The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Carlie: It’s the Expat Focus Podcast. I’m your host, Carlie. If you have ever dreamed of packing up and moving to France, today’s episode is the reality check and the roadmap that you need.
My guest is Richard Hammond, founder of French Connections HCB, who has helped over 400 American and British families relocate to France every year since 2017. Today he is breaking down exactly where people go wrong and how to avoid it. You should note that Richard’s insights are general in nature, and he is not giving specific immigration or financial advice.
We love an origin story here at Expat Focus, so can you tell me first up what got you personally into helping people move to France, and how did French Connections HCB come to be?
Richard: I’m going to try to make that as short and entertaining as possible for the whole audience. Like many founders, I didn’t really think about the angle too much, because it’s just something I’d always had the idea for. I’d seen an issue — how do I fix that?
I was born in France to British parents, so technically speaking I’ve been helping people understand how France works for over 30 years, because my parents never really got fluent in French and from a very young age I started helping them.
Carlie: I was going to ask — did you become the automatic go-to translator in the family?
Richard: I guess so. I’ve got to be very thankful to my parents, because in a way the reason I speak English so fluently is that they probably sacrificed their knowledge of French to an extent. Or maybe they were just lazy with it — let’s not give them too much credit.
They were among the very first early expats. I hate that term, by the way, but people who had moved to France and spoke English. Growing up in France in a French school, just being launched in there with no other English speakers — French was my first language, and not just the language, the culture. I was brought up as a French person.
But at home it was always English, and quite Received Pronunciation English, as you can hear. My grandfather was a teacher — he actually taught the royal family, so he had a very RP-type accent, which followed through in the family. So I’m weirdly very British but completely French, and that was the beginning of the origin story of how we got the idea in the first place.
Carlie: I do recall the comedian Tatty Macleod talking about growing up in France with an English parent, and how she always felt a bit culturally confused, even about the things she liked to eat for lunch. Did you have that cultural confusion growing up a bit too?
Richard: 100%. It’s funny, because this is what usually touches people more than how you practically help someone move. It’s how emotionally connected you are to their struggle.
I didn’t really realise that until now, having moved again from France to many other countries. But when I look back at it, I had a very old-school British upbringing at home. At some stage we even got English TV, because that wasn’t available back then — probably until I was 10 or 12. But once we had British TV, it was England at home. Or Scotland, I should say, because I’m originally Scottish.
At school I was French, and I never actually felt foreign in France, because my best friend — still my best friend today, my oldest friend — was French, southwestern French. It’s like we lived in divorced families. We literally used to do one weekend at his house, one weekend at mine.
Carlie: Oh, I love that.
Richard: That’s the only time I felt a bit foreign, because they wanted to feed me duck all the time and I was like, “I don’t eat duck with fat on it, or one that’s come out of a jar.” That’s the only time as a kid that I really felt, “Okay, this is weird. I don’t eat the same food as you guys.”
Carlie: Putting crisps on your sandwich, or —
Richard: Well, it wasn’t quite that, because actually at school — and I spent most of my time at school — the food in France is phenomenal.
Carlie: Yes, I’ve heard this.
Richard: It was amazing. So I guess I’ve got this double life, in a way.
Carlie: It’s incredible. It’s like you’re a secret agent of both cultures.
Richard: And I always say that to people who are looking to move or looking to learn the language. The first thing you’ve got to accept is that you probably won’t be the same person in either language, so your personality is going to change slightly. I would generally say that French Richard is slightly different to British Richard.
Carlie: Isn’t that fascinating?
Richard: I think that’s if you’ve been completely immersed culturally, though. If you just learnt the language, maybe not.
Carlie: I’ve been in France for 10 years and I am not fluent in French, ashamedly. But I feel like I still try to bring my Australian-ness in when I speak French, and it just doesn’t work.
Richard: Well, I think it’s deeper than that, because for me it’s the cultural difference of what’s taught. I grew up in one of the most rural parts of France, the southwest — in many ways probably quite similar to what you’d find in Scotland, Wales, maybe New Zealand — where the biggest culture was rugby. Very rural, a simple way of living, and so attached to nature, to food, to the values.
I was discussing this with the ambassador of France to California a few weeks ago. We were having a podcast like this, and it was actually nearly emotional at that stage, because we said: learning French is one thing, but learning all of the culture that makes you French is a completely different aspect that some people may never get to. Having an understanding that it’s there, that there’s a difference, and why it exists.
