The step-by-step plan for France

Good news to start with: to live in France you don't need to apply for anything. No visa, no registration and no residence card. French law says it literally: EU citizens don't need a residence document.

Would you like one anyway, because it's handy at some counters? Then you can apply for a carte de séjour "Citoyen UE", a French residence card for EU citizens. Nothing obliges you to.

One thing for completeness, because this site also tells what nobody tells. The law does mention a notification at the mairie (the town hall), within three months of settling there. What you need to know about that notification:

• There's no fine on it.
• Proof of the notification may nowhere be a condition.
• The government information doesn't even mention the notification anymore.

If you don't notify, the only consequence is that you're formally deemed to have lived there for less than three months.

The most important lesson of this step is a different one. Because no counter forces you, nothing happens by itself either. Healthcare, the tax office and the bank only know you exist once you report to them. Of those three, healthcare takes the longest: there it's a matter of months. So this whole journey turns on clocks you have to start yourself.

In this step you find out how you'll be insured for healthcare in France. Just as in Spain and Portugal, there are three routes. But in France you have to bridge a longer period before you're in, and that's the most important warning of this plan.

Which route applies to you depends on your situation:

• You're going to work in France. Then you're entitled to the healthcare system of your country of residence (PUMa) from the start of your work, and you can register right away. If you work remotely from France for a Dutch employer, you're usually insured in France too; step 2.11 explains when.
• You're retired. Then the S1 form from the CAK, the Dutch body for healthcare abroad, arranges your access.
• You don't work in France. For example, you live off your assets. Then your right only starts after three months of stable residence. And the money you live on has to be at least at the level of the French social minimum.

On top of that, the processing of your registration itself may also take months. Your Dutch cover stops when you emigrate. So between that moment and the moment your French cover works, there's a gap. You have to bridge that gap yourself.

How you do that, you arrange in phase 2. Here you only need to know which route applies to you.

In this step you choose where in France you'll live. The country is big, and two things play a part in that choice that Dutch dreamers both underestimate.

The first is money. The official rent observatories, which measure rents in France, arrive at these amounts per square metre:

• In Paris about twenty-six euros.
• In the provincial cities eleven to thirteen euros.
• In the deep countryside six to seven euros.

So for the same monthly rent you get two to four times as much home outside Paris and its surroundings.

The second is amenities. In parts of the countryside GPs don't take on new patients. And without a declared GP, a regular GP you've officially registered as yours, healthcare reimburses structurally less (phase 5 explains how that works). If you choose the quiet, check first whether there's a doctor, a school and a station within reach.

Also look at what a region is like outside the summer. Regions with many second homes have a winter side, with closed shutters and a village square without people.

Outside the cities English is no safety net. The language weighs more heavily in France than in Spain or Portugal. So take it into your choice, and not as a footnote.

In this step you see what the move is going to cost you. The calculator above works with your own moving choices and shows three cost blocks:

• The application. For France this block is virtually zero, because there's no registration and there are no fees.
• The move. France is the shortest trip of all our destinations, and so also the cheapest.
• The landing. Deposit and rent, your living costs while no income comes in yet, and the mutuelle in your monthly budget. The mutuelle is the supplementary health insurance almost every French person has.

A rule of thumb that makes the journey less stressful: don't count yourself rich on a quick sale or a quick job. Only start spending once the first months are covered.

In this step you make sure you stand behind the decision as a family. You end up with a few conditions on paper that you both stand behind. No forms are involved, and yet this is where most journeys fail. Emigrating isn't something you do alone, even if the papers are in one name.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, with a week in between. Talk with your partner and, depending on their age, with your children:

• Evening 1, why. Why do we want this? What do we hope to find in France? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What is, for each of us, the condition for saying yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4 sheet.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you can both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in France and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. From the moment you're no longer insured, you have one year to take out voluntary insurance with the SVB. Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on big expenses.

Married, registered or living together? It can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. If you're both Dutch, each of you lives in France in your own right. If your partner has a nationality from outside the EU, they live there as your family member. If they stay longer than three months, they get a residence card of their own. A spouse always counts as a family member, a registered partner if France treats that partnership as equivalent to marriage. If you live together unmarried, you prove a durable relationship and France assesses it itself. Check at your healthcare further on in your plan what else applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four: tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed habits, like the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school: tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, like their room.
• Teenagers: involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs heaviest. Agree how they keep in touch and when they see their friends again.

Young children pick up the language surprisingly fast. For teenagers the transition is harder, and extra support is no luxury. In France a child must be in education from the age of three. You enrol first at the mairie (the town hall), and then at the school.

Who learns the language, and when? With France the language deserves the heaviest weight in this conversation. Daily life runs in French: at school, at the doctor's, at the town hall and with the neighbours. Unlike in the Algarve or on the Costa, there's no English-speaking safety net outside the cities. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and precisely that partner has no colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

Close the orientation phase with a target date for departure. Not as a deadline — as a compass. Here too you wait for nobody's permission, so the pace is up to you. A realistic picture: from serious decision to being settled, this journey takes most people three to nine months — where "settled" with France above all means: the healthcare clock run out.

You fill it in below in this card, and filling it in is completing the step. You can always adjust your target date — the planning adjusts with it.