Post written anonymously by a parent who has made the move.

Somewhere between the third grey week of February and the school-run traffic, a lot of parents have the same daydream: what if we just went somewhere sunnier and slower for a while? Portugal is the place that daydream usually lands on, and these days plenty of families are turning it into a real plan rather than a holiday fantasy. 

Having watched friends do it (and fielded a lot of messages asking how), here is the honest version of what the first year tends to look like.

The lifestyle really is the draw, and it holds up

The thing people worry will be a holiday illusion mostly is not. The weather is genuinely better, the food is good and cheap, and there is a culture of kids being welcome everywhere, restaurants included, that British parents find almost startling at first. 

Days are slower. Beaches and parks are part of normal life rather than a weekend mission. The families who move and stay tend to say the same thing: the day-to-day with young children is simply easier.

Schools: more options than you expect

This is the question that keeps parents up at night, and the answer is reassuring. There are international schools (English curriculum, pricier), bilingual private schools, and the Portuguese state system, which is free and where younger children in particular pick up the language frighteningly fast. 

There is no single right answer; it depends on your kids’ ages and how long you plan to stay. The one piece of advice everyone repeats is to sort school places early, because the good ones fill up.

The money side is friendlier than the UK, with caveats

Day-to-day costs (groceries, eating out, childcare, activities) are noticeably lower than in most of the UK. Housing is the exception: Lisbon and the popular Algarve spots have caught up to European prices, so families often find better value a little inland or in a mid-sized town. Build in the setup costs too: deposits, a car, the admin of getting set up all land in the first few months.

The bit people forget: you need the right visa

You cannot simply move indefinitely on a tourist stamp, and this is where families come unstuck. If one or both parents work remotely for employers or clients outside Portugal (which is most of the families doing this now), the route designed for you is the Portugal digital nomad visa. 

It is built around exactly this situation: earning your income from abroad while living in Portugal legally, with a path that lets the whole family settle properly rather than counting days. There are income thresholds and paperwork, and the details get updated, so check the current requirements before you book anything, but the route exists and is well-trodden.

For families whose income is more passive (pensions, investments, rental income), there is a different route better suited to that, so it is worth a short conversation with someone who knows the options before you assume which one fits.

What I would tell a friend

Go and visit properly first, ideally in winter, not just in August when everything looks perfect. Pick the area for the life you will actually live (school run, work, friends) rather than the prettiest holiday memory. Sort the visa and the school places before you fall in love with a house. And accept that the first three months are admin-heavy and a bit stressful, because they are, for everyone.

But a year in, the families I know who did it properly are not looking back. The kids are browner, more confident, often bilingual, and the parents have the thing they actually went for: more ordinary good days. If the daydream keeps coming back, it might be worth taking it seriously.