Maybe it’s about accepting that you might not have that, because you weren’t brought up in that context. But certain places in the world — Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, definitely parts of the Australian outback, more rural areas, and people from places like Colorado in America — there are specific areas where people find they share those values with rural parts of France.
Carlie: Oh, that’s so interesting.
Richard: So it’s a very emotional thing, relocating. Like feeling at home somewhere.
Carlie: Yes, definitely. The language is going to help, right? It’s always easier when you can be understood.
Well, Richard, you’re working with something like 30 to 40 families every single month on their France relocation, and after watching so many moves play out, what patterns do you see that are unexpected for people?
Richard: I think it’s probably fair to give a bit of context on what it is and how we’ve evolved. We started with me being born into this bicultural space. I actually had the idea for this when I was 18, but I had no idea how to launch a business, and nearly 10 or 12 years later I came back to France and started the company.
When I started, I’d come out of corporate — big enterprise — and I was able to work remotely before COVID, so that was kind of crazy. And I realised that in the 12- or 13-year gap when I’d left France, living in the US and then the UK, France hadn’t changed all that much, but the demographic of people living there had. A lot more English speakers. Social media was a thing.
My immediate idea was to help people with renovating properties locally and maybe with a few administrative tasks. The reason I’m giving you that context is that the answer to your question has really evolved over these last 10 years of me doing this.
I started off with local people in the southwest. One thing my father had passed on to me was a love of cars, but he never bothered importing them. He was an engineer, and he got me to do the paperwork. It turns out that the paperwork to import a vehicle is probably harder than getting a visa.
So I started all of this really just doing a couple of administrative processes — car importations and registering for healthcare — because I knew how to do it, I knew how to build a system, and having worked for very big corporates I built very good tech for what was available out there.
And that exploded. We got massive just on those services. Then I realised people weren’t only struggling with car importation, they might want to do other things. So I looked at visas, and suddenly Brexit happened. We diversified and started working with law firms.
We realised that lawyers were probably good at certain parts of the move, but they weren’t that good at the emotional part or the technical part, because they’re old school.
Carlie: You’ve lived in France a long time — the thing that we love about France is also the thing that frustrates the hell out of people. It’s very old school in its tech and its way of doing things.
Richard: Yes. And so within that space we diversified our service to not just cater for one or two things but to actually manage the whole move.
Carlie: All of these little administrative things.
Richard: They’re the base of it, but it’s also emotional. We even have emotional support when we look to move people — certain people need that — so we have coaches who work within our teams.
What I also ended up doing was building it all from within. That’s very key, because there are loads of people in this market space now, and I take it as a massive compliment when people either readapt their formulas to match what we do or just plainly copy what we do.
But the biggest hurdle was building everything within our team, because if we don’t do it in-house, what slips is the actual output and how you communicate with your clients. That would fall down drastically if you outsourced it, because it’s a cultural shift. If you suddenly pass it to another company and you’re charging a margin on it, it ends up not working. So we had to build this from within.
The reason I gave you all that context is that the shift in these people and what we do for them has changed, and therefore the people have changed as well.
Perhaps the market has changed. Perhaps remote working is quite new to the world. Perhaps early retirement has never been as high as it was before. Perhaps the political state of the world has accelerated people relocating from all parts — because don’t forget, the grass is always greener on the other side.
And perhaps it’s that France is the biggest country for tourism in the whole world, so people who come here on holiday end up eventually wanting to move here, because it is the number one tourist destination in the world. So maybe the market’s getting bigger, maybe there are changes in the mix.
Maybe it’s all of that — and therefore the variety, to answer your question, is massive. We go from helping a 70-plus-year-old move from Idaho to buy a ruin in central France for 23,000 euros —
Carlie: Nightmare. Personal nightmare. But I respect it’s their dream.
Richard: We also help students with their visas. I had an Australian ballet dancer who had a problem with her visa. So there’s no one specific thing I can point to that shocks me the most, because France is so —
Carlie: You’re seeing it all.
Well, Richard, I wanted to get into how hard or easy it is to move to France in 2026. We spoke about your parents being among the original Brits who moved to France, and I was in London when the Brexit vote was happening. I moved to France and experienced that change in freedom of movement for Brits — that transition period — and suddenly all of these Brits who for decades maybe had a second home in France, or just freely bought a property in France and came over, couldn’t do that so easily.
