After working with the Retire Sooner team for years and researching and writing about how they structure their lifestyles, I know there’s more to be learned. So I’m going straight to the source and taking you with me. My mission with the Happiest Retirees podcast is to inspire 1 million families to find happiness in retirement. I want to learn how to live an exceptional life from people who do it every day. Let’s get started. Craig Bjork. Cynthia Wilson, thank you so much for coming on the Happiest Retirees podcast.

Craig Bjork [00:01:18]:
You’re welcome.

Adam Carrol [00:01:19]:
Now, you’re coming to me live from Portugal, correct?

Cynthia Wilson [00:01:23]:
That’s right.

Craig Bjork [00:01:24]:
Correct.

Adam Carrol [00:01:24]:
So, okay, you’re originally from Wichita, but now you live in. We went over this pronunciation, and I knew I would butcher it, but. Marinha Grande.

Cynthia Wilson [00:01:32]:
Marinha Granda.

Adam Carrol [00:01:33]:
Marinha Grande.

Cynthia Wilson [00:01:35]:
I have to correct you on one thing that’s very important to me. I am not from Kansas. I’m from Seattle.

Adam Carrol [00:01:41]:
You’re from Seattle. Very important.

Cynthia Wilson [00:01:45]:
It’s very important to me because I don’t relate as much to Kansas.

Adam Carrol [00:01:50]:
Those are two very different cities.

Cynthia Wilson [00:01:52]:
So different. Yeah.

Adam Carrol [00:01:55]:
In fact, how did you. Why don’t we just get into a little of the romance here? How did you two strike up a connection being from two different parts of the country?

Cynthia Wilson [00:02:05]:
We were playing a pal talk game called Gender Wars. It was a trivia game, and it was men against women. And every night we would be in there with this whole group of people. Great people, seeing people every night. Got to know everybody. But Craig intrigued me because he was hilarious and he knew everything except how to spell. And as a writer, that was like almost no deal.

Adam Carrol [00:02:32]:
Almost a deal breaker almost.

Cynthia Wilson [00:02:35]:
And then I looked at his profile and I saw he was from Kansas and Wichita and uncle that lived there. And I asked if he knew him. Just, you know, chatting in the room. But I Noticed that he was in a boat in front of this beautiful island. Blue eyes, broad shoulders, you know, single, my age. I’m like, goodness. So I sent him a private message saying, where are you in the picture? And he said, I just got back from Belize. And I said, I just got back from Africa.

Cynthia Wilson [00:03:06]:
And we started a conversation that’s still going on.

Adam Carrol [00:03:10]:
Wow.

Cynthia Wilson [00:03:11]:
It was like. Yeah.

Adam Carrol [00:03:13]:
So you were both already big travelers, it sounds like.

Craig Bjork [00:03:16]:
Right?

Cynthia Wilson [00:03:17]:
Yes. It’s our passion. We’ve been to over probably 75 countries between us. He’s been to Moore.

Adam Carrol [00:03:24]:
Oh, my goodness.

Cynthia Wilson [00:03:25]:
If you count the countries he was in not carrying a gun. I’ve been to more, but as a Marine. Oh, he.

Adam Carrol [00:03:34]:
Yes, because he’s a. Well, once you’re a Marine, you’re always a Marine. But can you say he chopped up.

Cynthia Wilson [00:03:39]:
A bunch of kids?

Craig Bjork [00:03:41]:
Right. I retired.

Adam Carrol [00:03:42]:
You retired, but you’re still. Don’t Marines say, like, I’m still a Marine?

Craig Bjork [00:03:46]:
That’s a new generational saying. It used to be. It used to be it was okay to say you’re a former Marine or retired Marine. And now the new trend is you’re a Marine no matter what. So if someone says they were a former Marine, a retired Marine, then they were a Marine a couple decades ago.

Adam Carrol [00:04:08]:
Gotcha.

Craig Bjork [00:04:09]:
So it’s just new terminology for the new generation. The only thing we agree on is we never say ex Marine.

Adam Carrol [00:04:15]:
Oh, right. Okay. Leave that to the army or someone. Right. Don’t the Marines, they definitely feel superior to the Army?

Craig Bjork [00:04:22]:
Sure.

Adam Carrol [00:04:24]:
I interviewed a guy that was a Marine, and he said that he. He definitely felt that because his brother. Maybe it’s because his brother was in the Army.

Cynthia Wilson [00:04:32]:
No. Marines feel superior to everyone.

Adam Carrol [00:04:36]:
Okay, well, maybe they’ve earned it. They do a lot of hard work.

Cynthia Wilson [00:04:40]:
They have.

Adam Carrol [00:04:41]:
Yeah.

Craig Bjork [00:04:43]:
It easily comes down to economics. It’s easier for them to go after the higher quality person, have the tougher training because we only need so many. Where the other services have to fill the ranks and they have to lower their. Their standards to get those numbers.

Adam Carrol [00:05:02]:
That’s. Is that why they say the few, the proud, the Marines?

Craig Bjork [00:05:05]:
Right. The few, the proud, the Marines, Yeah.

Adam Carrol [00:05:08]:
Okay. I want to get to. Because there’s so much to talk about with you. Two very, very, very interesting lives. Even though you’re from Seattle, Cynthia, you. You were living in Wichita with Craig, and you had a food truck named Lumpia Palooza and the Parsnipity Cafe. Now it’s. I think you.

Adam Carrol [00:05:25]:
You had both at the same time, right?

Cynthia Wilson [00:05:27]:
Yeah, kind of. We started the Cafe. And Parsnipity Cafe is a name that came to me in a dream. I’m not kidding. Before I opened a restaurant, I was a private chef. I did home chef work and things like that. Never, ever thought of owning a restaurant. It literally fell on my lap.

