15 Pros & Cons to Know BEFORE Moving to France!

[Music] foreign is France a good place to live and is it where you should live here are the reasons why I think you should move here and maybe some reasons why it might not be right for you Jake and I have uh we've decided to move here full time and that is after living all over the world we've lived for a certain period of time in Vietnam Bali Thailand Mexico turkey Italy I've been able to compare France to other places we've lived as well as our home country of the United States okay so let's get started so the first reason I have to put on the list for why France is a great place to live is their health care in the United States as most people know you do not get Health Care Free it's not included in your taxes or anything like that so that is a major Plus for France not only that but I have gotten actually the same procedures done in the United States as I've done in France and my experience was night and day honestly my experience here in France was amazing and my experience in the United States was awful for anyway in my personal opinion not only is Healthcare better here in France price wise because it's included for you but also the doctors and the treatment that I got here in my experience was better although there is Health Insurance included contact here in France we do not have that since we are visiting this country and we are still in the social system in the United States we pay about 750 per year for us to be on a private insurance we use insubai if anyone is wondering and there will be a link to insubai in the comments in case you are trying to move to France I also have used it in other countries Jake got pneumonia in Switzerland and it was covered there and they have great problems right so not only that but since we have private insurance a lot of the time we are paying out of pocket and even that out of pocket expense is so much less than what I paid out of pocket in the United States for the same procedure so that's something to keep in mind because even with insurance in the US and insurance here still paid less here in France number two something that I love about France and the French is the work-life balance I love how much they value the quality of life here and how important it is to take time off they have a mandatory a number of days that they need to take off for a year I never have had a job here in France but this is from what I've read and heard from others who do have jobs here that it's great to not be given a hard time when you want to take days off versus in the US sometimes when asking for time off you get very little time off and there's no government mandated time off the culture around working here in France is also a lot more balanced than it is in the US for example if you work more than 35 hours a week you have to get special permission and your employer has to go through some kind of process because I'm not exactly sure how it works but in the US they expect you to work about 40 hours a week and a lot of time outside of work whereas in France when you leave work work is over if I were to have a job I'd much rather have a job here in France than have one in the US the third thing that I love about living here in France is the location obviously we are in the perfect spot we are living in Nice France and I love it here because we're so close to so many parts of Europe it's so easy to get around to compare our experience of living here in France versus Mexico in Mexico there are budget Airlines however um the prices are already much higher than they would be here in Europe the only cheap prices you can really get when living in Mexico was to go to other places in Mexico we definitely wanted to go to more places but we found that even just going to sell America Central America or going to the us we were paying a lot just to get out of Mexico compared to I mean one of my favorite things to do what y'all show in the background is I love to pull up Skyscanner and put in my home airport and then put everywhere and see everywhere that I can go for like under 150 or 100 direct flights and by doing that it's really helped me figure out where is the best place for us because we love traveling even if I didn't do it as a job I would be doing it as much as possible we definitely need to live somewhere where we could travel outside of the country as well as inside of the country um very cheaply and Europe is great at that southeast Asia is also a great place to do that just a little point for me so I'm going to make another a niece focused video later but nice has a tram that goes directly to the airport for only a Euro so it's crazy cheap and crazy accessible to get to the airport and that is really important for us one of the best parts about living here is that you can go to any country nearby for relatively cheap you could go to Spain Italy Switzerland Austria for under 100 round trip a lot of times especially if you are watching uh prizes or flying off season the fourth thing that I love about living in France is that there is so much to do here and France has a bit of everything I just keep finding new places here in France that make me want to travel even more so for us France was just kind of the perfect place to go for travel blogging because every single place was really inspiring for us every single place I found just insanely beautiful and see for example um Leone I loved Leone I've I think one of my favorite trips I've ever done was when I did ANSI and Leon together and also um doing Normandy we did etra run and lizon delis all these places that don't look real not to mention that here in nice we can take a um one Euro bus to get to two different amazing ski resorts so we have mountains here and also the beach we have got some of the most beautiful cities in the world we've got amazing food so France just has everything number five cheaper rent this is obviously a huge reason why we're here if it were more expensive we might not be here we were very interested in living in Mexico but I actually found that at least in the places we were going which we definitely understand that there are cheaper places to go um we're living in places like Puerto Vallarta or Playa Del Carmen the rent was very similar to what we're paying here in France that