You also spoke about geopolitical changes and their effect. We’ve seen an influx of interest from Americans, especially here at Expat Focus, in relocating to France and seeking out those guides. So can we speak especially for Americans and Brits in 2026 — how easy or difficult is it to move to France today?
Richard: It is fairly easy, I think, compared to a lot of countries. There are definitely a lot more paths, especially for retirement visas, than in pretty much any other country. Which comes back to your first question about what types of differences we see — well, we see every type of age group and capacity.
It’s fair to say that we probably suit people who are looking for an all-inclusive assistance package rather than just help with a visa problem. That’s perhaps the premise of what we do. But how difficult is it to actually move? If you’re retired, it’s pretty straightforward administratively.
It’s a little bit heavy, but any country’s visa applications are fairly heavy. It’s very well documented these days, and we’ve seen a huge evolution in what people ask us to help with, because now there’s AI, there’s Google Gemini telling you roughly what’s going to go on when you type into Google. There are hundreds of YouTube channels giving advice that might or might not be right.
So the difficulty has probably gone down in terms of “what do I need to do to fill in my visa form.” But moving to France is not just visa forms, and I’ve seen that shift. Our biggest-selling product used to be visas. Now it’s probably assistance with finding property.
Let’s define that. To get a visa you need to have a safe place to live, and the French embassies across the world all operate slightly differently, and so do all of the prefectures. Yes, they have the same rules, but they’re looking at the demographic of people who are coming and applying for visas.
If you’re applying from the USA, you’ve probably read online and watched YouTube videos and you might say, “Hey, I’m going to do this by myself.” Ninety percent of the time, people doing it by themselves — if they can be bothered — will probably be successful, because most retirees have quite wealthy situations compared to Europe.
They might not be wealthy in America, but compared to France they’ve got a lot more money than the minimum requirements, and one of the big criteria is financial. Where it’s going to be difficult is often in finding somewhere to live, or figuring out where it is you’re going to live to have a successful relocation.
For Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans — anywhere in the English-speaking world — the processes are at least very similar. The French government choose to subcontract a lot of their requirements in these different countries because they don’t have a huge presence there, but they ultimately sign off all of the visa requests.
So the only one that’s actually quite difficult, and that has changed a lot, is Britain. Obviously Brexit. I think it’s okay for me to say this because I’ve got a British passport and my head office is actually based in London. The biggest difference we notice is that a lot of British people who are moving are younger. They’re escaping the rat race, and they want to buy a house or a chateau, do it up, become a gîte owner. That’s become more complex.
So if you’re a remote worker from Australia, New Zealand or America with a good salary, you’ve got to navigate a few things on the back end, but your visa aspect probably isn’t that hard. If you’re a retiree from any of these countries, it’s probably pretty simple. For British people — which would have been my parents’ case 40 years ago — it’s become more complex, because the circumstances of people’s moves from all of those countries are slightly different.
And there’s also just the geographical barrier. If you’re moving from 8,000 miles away, at minimum you can afford the airline fare. It’s a luxury to go to Europe if you live on the other side of the world, whereas for British people it’s just a car journey away. So the way people look at and view the move is completely different.
To answer your question of how hard it is: it’s pretty straightforward from an admin perspective for visas, unless you’re in the UK. For all the rest of it, housing is the single biggest problem that people moving from 8,000 miles away face.
Carlie: And is that why you suggest it takes six to 12 months from decision to settled? Is property a big part of that?
Richard: Yes and no. Again, it depends on your situation. If you’re from Sydney, or from California or LA, and you’ve been to France once in your whole lifetime — or maybe never before — and you want the successful outcome of loving where you’re going to be, I think the biggest issue isn’t actually finding a property to rent at that stage. It’s knowing where to go.
Because France is a small country, but culturally it’s massively different from region to region. And the regions themselves are different internally as well.
Carlie: I live here in Alsace, and for my first 18 months in France, having never been anywhere else in France except Paris, I just assumed that every provincial regional centre outside of Paris must look like Strasbourg, with half-timbered houses. It was only when I met someone from Montpellier and he said, “No, absolutely not.” There’s a lot to learn.
Richard: That’s a great example — let’s keep that and make a tip of it. What you’ve just described is actually what I think determines how successful your relocation is going to be.
When I say plan six to 12 months before: paperwork is always a bit tricky in any country. And when you’re retracing your whole life and the French government asks where you went to school when you were 13 years of age, you probably want some time to collate those documents. You don’t want to screw this up, because it’s a long way to travel back.