Cynthia Wilson [00:05:46]:
But before the days of ever having that, I had a dream when we were watching Food Truck wars or whatever, that we owned a food truck called Parsnipity. And I went, well, when I woke up, I went, gosh, that’s cute. And I googled it and there’s no such word. There’s a town in New Jersey that’s similar, but it’s not Parsnipity. So when the restaurant landed in my lap, I named it Parsnipity Cafe because I thought, I’m not going to do better than that. And when I lived in Hawaii as a young woman, we used to eat a lot of lumpia. And I learned to make it. And it was just part of my life, growing up with the kids and parties and potlucks, whatever.

Cynthia Wilson [00:06:28]:
We always had lumpia. So I decided to put it on the menu as kind of an appetizer. And it was super popular. And one day I had some leftover pulled pork, and I thought, wonder what that would taste like rolled in an egg roll. It’s a lumpia is a Filipino egg roll. So I wonder what.

Adam Carrol [00:06:45]:
Oh, okay.

Cynthia Wilson [00:06:46]:
I was going to ask, like, rolled in Olympia, an egg roll and dipped in barbecue sauce. So we tried it and took it out to the customers. Everyone liked it. So my sous chef and I were running around the kitchen putting everything in wrappers and apple pie filling. Chocolate chip cookie dough. Oh, my God. Chocolate chip cookie dough. Incredible fried.

Cynthia Wilson [00:07:08]:
So I said, let’s on Halloween, have an event, and we’ll call it Lopia Palooza. And we’ll have 10 savory styles and 10 sweet styles. And we’ll just, you know, people could come and have these. And the food writer, who was so kind to me getting started, she really liked me and gave me a lot of press, put it in the paper. And on that day, on Halloween at our restaurant, he was dressed in a kilt, I was dressed in a winch costume. We served. Exactly. We served over a thousand lumpia out of that restaurant.

Cynthia Wilson [00:07:51]:
They were down the. Yeah, they were down the street. Our restaurant was in the Epic center, which is the tallest building in Kansas. It’s in the atrium, this office building. People were four or five blocks down the street in downtown Wichita. And so at the end of the Day we were just. We were hammered. I looked.

Adam Carrol [00:08:12]:
You were loopy it out.

Cynthia Wilson [00:08:13]:
We were lympheda. I looked at him and said, I think we need a food truck. And by April, we had one on the road, and it came out of the gate like a bullet train and was instantly lobbing. Hundreds of people logged. That thing was a muddy machine.

Adam Carrol [00:08:33]:
Wow.

Cynthia Wilson [00:08:34]:
And it was all just. I never wanted a restaurant. I never wanted a food truck. That kind of leads us into. Into Covid.

Craig Bjork [00:08:42]:
Okay.

Cynthia Wilson [00:08:42]:
Because.

Adam Carrol [00:08:43]:
So you were. You were doing that up until Covid hit. And that’s when the. The dream of going to Portugal started.

Craig Bjork [00:08:50]:
No, we were planning on retiring overseas somewhere. We thought of Belize. We. We loved Belize. I used to go. I’ve been there every year, 10 years with the Wichita State geology department going down for their spring break, helping geology students look. Look at the near shore environment, reading rocks and things like that. Oh, we thought about retiring there.

Craig Bjork [00:09:13]:
Yeah. After the Marine Corps, I went use my GI Bill, went to school for geology.

Adam Carrol [00:09:18]:
Interesting. Okay. This is the study of rocks and land.

Craig Bjork [00:09:22]:
Well, it was mostly. Mostly deciphering where to find the oil and gas.

Adam Carrol [00:09:26]:
Oh, that. That sounds like a lucrative part of geology. Yeah.

Craig Bjork [00:09:31]:
Yes. Yes. More so than being the guy you bring rocks to and say, what is this?

Adam Carrol [00:09:36]:
Yeah.

Craig Bjork [00:09:39]:
So we were, at the time, we were on a Christmas holiday vacation in Scandinavia, and Cynthia ran across an article, Top 10 Places to Retire, and Portugal was on there. And she’s like, yeah, I used to live there. Live and work there in the 80s. She came to me and said, what about Portugal? And I said. I said, perfect. Beautiful weather, beautiful people, beautiful food. So then we started researching it, and pretty much. Pretty much we were planning on retiring a few years later, but when Covid came, that forced our decision for us.

Adam Carrol [00:10:12]:
Gotcha. Okay. So at that point, did you close down Lumbia Palooza and the Parsnip Cafe?

Craig Bjork [00:10:19]:
Yes.

Adam Carrol [00:10:19]:
Or you started working towards doing that?

Craig Bjork [00:10:22]:
Well, we’d closed Parsnipity Cafe a little bit earlier, just before COVID hit. Okay. And because our hands were full with the truck.

Adam Carrol [00:10:31]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:10:32]:
Yeah. But we were 65 years old, working seven days a week, 14 to 16 hours a day. Oh, we could barely crawl at the chip. Yeah. It was too much. And the truck was doing so well, we didn’t need the restaurant at that time.

Adam Carrol [00:10:52]:
So Parsippity was closed. And then you were. Were you working that many hours just on the truck?

Cynthia Wilson [00:10:57]:
No, that was with both.

Adam Carrol [00:10:59]:
Okay, okay, gotcha.

Cynthia Wilson [00:11:01]:
There was one day I was sitting in my office. This was still when we had the cafe. Cause I was in my chef office, and I got one phone call after another closing. You know, canceling weddings and big events. We’d go to events with 30,000 people. Music festivals, fairs. This is the way our truck operated. We were.

