How did you decide where to live?

3POSTS

13 years ago

My wife and I are in the exploration stages of somewhere in France to retire to (less than 9 years) and we would appreciate any and all thoughts, wisdom or warnings in our endeavour.聽 While we have been to Paris 4 times in the last 5 years, we are much more interested in learning about a couple of specific towns.聽 Our needs will be simple: near an airport, must have a train station and local trams/buses for transportation as we will probably do without our cars as much as possbile.聽 We have had the opportunity to spend 5 days in Montpellier and absolutely loved it - as it met all our requirements.聽 But we obviously want to explore other options - such as Grenoble, Toulon and the lovely town of Vence (which we just visted while on a Meditteranean cruise from Rome to Barcelona and back to Monte Carlo (loved Cannes).聽 But we are also regular folks so the high budgets of Paris and Nice are out of our league but others may be possible.
As a guide - we our retirement income would be $5,000 per month and we would be looking to rent something with 2 bedrooms.聽 Are we being realistic?聽
How did you decide where to live and are there any places or specific reasons you did not choose somewhere else?聽 Your help would be appreciated.

John & Robyn

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础耻谤茅濒颈别 ViP

22735POSTS

13 years ago

Hello John & Robyn.

For the accommodation, you can post an advert in the housing in Montpellier section. It can help you to go forward in your research.

I hope other membres will soon be able to provide some advices.

Thank you,
础耻谤茅濒颈别

happyhere Contributor

100POSTS

13 years ago

Hello - $5000 seems a good enough sum to live on. You can easily find rental rates by googling "maisons 脿 louer + the town of your choice".

You can also look in leboncoin for the various towns.

My wife and I chose this town because it is just an ordinary French town. We did not want to "live the French dream" - we just wanted to live in France. Nor did we want to live in a village full of expats. This town of 55,000 souls has fewer expats than villages with a population 0f 500 or less.

Also - Provence too hot + expensive, Brittany to cold + wet, Biarritz too expensive + wet.

There also seems to be a high level of crime in Med. towns - all these rich people.

As it is the French people in the SW are wonderful - friendly, welcoming - so many invites to lunches + dinners - a definite health hazard, but great fun.

Happy hunting.

Ian