Ten Things Ten Years Taught Me (That No Relocation Guide Will Tell You)
Ten years of Italian life distilled into ten lessons — some practical, some philosophical, all of them things I wish someone had said to me plainly before I packed up my belongings. Starting with the one nobody asks early enough: the income question.
I have lived in Italy for ten years now. That sentence still surprises me a little.
I did not move here because I was romantic about cobblestones and aperitivo hour (though I am not complaining about either). I moved here because my husband Joe is Scots-Italian, because the numbers made sense, and because I had built a career that could travel. What I did not anticipate was how much the move itself would teach me: not about Italy specifically, but about decisions, systems, money, and the surprisingly large gap between what relocation guides promise and what actually happens on the ground.
These are ten of those lessons. Some are practical. Some are philosophical. A few are things I wish someone had said to me plainly before I packed up my belongings.
1. The income question is the one nobody asks early enough.
Everyone researches neighborhoods, visa categories, and whether their dog can come. Almost nobody sits down before the move and builds a clear picture of what their income looks like in euros, after currency conversion, after taxes, after the cost of whatever they left behind. I call this the expat income gap: the distance between what you think you’ll have and what you actually have once reality lands. It is the number one reason people move back.
2. Bureaucracy is not a problem to solve: it is a system to learn.
Italian bureaucracy has a reputation. Most of it is earned. But what I have learned is that the problem is rarely the system itself — it is approaching the system with American expectations (speed, logic, consistency) and then being bewildered when it delivers Italian ones instead. Once I stopped fighting it and started learning it, things got significantly less stressful. Key insight: find your local CAF (tax assistance center) early, make friends with your patronato, and never underestimate the power of a marca da bollo applied in the right place.
3. A reconnaissance trip is not optional: it is due diligence.
I am a firm believer in at least one extended stay (four to twelve weeks, not a vacation) before you commit to a move. Not to fall in love with the place (you can do that on a long weekend) but to stress-test the practical reality. Can you navigate the grocery store? Do you understand the pharmacy system? How does the post office work? These are not glamorous questions, but they are the ones that determine whether your daily life is manageable or exhausting.
4. Small town life is not a consolation prize.
We live in Borgo Val di Taro: a small town of about seven thousand people in the Apennine mountains of Parma province. People occasionally look at me sideways when I describe it, as if I have made some kind of sacrifice by not living in Florence. I have not. I pay €300 a month for a 95-square-meter apartment above the Monday market. I walk to everything. I know my neighbors. I have a baker, a butcher, and a coffee bar where they know my order. If that is a consolation prize, I will take the whole box.
5. Healthcare will surprise you (in the best possible way).
I was diagnosed with cancer while living here. That sentence carries a lot of weight, and I say it deliberately: because navigating the Italian national healthcare system during a serious diagnosis taught me more about it than any amount of research could have. It is not perfect. There are occasional waits (although honestly I’ve never waited longer than a week or so for anything). There is paperwork. But I received excellent care, I was treated with dignity, and the financial catastrophe that would have accompanied the same diagnosis in the United States simply did not happen. Know your options before you need them.
6. Your identity will shift: plan for it.
This one catches people off guard. When you move abroad, you leave behind most of the shorthand that defines you at home: your professional context, your social network, your cultural references, even your language. You become, in a very real sense, a beginner again. Some people find this liberating. Some find it destabilizing. Most find it both, sometimes in the same afternoon. The people who navigate it best are the ones who had already built some version of their identity around what they do rather than where they do it.
7. The tax situation is real, and it does not fix itself.
Americans abroad are subject to U.S. tax filing requirements regardless of where they live. This is not optional, it is not something you can ignore until it goes away, and it is absolutely something to get professional guidance on before you move (not after your first year abroad, when you are already behind). Italy also has its own tax obligations. Understanding how these two systems interact and building a relationship with a commercialista (Italian accountant) who understands your situation is not a nice-to-have. It is foundational.
8. Language fluency is the goal: functional competence is the floor.
I want to be honest about this one: I am conversational in Italian, not fluent. After ten years. Partly because I work in English, and partly because most people just need to make made peace with being a lifelong learner of it. What I will say is this: functional competence (enough to handle a doctor’s appointment, a bureaucratic form, a conversation with a neighbor) is not optional. It is the floor. Everything above it is a gift you give yourself.
9. The decision to stay is not made once.
People talk about the move as the decision. It is not. The move is just the first decision. After that, you make the decision again: when the bureaucracy defeats you in month three, when you miss your family in month eight, when something goes wrong and the support system you had at home is not there. I have made the decision to stay many times. So has Joe. The fact that we keep making it is, I think, the actual evidence that we made the right choice the first time.
10. The infrastructure of your life abroad needs to be built intentionally.
This is the one I wish someone had handed me as a framework before I left: you are not just moving to a new place, you are building a new operating system for your life. Banking, healthcare, income, legal residency, community, communication with people at home — none of it transfers automatically. All of it requires active design. The people who thrive long-term are not the ones who moved most impulsively or most romantically. They are the ones who treated the move as a project: with checklists, contingencies, and the willingness to ask for help from people who had done it before them.
Ten years. Twelve if you count the planning years.
I am still learning. I suspect I always will be. But if you are somewhere in the middle of deciding whether to do this — or how to do this without detonating your financial life in the process — I want you to know that the learning curve is real, survivable, and genuinely worth it.
Start with the income question. Everything else is easier once that one is answered.