Cynthia Wilson [00:11:22]:
That truck is on a street corner somewhere. We only operated for huge crowds. We would do lunches in other businesses, and nobody was coming to work. So it was just like. And I just sat there and cried because it was over. Yeah. Oh, it was like 50 people called and said, your business is over. Because it was.

Adam Carrol [00:11:44]:
Oh, man. Oh, yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:11:45]:
The government came out with all these loans. But I said, craig, we are so close to retirement. I do not want to go into debt to try to save this, because I don’t think food, drugs are coming back.

Adam Carrol [00:11:58]:
Right.

Cynthia Wilson [00:11:59]:
And, well, I didn’t know if the world would come back. Remember how we were? We didn’t.

Adam Carrol [00:12:03]:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:12:05]:
So he had an idea to go on Social Security.

Adam Carrol [00:12:10]:
Okay.

Craig Bjork [00:12:11]:
We decided to take Social Security early. We looked at it like, okay, we take it two years earlier. We get a little bit less money, but that’s two years that we’re drawing Social Security.

Adam Carrol [00:12:21]:
Exactly.

Craig Bjork [00:12:21]:
I figured out it would. Wouldn’t until we hit in our ninet would we start. Had. Start losing money on taking it early. And we’re going to Portugal. We decided now we can move up our timetable to Portugal and we can come to Portugal, where the cost of living is half of what it is in the United States. So the little bit lower Social Security was. That was fine to live on.

Craig Bjork [00:12:44]:
Then all the other money is just mad money.

Adam Carrol [00:12:47]:
Is the cost of living in Portugal that much better to where you’re on your Social Security? You’re ahead of the game.

Cynthia Wilson [00:12:54]:
This is a delicate topic.

Adam Carrol [00:12:57]:
Oh, it’s delicate.

Cynthia Wilson [00:12:58]:
Oh, it is. Because the Portuguese people minimum wage is about $800, $900 a month. This is what they live on. So when we first got here, we were like, oh, my gosh, everything’s free. The feelings of my Portuguese friends, and they’re going, it’s not free to us.

Adam Carrol [00:13:18]:
Right.

Cynthia Wilson [00:13:18]:
And so the answer is yes, you can live, like the YouTube say, on 22 to 20 $500 a month for a couple. But not in Lisbon, Porto or the Algarve. That’s like trying to live in Manhattan on that.

Adam Carrol [00:13:35]:
Oh, Lisbon’s just as expensive as. As any big city in the U.S. right.

Craig Bjork [00:13:41]:
Right.

Cynthia Wilson [00:13:41]:
So and Porto and the Algarve too. So it’s like, if you’re willing to live in a little serviceable town like we do. You can do it. You know, there’s not a lot of travel with that. You know, you can’t eat out every single meal or whatever. But yes, it can be done, which it can’t hardly be done in the United States.

Adam Carrol [00:14:04]:
Right. Okay, so Marina grand. And I apologize to any Portuguese listeners.

Craig Bjork [00:14:13]:
You can use the English translation. It’s called Big Navy.

Adam Carrol [00:14:17]:
Big Navy. Okay, so how far is Big Navy from like, let’s say you want to fly to visit family. How far is the drive to the airport?

Craig Bjork [00:14:26]:
It’s an hour and a half.

Adam Carrol [00:14:28]:
Oh, that’s not bad.

Cynthia Wilson [00:14:29]:
Beautiful drive. Beautiful.

Craig Bjork [00:14:31]:
Portugal is not that big.

Adam Carrol [00:14:34]:
So you, and you drive along the Silver Coast. Right. So it’s, you can see the ocean and.

Craig Bjork [00:14:39]:
Right. And it’s from here. We’re about five miles from, from the highway. The highway is a three lane, well, six lane all the way to Lisbon. And it’s all, it’s better roads than you have in the States.

Adam Carrol [00:14:51]:
Oh, really? Okay.

Craig Bjork [00:14:52]:
There’s a private, private highway. So you do pay a toll. But there’s no potholes, there’s no bad areas. There’s rest stops, gas stations all the way. All along the way. The route, beautiful driving. Or you can take the scenic road, the windy roads along the coast of the little towns. It’ll take you about four hours.

Adam Carrol [00:15:12]:
Oh, so it’ll be longer, but you’ll love it if you’re ready for that. Okay, just so our listeners know, I was. You were featured in a CNN travel article and I think, was it you, Cynthia, who said, the only way I’m coming back to the US is in an urn?

Cynthia Wilson [00:15:29]:
Yeah. That would, if somebody says something outrageous, that would be me.

Adam Carrol [00:15:34]:
I do try not to, but that was quite an endorsement for Portugal.

Cynthia Wilson [00:15:40]:
And it’s true. It’s really true. I did. Some people cut their knickers a bit in a twist over that. I didn’t mean I wouldn’t come home for a visit. I mean, I would never come home live. And the reporter actually said, will you ever go back there to live? I said, I will not go back unless I’m in an urn. But I meant to live.

Cynthia Wilson [00:16:02]:
And then they loved the sound bite so much they didn’t put in the context. So, you know, my family’s like, not even for the kids weddings, you know.

Adam Carrol [00:16:11]:
I’m like, no, oh, no. Oh. I didn’t take it that way. I didn’t even take it as if you hated the U.S. it was just how much you loved your current living situation.

Cynthia Wilson [00:16:20]:
So there’s A little bit of both of that.

Adam Carrol [00:16:23]:
Okay, now tell me. So this is a little bit getting into the nuts and bolts, but I didn’t know there’s an actual visa known as the D7 retirement visa. That’s a. That’s a specific visa.