So whether you want help or not — and by the way, these days we offer really light packages for people who just want us to check things, or fully inclusive, and you can pick and choose how you work with us — the main thing is that the region isn’t just determined by how difficult it is to find a property there. Is it going to suit you, and is that going to be successful for you long term?
To define that, we evolved our service to offer something called Region Matcher, where we work with people two or three years beforehand.
Carlie: That is a great idea.
Richard: We do it with three or four people in our team who are all French. We also look at the areas you like in other parts of the world. This is something I’ve worked on for years now, and it’s a service anybody could use — because the visa, the admin, getting your driver’s licence, all of that means you need to physically move to France first.
A lot of your viewers might be thinking, “Should I go to Portugal, Italy, or somewhere else?” I’ve lived in a few of those, and I do think France does very well for English speakers, because it’s a bridge between the Latin world and the convenience of the English-speaking world. It’s very safe for the most part, with good conveniences and good infrastructure.
So it’s not too much of a culture shock. If you go to the outskirts of Portugal, or some parts of Italy, or the middle of Spain, it might be a bit weird if you’ve lived your whole life in the centre of a city. France does that bridge quite well.
But generally speaking the regions themselves are all different. The access to things is different, the feeling, the people — and working that out before you even work out where you’re going to rent or buy a house is what I think determines how successful your move is. And that can be started two or three years before.
My team who look at this for people look at empirical data, but they also look at availability of rentals. There’s no good us saying, “Hey, you should move to Strasbourg,” if we know there’s a shortage of rentals and there’s no air conditioning there and you definitely need air conditioning.
Carlie: The last few weeks, absolutely.
Richard: Do you see where I’m coming from? So we don’t just determine the location based on what ChatGPT is going to tell you. We look at whether it’s a good fit, but also whether it has the things you’re going to want to do long term.
Carlie: Exactly.
Richard: And does it then actually have somewhere for you to live or to buy? Because there’s no good saying we definitely think this is the best place in France, and then there’s nothing available.
We also look at something that usually shocks a lot of people. I’ve figured out a way of doing this where I really focus on what you already know and where you already like. So you might say, “I really like Santa Monica,” or “I really like Brisbane.”
Carlie: Give me the Brisbane of France. Where is it?
Richard: Exactly. But then, what do you really like about Brisbane? And you keep drilling in — architecturally, what do you like? Because if you’re buying a house, for me personally, I like certain types of architecture in France, and they’re only really built in certain areas.
Carlie: I was just in the Normandy region, where everything is stone houses. They have a certain aesthetic, and I think you either really love that or it’s not your jam. And for me, it wasn’t my jam.
Richard: Exactly. So if your ChatGPT says Brittany is the best place based on weather and so on, but you rock up and the actual properties are nothing like what you want, then even though you might make do for a while, it’s probably always going to be an issue longer term.
So we really look at the holistic approach. Why do we start so early? Because this takes time to figure out, and if you screw it up, it’s kind of hard to change.
Carlie: I can say I moved here to this region because it’s where my now husband is, and we’ve been talking about where we actually want to be. For him it’s been no question — he’s from here, he wants to live here. And I’m like, okay, but I don’t actually know if this region suits my personality.
The people are lovely, but they are a particular type of people. And I hear these stereotypes, for example, about people in the South being a bit more energetic and outgoing, and people in Alsace being a bit harder to get to know. There’s a lot of cultural nuance, as we’ve talked about, that you should really think about. Does it match your personality? That’s certainly what I’m thinking about if we move somewhere else. What will align?
Richard: 100%. And for us it’s a real screw-up, because if we sold you a whole package to relocate, and you’ve watched all our videos on YouTube — so many viewers have watched all of our videos and been following us for years — they already know they’re going to use our service. And they put so much pressure on this move being successful.
So what happens if you rock up and it’s not a match? You paid for a full relocation service, you’ve told your whole family, and you’ve sold your home in California. I take it extremely seriously, how big a decision people are asking us to help them with. And it’s not good for my business if people move and ultimately don’t like it.
Carlie: So does that mean a reconnaissance mission is essential? A couple of trips to France, trying out a few areas? That’s what my husband and I plan to do in the next couple of years — deliberately go on vacation to certain places we think we might want to live someday.
