Apr
Solo Female Travel, Europe, Positive Lifestyle, Travel Destinations, Travel Inspiration, Travel Narratives
Moving Abroad in Your 40s with Melissa Bryon – Episode 3
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Summary
In this episode of Bon Voyage Besties, hosts Rachel and Rosa chat with Melissa Byron about her journey of moving abroad to Portugal in her 40s. Melissa shares her experiences with the visa process, culture shock, and the importance of building a community as an expat. She emphasizes the empowering nature of solo travel for women and discusses the challenges of entrepreneurship while living abroad. The conversation highlights the need for courage, planning, and the willingness to embrace new experiences.
takeaways
- Melissa Byron moved to Portugal after living in Germany and Greece.
- The visa process can be overwhelming, but hiring a lawyer can help.
- Community support is crucial when moving to a new country.
- Solo travel can empower women and build confidence.
- Cultural adjustments can be challenging but rewarding.
- Entrepreneurship abroad comes with its own set of challenges.
- Social media often portrays an easy journey, but it takes time and effort.
- Taking the leap to move abroad can lead to personal growth.
- It’s important to enjoy the slower pace of life in Europe.
- Learning the local language enhances the experience of living abroad.
Moving Abroad in Your 40s: Deep Dive
Listen on APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE
If you’ve ever stared out the window at work and thought, what if I just… left?
I think we’ve all been there. Multiple times.
So … if you’ve had those moments of daydreaming of moving overseas, then this one is for you. On this week’s episode of Bon Voyage Besties, we sat down with Melissa Byron, founder of A Solo Woman Traveling, to talk about what it actually takes to pack up your life and start over in another country. Melissa has been living abroad since 2017, and at 45 years old, she’s proof that moving abroad in your 40s isn’t just a fantasy or something that needs to wait until retirement.
It’s a plan you can actually execute. Now. Today.
The spark that started it all
Melissa didn’t grow up assuming she’d ever live in another country. Like many of us, she thought moving abroad was reserved for people with dual citizenship, ancestral visas, or a job transfer. It wasn’t until a chance conversation on a train during a solo trip, with a stranger who told her plainly, “if you want to do something, you can find a way,” that the idea shifted from daydream to possibility.
She went home, started researching, and in 2017 made her first move: to Germany. Since then, she’s lived in Greece and, most recently, Lisbon, Portugal, where she’s been based since 2023. Her path wasn’t a straight line, and that’s kind of the point.
Since when is life ever a straight line? Literally never.
The visa process: what you actually need to know
One of the biggest questions around moving abroad in your 40s is the paperwork. We all dread that. But don’t worry! Melissa breaks it down clearly.
For example, for US citizens looking to move to Portugal, there are two main visa pathways. The D8 is a digital nomad visa, designed for remote workers. The D7 is a passive income visa, which applies if you have pensions, dividends, or rental income from a property back home.
Melissa chose to hire an immigration lawyer to guide her through the process, which cost around 2,000 euros. She’s quick to note that many people do it themselves successfully, but having professional support meant someone accompanied her to appointments and managed communications with Portuguese authorities. The timeline was faster than she expected: she submitted paperwork in September and received approval shortly after Thanksgiving.
Culture shock and Challenges
Social media tends to show the aperitivo hour and the golden-hour cobblestone streets and millions of amazing incredible friends that you’ll make once you’ve made the leap oversees. Social media? Isn’t reality.
It skips the part where you learn you can’t flush toilet paper in most of Greece, or that your apartment water heater needs 30 minutes of warm-up time before you can shower. Melissa laughs about these things now, but they’re real adjustments.
For example, Germany brought its own culture shock in the form of bureaucracy, as a country famous for paperwork, stamps, and handwritten forms. Just recently in Lisbon, Melissa had to visit her bank in person to change her address, bring supporting documentation, and return again to sign the form once it was prepared. It’s a reminder that as much as we take digital convenience for granted in the US, it’s far from universal.
Her best advice for handling the adjustment? Build community immediately. Seek out expat groups, nomad meetups, and platforms like Meetup.com.
For instance, when Melissa first moved to Berlin, she found her closest friends through a wine-themed Meetup. Years later, those friendships are still going strong.
Slow travel as a philosophy and a business
Melissa’s years of living in Europe didn’t just change her address. They changed how she moves through the world. That philosophy is now the foundation of her business, A Solo Woman Traveling, where she curates small group trips for women focused on slow, immersive experiences in Europe.
The concept is simple but powerful: stay in one base location, take day trips to surrounding areas, and skip the exhausting hotel-hopping that leaves you feeling like you’ve seen everything and experienced nothing. Her Greek Islands tour in October drew women from across the country and left everyone, in her words, with friendships for life. An upcoming August trip to France is already on the calendar: a detail that made Rachel (haha, yes, me), a teacher limited to summer travel windows, practically cheer out loud.
The mindset shift that makes it possible
When Rosa asked what single piece of advice Melissa would give someone considering moving abroad in your 40s, her answer was less about logistics and more about mindset. Find people who have done it.
Reach out, ask questions, and let their experience take some of the fear off the table. And then, quite frankly, stop saying “maybe next year.”
Open a savings account labeled for the move. Put a research date on your calendar. Take one concrete step, then another. Melissa spent over a decade evolving into the life she has now, and none of it looked easy from the inside even when it looked effortless from the outside.
She also has a grounded perspective on the fear of failure. If Portugal stopped working, she could go back to the US, find a job, and figure it out. She already knew how to do that. What she didn’t know was what living abroad could look like, and that unknown was worth exploring more than the familiar was worth protecting.
Is it too late? Absolutely not.
If there’s one takeaway from this conversation, it’s that moving abroad in your 40s isn’t a consolation prize or a midlife crisis.
For Melissa, it was the beginning of her most intentional chapter: the one where she built a business she loves, found communities that sustain her, and made a home in a country that matches the pace she actually wants to live at.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to take the first step.
Listen on APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE
In this episode, we learning that moving abroad in your 40s can be a true reality! Follow Melissa on Instagram at @solowomantraveling and explore her group trips at A Solo Woman Traveling. Listen to the full episode of Bon Voyage Besties on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.