Cynthia Wilson [00:16:36]:
Yeah.

Craig Bjork [00:16:36]:
She could have actually a passive income. So it could be. It’s mostly retirement. It used to be for remote workers as well, but they’ve made a new visa for remote workers called a D6. But the D7 is now pretty much only retired people are doing. Doing that.

Cynthia Wilson [00:16:55]:
Yeah.

Adam Carrol [00:16:55]:
So, like, say I just decided I wanted to move to Portugal. Could I just start applying for the. The D7 visa if I were a certain age?

Craig Bjork [00:17:05]:
Well, no, it doesn’t have to be a certain age. You would just have to prove a certain amount of income, guaranteed income per month. Say you have four or five rental houses that you get income from. Say you have a pension from some company or some type of something set up where that pays you every month.

Cynthia Wilson [00:17:24]:
Like a podcast. You could do this podcast from Portugal. Many people come on that many digital nomads.

Craig Bjork [00:17:34]:
Yeah, there is a. Digital Lisbon has been rated as, I think, one of the top destinations in the world for digital nomads.

Adam Carrol [00:17:42]:
Wow. And it’s.

Cynthia Wilson [00:17:44]:
So we’ll talk. That sounds.

Adam Carrol [00:17:46]:
That sounds doable. Because a friend of mine wanted to move to the UK and it was. It was harder. She owned. She bought property, but that didn’t even really expedite it.

Cynthia Wilson [00:17:58]:
It’s very.

Craig Bjork [00:17:58]:
No, it doesn’t. Now, you don’t need. You don’t need to buy property or anything like that. In fact, we have friends that. There’s certain hours of the week where they can’t do anything because they’re working from home. Either. Either. Medical transcribers are doing some things online with their company back in the States.

Adam Carrol [00:18:16]:
Okay.

Craig Bjork [00:18:17]:
But they’ve got a. So those people, though, have a different agreement where the company pays taxes to Portugal. The employment taxes. Digital nomads don’t have to have that company back in the States.

Adam Carrol [00:18:31]:
Okay.

Cynthia Wilson [00:18:32]:
There’s many categories of visas. All of those would be different. The remote worker, the digital nomad. So our visa, the requirements for the D7 passive income is just that we have enough income. That would be 900 for the first applicant a month and then half again for the second applicant in a couple. That’s math. I don’t do it. So you’re all free to do that for yourself.

Adam Carrol [00:19:01]:
I was told there’d be no math in this podcast.

Cynthia Wilson [00:19:04]:
Yeah, I won’t. But you have to have that coming in a month. And then you have to show that you have €10,000 in the bank here in Portugal, a bank account with that. But that’s your money. You can immediately spend it, and you usually do on rent and, you know, getting set up. But you have to have that and a clean FBI check.

Adam Carrol [00:19:30]:
Okay.

Cynthia Wilson [00:19:31]:
And so really, it’s not hard at all. Almost anyone can do it.

Adam Carrol [00:19:36]:
That’s very cool to hear. Okay, so tell me. So I. I know, Cynthia, you’re a type a person. Your entire life has been work, work, work. So retirement has been a little bit challenging for you in that way. What do you do each day? How have you made that work for you?

Cynthia Wilson [00:19:53]:
So since we retired less than three years ago here in Portugal, I’ve written a book and started two others, given cooking lessons, edited the English translation to this Portuguese children’s book, took Portuguese language classes for several weeks, getting the A2 certificate, and started a personal chef business called Parsnipting Parties and hosted dozens of dinner parties and helped a lot of American immigrants settle into Portugal. So, as you can see, my retirement isn’t working out for me. You know, in the back of my mind, something is telling me that I’m supposed to be knitting or something, but leisure spooks me. I feel like I’m doing something wrong or even naughty if I’m not doing anything. And, you know, part of me wants every day to just unfold, and part of me wants to design every moment of every day. I always have lived my calendars and lists. You know, when my grandmother was my age, she was an old lady, you know, in a different kind of way than we are today. And she never left her little teeny apartment, and she watched her programs or her stories, and she read the Bible and prayed and embroidered there on her little couch, you know, and I just can’t even imagine, you know, being able to live like that.

Cynthia Wilson [00:21:22]:
But I have to tell you, though, here’s one of the things that drives me. It’s an essay I’m working on right now called My Last can of Hairspray. So I don’t buy product or anything. I’m kind of a wash and wear girl. And once in a while, like tonight, I put hairspray in my bangs, and I needed hairspray, and I picked up a thing of hairspray at the store, and that’s a lot. And I said, that’ll likely be the last can of hairspray I buy. And that really, really struck me because it’s true. And I have this pressure to get it all done.

Cynthia Wilson [00:22:05]:
I have a major Broadway musical and I won’t say what it’s about, but it’s totally original in my head, nearly written, lyrics and all. I have two other books nearly written, you know, outlined. I have a list of 15 articles. I have this stuff and I don’t want this to be lost. I just finished a book here and I feel like if I don’t get this books out, or at least on paper, if I get them down, they’re okay. Because my son, who needs to write a book of his own called marketing your mother for dummies, will happily monetize all of my intellectual property, which I’ve left to him and my daughter in my will. But it has to be there, you know, So I just have this hurry. Although I’m perfectly healthy, amazingly healthy.

Cynthia Wilson [00:23:06]:
But I don’t want to die with my brain full of art.

Adam Carrol [00:23:10]:
Of good stuff.

Cynthia Wilson [00:23:11]:
Of good stuff.

Adam Carrol [00:23:13]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:23:13]:
And I don’t want to die at all, but. And I. And not finished.

Adam Carrol [00:23:19]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:23:19]:
With anything. Well.