was pretty surprising here in nice we pay about 780 Euros per month for rent not including utilities or our water bill which still is crazy low there is rent control here and so they can't just raise our rent whatever they want there's laws that make it so they can't raise it too much and so the rent hasn't gone crazy here in France as it has in other places not every city in France has rent control but the more expensive ones do there is some protection from the government so you don't just get screwed over by your landlords so that's a great place number six affordable public transport huge huge huge plus obsessed with this one I really really just absolutely love public transport I had never used it until I was 17 and my grandma who was actually born in the UK took me to London and I got to use the tube and all that for the first time I loved it I felt like this is how things should be and I definitely still feel that way I didn't even realize because in the US I never had the opportunity to use public transport which sounds insane but definitely is the case I just love it I think the US is sorely like that's not a good it's it doesn't exist honestly um unless you're in New York City here we do not need a car and in most cities and places here you don't need a car people still choose to have one especially if they live maybe like 50 minutes to an hour outside of the city center but if you live close to city center you can find everything within walking distance and there's public transport walkability walkability walkability can't talk enough about that not just bikes just check them out if you haven't already I had a car uh the whole time I lived in the United States it's basically impossible to live in the US without having a car I really hated that I I don't like driving I think driving is a lot more dangerous than we think it is but whatever I really like not having to own a car not only is it saving us a ton of money we don't have to pay car insurance and we don't have to pay for gas our monthly cost for public transport are under 30 Euros a month where you don't use it that often because we walk nearly I'm everywhere I walk about 15 minutes to the gym I walk literally two seconds to the bakery in front of our house there's um every single block here has a little mini market or a little Supermarket like everything is within 20 15 to 20 minutes and so most of the time we don't need to take public transport but it is there when we do need it I absolutely love that I don't think I could go back to living in a city that doesn't have walkability and accessible public transport that is also affordable we've traveled all of our Brands and used their public transport and had no problem so obviously a huge Plus of living in France is the food it's the perfect place to live you can get authentic baguettes anywhere all the time so perfect the bakeries here are super affordable so one kind of funny thing about the French and their food is other day I was watching the news and they would put up all of the different foods that are in season not only do you have access to some of the best wines and cheeses and breads you also have some of the best produce and ingredients to make your own food at home which is mostly what I do I'm not gonna lie am I not a huge like go out to eat fancy French food person but if you were that type of person this would be the place to be the next point is that France has a lot of really cool budget Stores um I've some of them are all over Europe but um you can definitely find them here in France so one of my favorite ones is decathlon which is actually a French company but they have it all over Europe but it's like a sports store like a Dick's Sporting Goods except for everything is like Walmart prices and so it's awesome you could go and get like a 10 sleeping bag a three dollar bikini like they just have insanely cheap prices and we also love shopping at places like Maxi Bazaar and Carrefour those are places that are available all over Europe but still they're in France the next thing that is great about France especially if you plan to live here or have children here is the paid time off as well as paternity and maternity leave in France it is a legal requirement to have at least 30 days of paid time off paid days off so that's amazing and also those days don't include the holidays which there seem to be quite a bit of that are also paid days off also government mandated paid time off for both the father and the mother which is so awesome okay now we're starting with some of the reasons why France might not be a good place for you to live the first reason why France is a bit of a tricky place to live is the red tape the bureaucracy that means you haven't known the triumphs and defeats the Epic highs and lows of high school football that word comes from French living here I personally find it's not as bad as other places that we've lived or wanted to live Italy I'm looking at you but you definitely do need to be on top of things and you need to have a document for everything everything copies more documents you never ever throw away any documents here ever ever if they give you something keep it if you're not an organized person I don't know that France would be right for you because they definitely want you to be organized they keep all their stuff in something called the dossier which is like a folder and you just have like a dossier for everything you have a dossier to apply for a bank account you have a dossier to apply for an apartment dossier to apply for Visa basically it's just all the documents that you put together in France their birth certificates are like a living document they change as things happen in their lives so it's a bit different because in the US we get our birth certificate and that's it you have that one birth certificate for your whole life they expect us to get new translations of a birth certificate that isn't changing luckily I haven't had any problems but technically they could ask me to pay again to get it re-certified re-translated all of that because they consider it to be like expired even though my birth certificate has not changed one bit oh well the second thing that might make you reconsider moving to France is knowing French it is definitely not something that you can