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RETIRING TO FRANCE PERMANENTLY – SETTING THE STAGE

The Southern Woman That I Married and I are both 63 years old. Neither of us was infected with the Protestant work ethic. Work for pay does not define us. We can fill our days without taking big chunks of time out of them to ‘earn’ a living. When we can afford to retire, we will.

We’ll be able to afford retirement in a couple of years.

As my readers are aware, we began planning for our retirement over a decade ago. What did we want to do during our retirement? Travel. Where did we want to travel? Europe. Why not live there?

After investigating likely retirement locales in newsletters, on the internet, and in person, we became captivated by the Languedoc. One morning over breakfast, on our first visit to the region, we struck up a conversation with three couples at a neighboring table in what has over time proved to be our favorite hotel/restaurant, the Hotel Residence in Nissan-lez-Enserune. They were vacationing from their homes in Provence and they confirmed what we had read. The Languedoc is less crowded than Provence, less expensive, and just as beautiful in terms of both scenery and climate.

We were convinced. We bought. We took possession of our little village house in Cazouls les Beziers on January 1, 2005. We visit once or twice a year, we rent it to vacationers when we can, and we haven’t looked back.

Now it’s time to look forward, though. In the next set of posts, I’ll be talking about our plans to put our house in Cazouls on the market during our upcoming trip over the Pond and about the rest of our plans for the next couple of years.

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