Adam Carrol [00:23:21]:
And. And I don’t know what the Broadway musical is about, but I’m guessing it’s not called Hairspray.

Cynthia Wilson [00:23:30]:
I already did that one. I think I was six at the time, so I.

Adam Carrol [00:23:35]:
But I. I really love hearing that you. I mean, because that seems like what life is if. If you still have so much to offer, you want. You want to share it. You don’t want to just sit in a lazy boy and clock out, you.

Cynthia Wilson [00:23:48]:
Know, and let that atrophy. Let it just waste. It’s waste. And this maybe sounds arrogant and I surely don’t mean to, but if I were to die with this head full of stuff, it’s such a waste.

Adam Carrol [00:24:03]:
Yeah, exactly. Well, I’m glad you’re still getting it out there because the rest of us want to hear it.

Cynthia Wilson [00:24:09]:
Yes, I do hope that pretty soon. I love creating my work, Pete. All my writing. I don’t like the business aspect of it, which is what drives my son out of his mind because he wants me to get very rich before I die, so. But I’ve got to get serious about that. And he’ll help me. He’ll let me do that.

Adam Carrol [00:24:38]:
Well, Craig, what do you do each day? What your. Your. Your wife is. Is really killing it here. What are you keeping up?

Craig Bjork [00:24:45]:
Not at all. I make a few plant hangers here and there. I wake up, have my coffee and realize I don’t have to do a thing today.

Adam Carrol [00:24:54]:
And you’re happy with that? That’s what you enjoy?

Craig Bjork [00:24:57]:
I’M happy with that. You know, I check the sports, I check the sports news all the teams, I watch a little soccer, make Christmas presents, plant hangers, things that my grandpa had taught me. Drive her around to all these catering things.

Cynthia Wilson [00:25:12]:
I will say he does help me a lot with my catering work. He does the food art. I do really whimsical, like making a cauliflower into a cat or peppers into a train or whatever. Really whimsical stuff. But I didn’t mention it before, but I’m visually impaired and it’s the least interesting thing about me, so I hardly bring it up. But I can drive, obviously, and so he does have to drive me to meet my social life. Take me there and you’re gonna have a chauffeur.

Adam Carrol [00:25:48]:
I think Craig is a pretty good one, you know.

Cynthia Wilson [00:25:51]:
Yeah. And. And he does a lot of fetch and carry with all the catering.

Adam Carrol [00:25:57]:
Oh, gosh. Okay.

Cynthia Wilson [00:25:58]:
He’s my helper. I mean, I would be that lady sitting there knitting if. If I didn’t have his help. So. Thank you. You’re a team, dear.

Adam Carrol [00:26:06]:
We are, yeah. And do you both consider your motto to be joy as my default state of being, or is that more just Cynthia?

Cynthia Wilson [00:26:14]:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him joyous.

Craig Bjork [00:26:16]:
I’m happy. I’m happy with just observing people. You know, I can. I can go to the park and sit all day, just watch people.

Adam Carrol [00:26:23]:
Yeah, but you found a balance. Like whatever you’re doing seems to be working. You seem happy.

Craig Bjork [00:26:28]:
Yeah, she does the talking and I just watch people.

Cynthia Wilson [00:26:32]:
We say, I’m the circus, he’s the audience. And my best friend in the world, Brenda, she’s a introvert too, and she says we just like watching.

Adam Carrol [00:26:50]:
But you both have core pursuits. I mean, you’ve already mentioned a bunch of them. But Cynthia, you also love genealogy, I think.

Cynthia Wilson [00:26:57]:
Yeah, I’ve been, since I was a little girl, very interested in genealogy because my grandmother immigrated from Denmark as an adult. So it was very. The Danish part was very much part of our life. She had all these pictures of these beautiful thatched houses with these big families in front. And I was always very interested in those people and in my ancestors, just in general. I think I’m big on legacies. That’s part of like the hairspray thing. Who were there, what part of me is from them.

Cynthia Wilson [00:27:34]:
It’s like my Danish grandmother immigrated from Denmark to the United States. Her mother, as 14 year old, immigrated from Sweden to Denmark to get a job as a maid, where she met the gardener My great grandfather and they got married. So I come from a line of immigrant women, and to be an immigrant woman says something about you. It takes vast courage to do this.

Adam Carrol [00:28:02]:
Well, I’d like how you described who you wanted to be in Portugal. You didn’t want to be an expat, you wanted to be an immigrant. I mean, tell me about the difference.

Cynthia Wilson [00:28:11]:
Well, sometimes I make the expats cranky when I do this, but I’ll speak my lived experience.

Adam Carrol [00:28:20]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:28:20]:
And they can speak theirs. So many people come here for the goodies, the health care, which is fantastic, the cost of living, the beaches, the weather, the safety, the no political upheaval, although there’s stuff goes on. They come for all the goodies, but they never integrate. They hang out in enclaves, expat enclaves. They go to expat meets, meetups. They never meet any Portuguese people. They don’t learn to speak Portuguese. We had been here six weeks when we were at a restaurant and I turned to the waitress in Portuguese, said to her, see the man down there with a flowered hat, Ask him if he wants a Bifana.

Cynthia Wilson [00:29:08]:
And I was at a table with three ladies from Great Britain and they went, you speak Portuguese? I said, well, that’s much. I should by working on it. Don’t you know how long you’ve been here? 30 years.

Adam Carrol [00:29:22]:
Oh, they’ve been there and still didn’t speak it at all.

Cynthia Wilson [00:29:25]:
No. And I know any Portuguese people? Well, my housekeeper, my accountant, my garden guy. And so they live these separate lives and don’t. Some of them don’t even have decent respect for the people or the culture. This drives me crazy because I love the Portuguese people.