Richard: Pretty much. We’ve talked about how we got here as a business, and Region Matcher is a key one. I called it Region Matcher because I thought, okay, which region are you going to work best in? We started working on this probably over a year ago. Most likely everybody will be copying it in a few months’ time, so I’m happy to share that information, because I think there’s a secret sauce we still bring to this party.
Like you’ve just said — people who are fully committed to moving but have only been to France once. We couldn’t sell them any services. We’d have these calls and they’d say, “Well, what do you do?” And we’re not a non-profit organisation, so how do we service these people?
Carlie: And you’re not going to help them for free.
Richard: Exactly, and we’ve never hidden that. It’s like, well, if you’re not moving for two years, all of the visa rules might have changed, so we can’t really do much.
But what we noticed is that they still wanted these calls. So we thought, well, really what you’re looking at is scouting trips and figuring out those areas. And you know exactly what that feels like — you’re not 10 or 12,000 miles away, but you’ve got to make this count.
So then we thought, okay, maybe we can help organise this. That’s how we came to these services. And we do force people, I would say, not to buy everything, not to fully commit to relocating, until we’ve done that. And even if they’re not going to do a scouting trip, at least do the Region Matcher so we can plan-proof your idea.
A lot of people come to us with an idea. It’s like going to buy a suit, or a fancy dress — you might not do it very often.
Carlie: Don’t talk to me about that, Richard. Do you know how many wedding dresses I bought online that turned out to be duds?
Richard: My point is that with things you don’t do very often — and you’re actually searching online for one right now, right? — this is maybe the other side of the story. You go to the store, and it’s quite an intimidating store to go to. If you went into a shop on Savile Row in London: wow, I’ve never been here before and I’m buying a suit, which is the most expensive piece of clothing I’ve ever purchased.
It’s quite intimidating, and you expect it to be amazing. You want this suit to cure cancer — for that kind of money, you’re like… And then it doesn’t turn out to be quite what you wanted. Eventually it’s a very nice suit, but it might not fit your personality, it might not fit you on a daily basis.
And why do you go into the store for that rather than just buy it online? Because you want the guy who sells the suits to reassure you that this is a good idea. And I, or my team, are usually the people you come to with an idea. “I want a purple suit.” And we might sit you down and say —
Carlie: Purple is maybe not the right colour for you. It’s going to save you a lot of incorrect suits.
Richard: So I think that’s where we’re going with the analogies. But the point is, to answer your question — is that where we start? We used to. But now we probably highly question somebody’s authority on whether they actually know where they want to live, for all of the reasons and examples you’ve named. Because once you’re there, it’s difficult to get out.
Carlie: It is so difficult. There are many things I love about this region and our life here, but there are elements — the weather, the climate in general, the opportunities, the size of the city. If I had my time again, as they say, I would probably look for something like a Region Matcher, just to understand where I’m best aligned in France, because I came here really not knowing anything aside from Paris.
Richard: Most people are like that. And my job is to question that — because if I don’t, are you going to sign up for my services? Well, actually, a lot of people do, and we are today the leaders in what we do.
Thirty or 40 people — I always think it’s crazy, the volume. And it’s nearly more than that, because that’s just the visa applications, and then there are all of the people we’ve already helped. But the biggest thing is that if that isn’t fulfilled, the risk is you’re not going to feel at home. Ultimately, you want your relocation to be successful.
Carlie: Yes. Nobody moves… Sorry, I just looked up at my window and there’s a cat staring at me. You don’t make such a big move abroad to feel disappointed and move back in two years.
Richard: Well, it’s terrible for us as well, because as a business it’s so exposed online these days.
Carlie: Oh yes. You don’t want that Google review, Richard.
Did you see the viral videos about the French government clarifying the rules on remote work? It really blew up in expat circles about six weeks or two months ago from the time of recording this. There has been a debate for years on this particular point, and how you interpret whether you can work remotely from France. I think the jury may still be out on certain parts of it. But there were so many videos, so many influencers and people sharing what many people view as an authoritative take, which may not be the case.
Richard: I hope that anyone watching this today has the opportunity to go on our YouTube channel and check out what we were saying a year ago, because it makes me laugh. I did see this stuff, but if you check out a video I posted nearly a year ago, I was actually answering the questions that people are claiming are new bits of information.
What we try to promote is consistency in our message. And to answer those kinds of questions about remote working — they’re very difficult to answer, because remote working is quite a new thing to the whole world. I’m not sure tax advisors, accountants or CPAs in any country across the world completely understand what remote working means for their country.
