This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brad Allan, an American who relocated from Austin with his wife, Olivia, to Montepulciano, Italy, to retire. Allan, 60, now gives advice to other expats in Italy through his YouTube channel, BradsWorld. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
In the US, I owned a chain of furniture stores and dabbled in investing in multifamily real estate.
For me, retiring in Europe was about being able to keep up the lifestyle that I had when I was running my stores and owning multifamily and actively working in the US. Without being cliché, we wanted to be able to lead a Champagne life on a beer budget; to be able to stretch our dollars.
When you look online, it’s so inexpensive to buy nice properties in Europe. I can remember at least 10 years ago looking at real estate listings and daydreaming about retiring in Italy, Southern France, or Spain.
We’re big travelers — my wife and I were lucky enough to be able to take three or four international trips a year. We went everywhere, but we always gravitated back to Southern Europe.
So Italy was always on the radar. We got serious about it just before COVID. We took a six-week trip in the fall of 2019, and drove around all of Italy from the very northern part all the way down into the heel of the boot.
We ended up choosing to buy property in Southern Tuscany, specifically right on the Umbria border. The other areas are nice, but we felt most comfortable here — we had been here a lot and knew a lot of people.
We moved here full-time in 2023 and love it. We just felt at home.
The natural beauty here is otherworldly. We’ve found the people to be very friendly, and people always talk about la dolce vita, the slower pace of life. Plus, we really like wine, and the quality here is second to none.
Italy’s healthcare is inexpensive compared to the US
The No. 1 thing to know is that in general, healthcare in Italy is very inexpensive. Even if you’re not on the national healthcare plan, you can come here.
When you’re retired, you’re not having anybody paying into the system for you. So we paid 2,800 euros [about $3,228] for our buy-in to the national healthcare system for the year. What was our payment for one month in the US pays our healthcare for the year, and we don’t really have to pay for anything unless we wanted one expedited service.
For example, my wife needed an MRI, with and without contrast, and we went to the local MRI private clinic not through the healthcare system. I believe it was 200 euros for two different MRIs. I had to get an X-ray, and it was $30. A doctor’s visit is 50 euros, and a specialist visit is 120 euros. So it’s very inexpensive.
At 60 years old, I’m still five years away from being able to get Medicare — my wife’s 15 years away from that. So that’s a long time when you’re unemployed — as you are when you’re retired — to be paying $3,000 a month in healthcare costs in the US. So that’s a huge deal.
People say, “Well, the taxes are so high in Italy. It’s six points higher than the top line in the US.” And yes, the scale maxes out much lower than the US, but taxes aren’t just federal income tax; it’s also property tax, and I consider healthcare costs to be a tax, especially when you’re retired.
So all those things together, Italy is much more affordable, because when you’re retired, you’re not making as much income. And yeah, maybe we paid an extra $5,000 in federal tax here, but we saved $20,000 in property tax, which is what we had to pay in Texas. And we saved over $20,000 in healthcare costs. That’s huge savings.
Living in Europe is calmer, and traveling is a lot easier
Nobody here asks you what you do.
“How much do you make? What do you do for a living?” You don’t get personal questions like that, which I find to be refreshing.
It is a slower pace of life. You eat dinner so much later, and it’s not just about chowing down on the food.
And the prices are different. If you go out to dinner here, you’ll be amazed. You go out to town here with a good bottle of wine — and this is a tourist town — and your total bill is probably going to be $60 out the door.
We’re also able to take trips to really interesting places with Italy as our home base. Two weeks ago, we decided to go to Tenerife for a week because it was $29 each way to fly — of course, by the time they hit you with bags, it’s not $29 each way.
But you can just hop on a plane and go to so many really unique places, and you don’t have issues with five-hour waits from TSA. There’s an ease of getting around.
We never take trains in the US. But when my brother-in-law’s visiting, we’re going to pop down to Naples; it’s only two and a half hours by train — that’s like 180 miles away.
Last year we went to Scotland and London on two different trips. We went twice to the French Alps in the summertime, because it gets pretty warm here. We have two big dogs, and we took them French Alps so they could swim in the river. It’s beautiful.
We drove to go do that, and it was a six-hour drive. And that’s all within the last 12 months.
It’s really nice that we’re now able to do those kinds of things.
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