Adam Carrol [00:29:49]:
They are there that many Americans that they can only speak English and still get by each.

Cynthia Wilson [00:29:55]:
It’s not just Americans, it’s enclaves. So it can mean Germans and Aussies and Canadians and anybody else in England, Scandinavians, that all speak English.

Adam Carrol [00:30:07]:
Oh, I see.

Cynthia Wilson [00:30:08]:
But in Marino Grande, almost no one speaks English, so.

Adam Carrol [00:30:12]:
So you better study up on the Portuguese or you’re not going to be able to get your groceries or whatever.

Cynthia Wilson [00:30:17]:
Well, it’s going to be hard, you know.

Adam Carrol [00:30:18]:
Yeah, it’s.

Cynthia Wilson [00:30:19]:
Complain about that. I went into the bank and tried to sort out something and no one in that entire bank spoke English. I’m like, does your bank in Ohio speak Portuguese?

Adam Carrol [00:30:30]:
Right. It’s a great point. Yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:30:32]:
So I saw that, you know, and decided, no, I am going to become Portuguese. I’m going to be Cynthia Portuguese. I’m going to be a Portuguese woman. And so I’m going to get my citizenship in three years. I’ll be eligible for that.

Adam Carrol [00:30:50]:
How long does it take? What do you have to do to be a citizen?

Cynthia Wilson [00:30:53]:
It’s five years, and then you apply, and then it. Bureaucracy is very slow. So after that, okay, you have to. You have to have your A2 certificate, which we both have, and then I will hold an EU passport. It’s one of the most valuable passports in the world. Because I can live anywhere as a citizen in the eu.

Adam Carrol [00:31:12]:
Right.

Cynthia Wilson [00:31:13]:
I can go live with my Danish cousins in Denmark.

Adam Carrol [00:31:16]:
That’s amazing.

Cynthia Wilson [00:31:17]:
It is. And I still get to be an American. That you can.

Adam Carrol [00:31:21]:
Oh, you don’t have to renounce. You can have. Be a dual.

Craig Bjork [00:31:24]:
No.

Adam Carrol [00:31:24]:
Okay.

Cynthia Wilson [00:31:25]:
Greg isn’t gonna do it.

Adam Carrol [00:31:27]:
Oh, Craig, you’re not gonna do it? Why aren’t you gonna do it, Craig?

Craig Bjork [00:31:30]:
I don’t. I don’t see the need. I’m not gonna move to another country. I mean, after five years. Five years, I’ll register as a permanent resident.

Adam Carrol [00:31:38]:
Okay. Which is basically like a green card, right? Isn’t that.

Craig Bjork [00:31:42]:
Well, we already have that.

Adam Carrol [00:31:44]:
Oh, you already have that?

Craig Bjork [00:31:45]:
Yeah. You have to be a temporary resident, and every two years you renew it here. Our last renewal is just on. Is just online.

Adam Carrol [00:31:53]:
Oh, okay.

Craig Bjork [00:31:54]:
And, you know, no meetings or anything like that. My thoughts on the. On the. On the expat thing. What if suddenly we started calling all the immigrants from Central America, South America and the Caribbean expats instead of immigrants?

Adam Carrol [00:32:11]:
You mean in the U.S. you mean.

Craig Bjork [00:32:12]:
Right.

Adam Carrol [00:32:13]:
I feel like that would change some attitudes.

Cynthia Wilson [00:32:16]:
Exactly.

Craig Bjork [00:32:17]:
To me, expat is more of a title of a privileged kind of like a colonizer title.

Adam Carrol [00:32:22]:
Exactly. Yeah.

Craig Bjork [00:32:24]:
They try to say, well, expat means that we don’t plan to stay here, we’re going to go back home. But there is no expat visa.

Adam Carrol [00:32:31]:
Right.

Craig Bjork [00:32:32]:
It’s kind of a way of trying to say you’re privileged and they’re not. Exactly. Because the other people, like the Brazilians that immigrate here and the people from Africa, they don’t call themselves expats. They call themselves immigrants.

Adam Carrol [00:32:47]:
Oh, so is it mainly an American thing?

Craig Bjork [00:32:50]:
It started from the uk okay. It’s actually a UK term. And they used it all around the world. Then all the Americans picked it up, the Canadians picked it up, South Americans, Australians, they all picked up the term. I don’t know. And I don’t think the French use it because there’s a lot of French here.

Adam Carrol [00:33:09]:
Oh, there are.

Cynthia Wilson [00:33:09]:
That would be used in English, wouldn’t it? Yes. They probably use the same word, but in French. I. I do want to say on this topic, though, the reason I can have a social life without the expats is I did an extremely proactive thing that I highly recommend anyone doing that’s going to move to a foreign country like we did is two years when we first started, and we started zeroing in on the Leria district with the cities being Leria and Marine Grand. So I went to both of those cities, Facebook page, the actual city where they all talk to each other. Facebook page showed us with our food truck, said, hi, we’re Cynthia and Craig. We’re going to be retiring there in two years and I’ve already started. I’m a chef.

Cynthia Wilson [00:34:03]:
I’ve already started learning Portuguese cuisine. We’re so excited to be a part of you and really hope that you’ll help us get settled in and all this. And that got like hundreds of welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. In English. I did that. But I got about a dozen people who sent a DM and said, if there’s anything at all we can do to help, just let us know. So I started talking to these people every day, just asking little questions, like, if I can’t get this for a certain dish, can I use that? Or are EpiPens available in Portugal? So how much do they cost? Just something. Almost every day.