get by without doing you need to speak a little bit of French if not a lot of French I think it shows respects for that country so for example if I were to choose Vietnam as my home country I would have learned Vietnamese so I knew moving here to France ahead of time I was learning French and I'm still currently learning French French is an insanely hard language in my opinion so if you do not want to learn another language uh France probably is not for you of course you could find places where you can speak English um I just think that it's rude and so if you're not willing to learn French I don't think I should move here sorry that's my maybe harsh opinion but um that's what I think yeah so you definitely need to learn French luckily there's so many different resources to learn French I am obsessed with italki it's my favorite one um if I hadn't used italki I don't think I would have been able to get myself an apartment on these bank accounts and all these things because it just even just knowing like a very rudimentary level of French helped me to do so many of the things that we've done since we've moved here you would take one-on-one classes with a native speaker for very affordable rates I definitely think you should hop on itaki right now but my italki always remains as like my number one thing that I'm always using outside of that um when I first started I was using a lot of Duolingo until I kind of got you know basis of it and then I moved to italki and using Netflix and YouTube also if you really want to learn grammar I've been using quizzic French to take little AI quizzes and I find that it's one of the most bearable ways to learn grammar because I just I hate it so that's been awesome this one's probably one of the hardest biggest cons to living in France and that's that there's no good Mexican food I know rest in peace to the good Mexican food there is unfortunately not good Mexican food in basically all of Europe I don't understand why but it's just that comment has made a lot not a lot but like a couple of people upset on my blog I deleted the comments but they were upset that I said there wasn't good Mexican food here I'm talking about Good authentic Mexican food that tastes like what you would get in Mexico in my opinion there's no good Mexican food here if you are used to Mexican food authentic Mexican food from Mexico um do they have mexican-esque Foods here yes but definitely nothing close to the most amazing food that you can get in Mexico or in Southern California the next reason why France might not be the best place to live in are the strikes I don't personally like this doesn't bother me that much but also I work from home so that could be the reason if I worked outside of the house this could be a big problem because they shut down public transport and trains and everything that could definitely affect your daily life that's something to keep in mind it's more of an inconvenience than it is a total con but it depends on how much that would bother you last but not least is air conditioning it gets hot in the summer months here and there is no air conditioning in basically any building or any apartment I mean there are some but it's very rare the summer we were boiling alive we work in this apartment and it just really wasn't we were dying so we went to the store and we bought an at-home air conditioner and it was so expensive it was like 600 Euro um but that's how desperate we were because we are not people who spend a lot of money and we we suffered through most of the summer before we finally gave up and just said we're gonna buy an air conditioner so we bought an air conditioner it's just a tiny one that you kind of have like a tube that goes out the window so it's not like an official one of the Year here in France the weather is really great and so you wouldn't need an need an additioner and it's better for the environment obviously to not use an air conditioner but since we work from home and couldn't sleep it was just kind of a bad situation we just needed to have one we only used it for about a month and a half before we didn't need it anymore just something to keep in mind that if you are someone who needs air conditioning constantly uh yeah France might not might not be right for you and Germany or probably most of Europe luckily the weather here is mostly amazing and so I don't think it's a huge problem one last thing I'll add since it just happened while I was doing this video um so it's not like an official one oh my God for Amazon to work here you need to give them their phone number and a lot of the time you need to be in the apartment waiting for that thing to be delivered or else it won't be delivered for example just now the sun's coming out lighting's gonna be good for a second um for example okay so if you order something on Amazon and say it's going to come on Thursday they're gonna call you on Thursday and say are you in the house can we drop it off you need to speak French for that I haven't come across a delivery driver that spoke English yet I think Jake might have but I haven't it's just speak enough French and understand enough French to be able to answer the phone tell them you're there and be able to answer the door when they get here because you're living in an apartment building if it's too big for the box which is about this big in or you'll give them a code or something but anywhere you have to be there so that's definitely a con of living in France but I think that's the case for most apartment holy that's right okay well the end of this video is gonna be well lit I suppose um damn overall it's sunny I think France is a great place to live there are some cons but definitely way more positives of loving in France so yeah this is actually my first YouTube video so thank you for watching if you like language learning uh talking about travel and doing all that on a budget or about living abroad definitely follow happily ever travels and we'll keep posting content about that but yeah thank you for watching and I'll see you next time thank you foreign foreign

Channel: Happily Ever Travels

Views: 9,617

Keywords: france, move to france, american in france, how to move to france, i want to move to france

Id: wBP7labsCRs

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023