In France, there are three government bodies concerned by it. But I can definitely assure you that from an immigration standpoint it’s always been the case — there’s no issue from a visa aspect, as long as the company is not attached or affiliated to France. However, it becomes extremely tricky from a social contribution perspective.
Carlie: And what is your YouTube channel, if listeners want to dive into that particular subject?
Richard: French Connections HCB.
Carlie: Connections HCB.
Richard: Hotel Charlie Bravo, yes. If you watch that, there’s a whole section on remote working that was recorded a long time ago — I mean, a long time ago, probably a year ago. There’s also me on French national TV, being interviewed at lunchtime and being caught by politically led interviews about this whole idea of people using the French healthcare system. That links into remote working, because that’s actually where the tricky part comes in.
I was invited onto French national TV at lunchtime and wasn’t really told much other than that they wanted to use one of our client videos, and they were portraying my American clients as using the French healthcare system for free.
Carlie: I had this discussion with some French people just the other weekend, and they were going off about Americans moving to France just to take advantage of free healthcare. I was thinking to myself, I’m pretty sure it’s not as simple as that for Americans coming to France to even access French healthcare — but I decided this was not my area of expertise to weigh in on.
Richard: No, it’s not. The argument is that they have to pay for a private policy when they enter, and they have to display that they can cover themselves. There is a grey area in that text of law, though, and that’s for early retirees.
Again, these are things that didn’t exist 30 years ago. You didn’t have an early retiree that came with 14,000 people arriving every year. You didn’t have people working from Zoom calls. Most of these texts of law, in every country and not just France, were written 40, 50, 60 years ago. And in order to change a text of law in a democratic world, it takes a long time — and in between we’ve had God knows how many wars, COVID scares and so on. These governments are not really catching up.
What I always remind people is that 0.1% of the total population of France are English-speaking expats.
Carlie: They’re not overflowing your hospitals.
Richard: Well, even if they were, arguably you could say, “Actually, they’re the right type of immigration,” if you wanted to defend that view. But therein lies the issue: it’s such a small proportion that it’s not at the forefront of “let’s resolve this problem.” People are picking up on it to get political votes and all of those kinds of things, but it’s actually a small problem for France, so of course it’s not at the top of the agenda.
That being said, I interviewed the Ambassador of France to California on our channel — it will be fully released probably in the next few weeks, and clips are already available. It was hugely insightful to see how the French government actually view people moving, and how welcoming the French government are of that type of immigration, in their own words.
So for anybody watching this today, thinking about moving in a few years’ time, I wouldn’t worry. The Consul Général, Adrien, answered the question very eloquently. He said, “Look, I can’t forecast the future, but what I can say is this is how things work in France, and they take time. And actually, if you look at your parents moving 40 years ago, it was a very similar process.”
So the processes don’t change that quickly in France. They may be slow and rigorous, but they do work. They are fair, they are welcoming. I think his opening line to our whole interview was, “Remember that France was built on immigration.” So they have a pretty fair policy, I think.
There are nuances and things that confuse you — if you research too much of it, it could drive you crazy. But before people worry about all of the admin, I think they should worry about where they want to live, because the admin you can get somebody to sort out for you if you want to. There are loads of people who do that. Maybe look for ones who give you a warranty on it, because otherwise you might be falling into a trap.
The location is so important. There’s a New Zealander we interviewed, one of our clients, and this is a great example. She wanted an Olympic-sized swimming pool, indoor, that was open all year round. There are only three places in France that have that. So choosing the location where she wanted to live was quite easy, because we had one specific item.
If you look at her relocation, it’s been hugely successful. She’s had issues with remote work. She’s had issues with her paperwork. But because she was so happy with the location —
Carlie: It has the pool, that’s all I need.
Richard: Everything else — the restaurants, the cafés, the boulangeries — is pretty much everywhere, right? The markets, the fresh food. But that one thing was so specific, and when hard things do happen… She actually had a problem with her employer. Her employer was okay with her working remotely, but the French government said, “No, you can’t enter the healthcare system, because your employer isn’t paying into it.” It caused a bigger issue.
My point is that if she’d been in an area she didn’t like, or she didn’t have that swimming pool, that would probably have been a deal breaker for the rest of her move. She’d have said, “Screw this, I’m off.” And yet she’s still there. She’s loving life in France.
So that comes back to my point: don’t worry about the paperwork and the scary things online quite as much. Worry about where you’re going to be long term.