Cynthia Wilson [00:34:47]:
And I really hit upon something because later our landlord told us that Portuguese people love to help. They love the humility of asking for help, and they love to help. So. But soon we’re talking about their babies and their jobs and their life. And in those two years, we became so close to these 12 people, these 12 families, that when we arrived in Portugal, our friend group was set in stone. Somebody of the group picked us up from the airport. We spent the night in Lisbon with them. Then they showed us around Lisbon.

Cynthia Wilson [00:35:23]:
Then they took us to Marina Grande to the grocery store, got us settled. Then every day, somebody was knocking on our door with groceries and gifts, and they helped us with the telephone, the bank, the everything. It was like a red carpet rolled out in front of us.

Adam Carrol [00:35:39]:
Wow.

Cynthia Wilson [00:35:40]:
This is not usual, but it would be usual for the next person that tried it, I think. Yeah, you know, I didn’t see that much in the thing. They’re just generous, loving, kind people. And then, of course, some people have snarkily said, well, yeah, you have them to dinner parties. I’m not a chef. Basically, you bribe them with food, and I’m like, whatever works. It worked.

Adam Carrol [00:36:10]:
Yeah, exactly.

Cynthia Wilson [00:36:12]:
So What I’ve done is when I have dinner parties, I have a majority of Portuguese people that I’ll invite an immigrant family, too, so they can get to know Portuguese people. So my immigrant friends are now friends with Portuguese friends, and so they’re grandfathering in on my love.

Adam Carrol [00:36:31]:
Yeah. What do you say in Portuguese when someone arrives at a dinner party? What’s the greeting?

Cynthia Wilson [00:36:39]:
Oh, just good afternoon. Are you well? And they’ll say, I’m well. And then you kiss each other and they give you wine. And it sounds.

Adam Carrol [00:36:54]:
So is Portug. Portuguese sounds like a. I know. It’s a romance language. It sounds a little bit like if you mix Spanish and Italian or something.

Cynthia Wilson [00:37:02]:
Maybe definitely Spanish, but maybe Spanish and French.

Adam Carrol [00:37:07]:
Oh, really? Okay. It has. It has a really nice ring. Like, it. It sounds. You know, some. Maybe this is just personal preference, but some languages sound, like, smooth. And Portuguese is one of those.

Cynthia Wilson [00:37:19]:
Yeah, it sounds really pretty until you’re trying to understand it. And like French, there are many sounds they do not pronounce, so that makes it really difficult to understand them. I can talk and speak Portuguese. I can read it almost like English, but the minute I start to talk, I’m like. Speaking of wine, Craig, you want to tell them about the wine here?

Adam Carrol [00:37:47]:
Oh.

Craig Bjork [00:37:49]:
My favorite style is Vinha Verde. It means green wine.

Adam Carrol [00:37:53]:
Okay.

Craig Bjork [00:37:54]:
It’s like a. The closest thing would be a German Riesling. It has the green grape tartness flavor to it. It’s a crisp, refreshing wine. But there are literally thousands of brands of wine. You can get a bottle of wine cheaper than you can buy a bottle of nice water.

Adam Carrol [00:38:14]:
Really? There’s so many vineyards there.

Craig Bjork [00:38:17]:
There’s so many vineyards. We have neighbors that grew that have vineyards. Of course. Basically, they take the grapes during harvest to a vineyard, and they produce so much wine for themselves. And the rest of the vineyard, that goes into a co op and it gets sold and they get profit, and some company will buy all those. But the famous wineries, of course, grow their own grapes. And every year, just like everywhere else, it depends on the rain, the weather, for the quality of the grapes. But it’s just so many different regions in Portugal.

Craig Bjork [00:38:53]:
Up north, it’s cooler, it’s wetter. Down south, it’s drier, it’s night rains or moisture, all the grapes act differently. So, I mean, it could be you cannot keep up trying to figure out what grape, what wine is Malbec just.

Adam Carrol [00:39:12]:
A Spanish thing, or are there a lot of Malbecs made in Portugal?

Craig Bjork [00:39:16]:
As far as I know, there’s no Malbec in Portugal.

Adam Carrol [00:39:19]:
Okay.

Craig Bjork [00:39:20]:
I mean, there’s, you know, you have your. You have your reds, whites, and the green and then the red. You have the chardonnays and you have different styles. The sweet wines with the muscatel or the Vinho de Porto out of Porto that is famous around the world.

Adam Carrol [00:39:38]:
And are you in any kind of wine club or anything?

Craig Bjork [00:39:42]:
No. Yeah, the Aldi’s down the street, they have a wine section that’s a. That’s one aisle long.

Adam Carrol [00:39:49]:
Oh, wow.

Craig Bjork [00:39:49]:
Wine club.

Adam Carrol [00:39:51]:
Every grocery store.

Craig Bjork [00:39:54]:
Yeah, yeah, every grocery store has a. Has hundreds of wine on the rack.

Cynthia Wilson [00:39:59]:
I’m not much of a drinker at all. So I. I only like sangria. It’s okay. Like koolaid. It’s.

Adam Carrol [00:40:06]:
Yes, yes. That’s a little sweeter.

Cynthia Wilson [00:40:08]:
It’s just fruity and girly and not very heavy.

Adam Carrol [00:40:11]:
And, hey, to each her own, right?

Cynthia Wilson [00:40:14]:
Yeah. Sorry.

Adam Carrol [00:40:16]:
On a fun note, tell me. Tell me about people. Listeners to this show love animals, love pets. So tell me about your rescued Portuguese cats.

