This Part Is Hard (and Good)

PLUS: 500,000 Italy Work Visas, A Simple Plan to Monetize Your Ideas, and Portugal’s Most Surprising Resort

Author

The Unretirees
July 13, 2025

Planning a move to Portugal? Our Moving to Portugal online course is everything we wish we had when we were planning our move. Information about visas, budgets, real estate, and more. All neatly organized so you can get the answers you need when you need them (no more rabbit holes on the internet). Yes! I’m ready to get started →


The Hard, Good Part

Have you ever struggled to make peace with past chapters of your life?

This past week has been filled with the kind of life changes so many of us go through at this stage. We’ve been having hard conversations with my dad about aging and independence. We cleaned out the basement of our Connecticut home and said goodbye to some deeply personal memories. Next week, we’ll hand over the keys to a house we poured our heart and soul into renovating.

It’s been a sad few days.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about mourning—not just the grief of losing someone, but the quieter kind. The kind that comes with aging. With watching life move forward. With closing chapters we never thought would end.

Maybe it’s raising kids. Or seeing our parents grow older. Maybe it’s a job, a city, a rhythm of life, a version of ourselves we used to be.

And sometimes, the memories sneak up on you. A song plays in a store. You instinctively reach for the phone to call someone who’s no longer there. Or a scent—lilac, in my case—takes you back to a place or a person you thought you’d long forgotten.

It’s the background noise in an otherwise whole and happy life.

I think this is part of the story of life after 50:

Learning to honor where we’ve been—without letting it keep us from where we’re going.

So how do we do that?

In Portugal, when people raise a glass, they say saúde, which means health. For a long time, I confused it with the word saudade—a Portuguese word that means longing or deep emotional nostalgia.

I thought they were the same. And honestly? That made sense to me.

Ever since I started coming to Portugal in 2021, I began adding a quiet thank you to every toast. A silent acknowledgment of the people who came before me—the ones who loved me, taught me, shaped me. In a way, I was toasting to them, too.

Now that I know the difference between saúde and saudade, I’ve decided to keep my version anyway.

Because gratitude is the sign of a well-lived life.

It’s proof that we’ve loved deeply.

And it’s a quiet promise to keep discovering what comes next.

Here’s to that.

Happy adventuring,
Matt and Dawn

🌎 EXPAT LIFE

Portugal’s Spookiest Resort?

We’ve been exploring some of the best places to live on the Silver Coast in our YouTube summer series. In this week’s episode, we explore two planned communities on Portugal’s Silver Coast—one polished and picture-perfect, the other filled with unexpected twists.

You don’t have to play golf to be fascinated by what we found.


ALSO:

She Ditched the U.S. for Paris at 79: Proving it’s never too late to make your dreams of living abroad come true, this feature in CNN Travel is sure to inspire your next move (at any age). Read the article →

Unretire in Italy: Dreaming of la vita dolce but not ready to give up your day job? Italy is planning to issue half a million non-EU work visas over the next three years. Get the full story →

🧰 FLEXIBLE INCOME TOOLS

Need a Simple Business Plan? 

We’re just a few weeks away from the launch of our online course, the 90-Minute Business Blueprint. If you have lots of ideas for a business but no idea how to turn those ideas into a revenue stream, this course is for you. It’s a practical guide to finding your niche, creating your product, attracting customers, and building a profitable business that you can run from anywhere. No hype, no hustle, just a common-sense approach to building more financial freedom over 50. 

Join the waitlist today to get special pricing and bonuses. 

✈️ TRAVEL

What Does Slow Travel Mean? (And How to Do It)

From The Good Trade, this thoughtful guide dives into slow travel’s ethos—highlighting how it’s more about depth than distance. It traces the movement back to Italy’s slow-food origins and offers practical approaches:

  • Choose intentional travel: stay longer in one place to truly connect

  • Build local routines: walk to the grocery, learn the language, linger—or simply sit in a piazza

  • Reap the benefits: reduced stress, sustainable practices, cultural immersion, and cost savings

ALSO:

Best Farm Stays in Europe: We love a good farm stay, so when our friends at Roadbook recently published their list of best farm stays in Europe, we couldn't wait to share it with you. See the list →

Great Hotel Stays in Lisbon: Planning a trip to Lisbon for a scouting trip or just a vacation? This list of great stays in Lisbon offers a welcome alternative to boring stays. Start exploring →

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