Carlie: A final point before we wrap up, Richard, and I really want to cover it because it does seem to trip people up a lot — the financial proof you need when you’re making your visa application. What sort of financial proof, speaking broadly, are you expected to show, and why do people seem to get it wrong?
Richard: Really good question. To answer that accurately is quite easy, because it’s written online. The figure the government are looking for is 1,400 euros a month per person — the equivalent of minimum wage in France.
Carlie: And is that something you have to have in savings, or just show that it’s consistently coming into your bank account?
Richard: Either showing it in consistency or in savings, times the number of months your visa requires. So if you’re applying for a six-month visa, you’d have to show six months of 1,400 euros a month, either in savings or consistently coming into your bank account.
But the truth is it’s a bit more complex than that, because it depends which country you’re coming from, what your age group is, all kinds of things. The French government aren’t just looking at what the text of law says. They’re looking at: can this individual sustain themselves safely in our country without causing a problem to our system? Without causing a threat, in terms of whether that person is eventually going to have to be looked after by the French government.
That’s really what they’re asking. And there are those three pillars. I’ve always been very consistent with this — if you look at videos recorded four, five, six years ago with other channels, I always said, “Think about this as a mortgage application.”
If you go to your bank and apply for a loan or a mortgage, you have to show that every month you’re not in the red, that you’re careful with your money, you’ve got savings, you’ve got money coming in, you’re not spending more than is going out, and that you’ve got consistency for at least three, four, five, six months. In France, for the applications, it’s three months’ worth of bank statements showing that regularity.
If you rock up at an appointment and you’re 20 years of age and you’ve got exactly 1,400 euros times 12 in a bank account and that’s all you have, then whilst you might meet the criteria on paper for the financial side, the likelihood is they’re probably going to say no. Because you’re at the start of your working life. If you don’t speak French and you’re there, what are you going to do? So they’re going to dig more into your file and profile.
If you’re a retired American with a million dollars in a 401(k), with €6,000 a month coming in from a social income, or even just $1,500, they’re probably not going to look at your profile that much.
So it really depends on how you present yourself. Think about it as a mortgage application. It’s not just the minimum figures that will make your visa application successful. The three pillars are financial, somewhere to live, and medical insurance if applicable. They want to see that it’s thought through, that it’s safe, that you’ve got enough to pay for your accommodation and that minimum income, and that you’ve got a little bit of savings — a little bit more than the minimum.
You could argue, “I’ve just got the minimum,” and in some cases you might get away with it, if they’re not looking into it too much. But usually the younger you are, the more they look at your profile, because the longer you’re going to eventually cost them, if that makes sense. Because France is a very social country, and once you’re there it’s actually quite difficult for them to remove you. So they are a bit more cautious.
Carlie: Richard, this has been a fascinating conversation and so valuable if you are a Brit or an American starting —
Richard: Maybe even an Australian.
Carlie: Yes, even an Australian, or a New Zealander who loves a swimming pool. If you are starting to think about what your move to France is going to look like and how you can make it happen, what’s the best way to get in touch with you to have a consultation and understand the best moves to make?
Richard: Through our website, of course: www.frenchconnectionshcb — hotel charlie bravo — .com. And if you just type “Richard Hammond move to France,” I’m literally all over the internet.
Carlie: You are SEO optimised, I’m sure.
Richard: I am. But also, before people even think about speaking with us, just visit our YouTube channel and start watching those videos, because there’s no point speaking with us until you understand the depth of what we do. You’ll get more out of that call if you’ve actually watched four or five videos. There are a lot of client testimonials from people who have done this before.
We also have our movetofrance-hcb.com website, which is more of a self-serve educational site you can go on.
Carlie: Of course, we’ll share the links in the comments below for all of this.
Richard: Generally speaking, starting to learn a bit of French is also a good option, and maybe that’s not necessarily with me. The French government sponsor what they call the Alliance Française, which has chapters all over the world where people can go and learn French, but also hang out with other people who love France, or who are French and are in your country. You’ll probably find that a chapter is closer than you might think to wherever you are in the world right now. That’s a great start. And then, of course, coming here is a good idea.
Carlie: That’s it for today. If you are even loosely considering a move to France, I hope that Richard’s rundown gave you something to work with before you really dive in. If you’ve gone through this process recently, or you’re in the middle of your dream move, let us know how it’s going in the comments on our YouTube channel. We are Expat Focus.
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