Cynthia Wilson [00:40:28]:
Okay. So I had to leave a kitty, and people, like, get real upset about that. But she’s with my daughter on the farm because we had a nice big yard in Wichita with a doggy door. And the kitty could go in and out, in and out, in and out. And she loved being out. And here we live where we have two small balconies. And I knew that not only would the trip be very upsetting on the airplane to her, but she would hate a life with a balcony. So we left her.

Cynthia Wilson [00:41:02]:
But I immediately had to have a cat. So I went to this wonderful rescue, the kitten Connection in Kaldish. No peniche. Excuse me. Because these women spend their own money, really taking care of dozens of cats and dogs. And so we went there and got a little tiny cat. And the Lady Elizabeth from Germany said, she’s crafty. And I thought, I wonder what crafty means? But she had these little round eyes, like an anime or something.

Cynthia Wilson [00:41:39]:
We just loved her. So we got her, and I named her Rania Joya Fofa Maria de Silva. Wow. And, yeah, that means Queen Fluffy Jewel. And Maria da Silva is just a very Portuguese name. So I wanted this long Portuguese name. And this cat is a circus cat. She’s crazy.

Cynthia Wilson [00:42:04]:
She can open doors, she can open drawers. She climbed along the balcony like. Like a circus act. She’s just crazy. So I told the ladies, you have given me a crazy cat. Of course. She’s hilarious. Yeah.

Cynthia Wilson [00:42:20]:
And they said. We said she was crafty. And I said, crafty. And Crazy are two different, different things. But they said. They said, well, the solution is to get her a mother cat. We’ve just had this cat come in. She’s only eight months old.

Cynthia Wilson [00:42:36]:
She just had her first litter, and they’ve all been adopted out and she’s been spayed, and she get her, and she’ll mother Joya and she’ll be calming. She’s very ugly. And so we got her, and I named her Rania Doce Florabella de Portugal. I love it. Sweet. Beautiful flower of Portugal. Queen Sweet, because they’re both queens. And so she is much calmer than Joya.

Cynthia Wilson [00:43:08]:
Joya is still a circus cat. But you know what? Don’t tell her, but I like Joya better. The little rascal.

Adam Carrol [00:43:17]:
I won’t say anything.

Cynthia Wilson [00:43:18]:
Yeah, the other one’s all, like, calm and curled up and purr, purr, purr. Enjoy it. She makes me laugh.

Adam Carrol [00:43:24]:
Okay, so tell me, just kind of as we wrap up here, like, do you have any advice for other retirees that. That maybe want to try to be as happy as you two are? I’d like to hear from both of you. What if maybe you have the same advice, different advice?

Craig Bjork [00:43:38]:
Well, I had the benefit of living and working here for. For a year and a half in 79 and 80, so I already knew what the people were like. I knew what the food was like. I thought I knew what the traffic was like and the living conditions. But I had not caught on to the explosion of immigrants. So we. Originally, I’d wanted to live in Nazare, which has the world’s largest surf waves. It was a quiet little fishing village nestled between the cliffs and the ocean.

Craig Bjork [00:44:11]:
About 1000, 1500 people. And that was it. One hotel, a couple nice restaurants, a lot of fishermen. Now it’s probably 20,000 people. Tour buses everywhere. And so I decided, well, we can’t do that. So what we did is we looked in regions, went on the sites, like searching for a house or an apartment or whatever your budget can afford. And then when we found a listing that we liked, I would go to Google Maps and then I would look at the area from above where all the cities were, the area.

Craig Bjork [00:44:48]:
Then go and walk the streets on Google Maps, because all the cities have that here. So you can walk down the streets in these little towns and see what the neighborhood looks like. And we did that, and we decided on Marina Grande. It was. We’re. Because we’re right in the middle of everywhere we wanted to go. 30 minutes from Fatima, 30 minutes from Nazareth, 10 minutes from all the. From private and public hospitals and all that major shopping 10 minutes from the beach, different beaches.

Craig Bjork [00:45:18]:
So it’s perfect.

Adam Carrol [00:45:20]:
So your recommendation would be to do some research and if. I mean, if you can afford it, go there before you move there to see.

Craig Bjork [00:45:27]:
Yeah, the easiest way would go to YouTube and just type in Portugal in the search bar. And there are literally hundreds of videos from the last few years of people touring Portugal showing different cities, drone footage from areas, people discussing how they got their visa, all the steps they went through to get a visa. And just watch the. Watch the. The YouTube videos.

Adam Carrol [00:45:52]:
Okay, that is very good advice because that’s. I mean, because it is expensive to try to go live or see a place before you actually move there. So YouTube to the rescue. How about you, Cynthia?

Craig Bjork [00:46:04]:
What.

Adam Carrol [00:46:04]:
What would you tell to other aspiring happy retirees?

Cynthia Wilson [00:46:08]:
Here’s your sound bite. Embrace the retirement you want. Don’t let other people define your retirement. There are those that. Cynthia, you’ve got to slow down. You’ve got to relax, and that’s not the retirement. Well, even if I wanted it, that I can do. It’s not possible.

Cynthia Wilson [00:46:27]:
If your retirement means staying in Idaho and playing with your grandchildren all day, do that. If your retirement is moving halfway across the world, make it happen. If your retirement is playing golf in Florida, well, whatever you want would be good. So just embrace the retirement you want. Go after it with the passion. You went after your career because we’re living a long time now. So your retirement, if you use hairspray faster, you might get to buy lots of hairspray, and there’s lots of years. So you want it to be a life you want.

Cynthia Wilson [00:47:17]:
That’s my word on this.

Adam Carrol [00:47:19]:
Well, you weren’t kidding. That was definitely a usable quote. And we might even be able to get Aquanet to sponsor this episode.