This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Todd Kleperis, 54, a Florida resident who is leaving the Sarasota area and moving to Lazio, Italy, about an hour south of Rome. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m 54 years old, and I don’t know how long I have left on the planet. Let’s say we can make it 10 to 15 more years. Are you happy? I haven’t been happy here in the last eight or nine years.
I made a deal with my wife a couple of years ago. I said, “If we’re still here, I want to be able to be out of here.” And she goes, “OK.” So that’s what happened.
The reason that I chose Italy was because I have a friend who is Italian who’s going back there.
He has blood cancer, and he wants to live out the rest of his life in an Italian family village. I like family, I like community, and I like close-knit groups.
I’ve known him my entire life. His family is all Italian. Three or four days a week, I’d be down at their house and experience what they had as a culture. And then when I came back to the United States, I was like, “Where is that culture?”
I grew up in a small town in Connecticut, and my town was a small farming town that had about 6,000 people. I believe in small-town values, and I believe in trying to take care of people and doing the right thing.
Italy represents that to me because it’s still a lot of family, a lot of good values, a lot of good food, a lot of good culture — a lot of good everything. You’ve got the coasts, you’ve got skiing, you can go kayaking, you’ve got everything that I’d like to do outdoors. Everything that I can’t do in Florida during the summertime, I can do there.
I’ve been around the world too many different times to not do what I want to do.
I’ve lived abroad before and didn’t want to move back to the US
I spent five years working in Taiwan. Then I moved to Singapore, and then we bought a house in Thailand. Then I lived in China for nine years.
My wife got a job in the United States and asked if I wanted to go back. I said no. I said that 10 years ago, and I’ve been living in Florida ever since. But this year is the last year.
There are three questions I always ask before a move. If you can answer the three questions, then you know where you want to go: Do you like the food, do you like the people, and do you like the healthcare? If you have those three things, you could pretty much live wherever that is.
But people really need to understand that if they’re going to do this, there are things that they need as a criteria list that they should have set, and then they build around that.
For instance, if you have to have some type of international restaurant, then you don’t want to go to a small village because they will not have international restaurants — that’s just not going to happen. I’m not going to go to my local village and say, “Hey, why aren’t you making any Indian food?”
What drew me to Italy was the proximity to the rest of Europe and the cultural nuances of having a society that’s been around for a very long time. The culture is very solid, and I think the way Italians interact with each other is different. Life is at a little bit of a different pace, but it’s also a better pace. And, in my opinion, it’s a better way to live.
Homes are cheaper in Italy, plus healthcare is free once you’re a citizen
We bought a home about an hour south of Rome in Lazio. It’s a little village that nobody in America would know where it is. It’s so remote and there aren’t a lot of foreigners, which is perfect.
Our home in Florida is 2,800 square feet, and the home in Italy is 2,500 square feet. Homes in my neighborhood in Florida are about $750,000. In Italy, you can buy the same house for $100,000.
Now, I’d have to put probably $50,000 into it, but it’d be almost the same size. I’m going to put on a 200-square-foot glass room addition on my home in Italy, and it’ll be nearly at the same size as my home in Florida, and it’ll cost me an 18th of the cost.
My wife and I will do the residency the first year, and then after that, it’s only a two- to five-year stint before you can actually apply for citizenship — or 10 years, and you get citizenship as included.
We’re definitely nomadic, though. My wife will probably travel more than I will back and forth to the United States.
If you’re a couple in your 40s in the United States, you can almost rest assured that you’re going to be paying a couple of thousand dollars a month in health insurance. In Italy, once you have residency, you’re completely covered by the Italian government.
Just that one example changes the dynamic for people when they look at the long term. You hit 60 years old, and you’re lucky to get Medicare and Medicaid in United States in the next 15 to 20 years. Over in other countries — and I’m not just specifically talking Italy — they have a different system set up as you get older, so weigh your benefits and your minuses.
I’m always going to travel, and will always be around different parts of Italy. But I definitely see that small town as being part of my life, because a small town has a small culture with small belief systems, and it’s the kind of thing that I liked. That makes it easier.
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