My wife and I moved from New York City to Paris about six months ago.  To make this move feasible, we have vastly simplified our lives.  We have each other, and we own two laptop computers, cell phones, some clothes, and a few brokerage and bank accounts.  We have three expensive pieces of luggage we bought at the fabled Goyard shop, which has been a fixture on Rue Saint Honore for generations.  All of our material possessions fit into these, with a little room to spare.  Mostly I kick around in a beat up pair of khaki pants, sneakers and a sweater, but I still keep one suit.  It’s a light grey casual suit that I bought to wear to weekend functions at my old job.  I still like to put it on from time to time, and then go out to a café or bar and sit for an hour or so and read, think, watch people, or just sit.  The apartment where we stay came fully furnished, and best of all, the owners hoarded books which they kindly left for us.  I suppose we feel that we have everything we need, thanks in large part to the fact that we realized we need a whole lot less now than we thought we needed during our previous lives in New York City.  What is life like here?  Life here is quiet.  It is good.  For us, it is not sexy or glamorous in the way you might expect.  Our lives are nothing like those you read about in a novel, or a travel magazine. No, for us life now is about strangely magical, but actually very mundane, routines.  We wake up early by habit.  I am the first out of bed, usually. I shower regularly enough, but I have long since given up shaving each day. After freshening up, I go out to find some bread for breakfast while my wife washes her hair and tidies up the apartment. When I come home, we make coffee, read a French newspaper and USA Today.  Later in the morning, but while it is still dark, I take the metro from Passy, which is located conveniently close to our apartment, to Babylon station.  There, I stop into one of my four favorite brasseries and drink an espresso or two standing up.  Espresso is expensive in this country, and you can save one or two Euros or so by standing at the bar.  Plus, it’s easier to meet people and speak with them standing up at the bar.   At that hour of the morning, the espresso bar is frequented by regular working people and students.  Everyone seems to smoke. Sometimes I smoke a cigarette, but mostly I try not to.  I take a French immersion class nearby, which goes until lunch.  When we came here, I spoke no French whatsoever.  I am still only just getting the hang of it.  I practice whenever I can, and make a point of watching French television and going to French movies.  I strike up conversations with whomever is willing to speak with me, whether in English or French – or in my case, usually both.  After class, my day is wide open.  I usually eat lunch out.  I try different restaurants, but generally order the same meal: a ham and cheese sandwich with butter on a baguette.  This meal is almost a Parisian syndrome.  I don’t rush it, when I eat lunch.  I easily take an hour or more to eat, review my class notes and drink.  One of the things I have started to notice is that there are a lot of people in Paris who do the same thing.  Where do they get the time?  Sometimes I feel so strange, to be sitting there, a young man with no job, idling away the time, but then I see that I am far from alone in my habits here.  Yes, many of the people around me must be tourists, but not all.  No, far from it.  Many people are rushing in this city, just like in any city around the world.  But many, many are not.  This is because either the French have an antipathy for rushing, or because for many here, there is nothing that needs to be rushed to.  I walk often, even in foul weather.  Sometimes I walk all the way home after lunch.  In any event, I usually meet my wife again in the late afternoon, and we shop for our dinner.  We are now in the habit of shopping at three or four shops for ingredients for just one meal, including wine (which we regularly drink every night).  For us, the evenings are about cooking, eating and taking a walk along the river.  Sometimes, but frankly quite rarely, we might go out with one or two friends in the late evening for drinks or a party, but the norm for us is to stay home talking and reading, or sitting on our veranda watching the Eiffel Tower glowing in the brief distance.  As I said, we lead a very quiet life now. I am not the same person now that I was six months ago.  My own personal circumstances changed me, but also, Paris itself has changed me.  We are not here by fluke chance.  In fact, we spent years preparing for this, and waiting.  The journey began in 1995.  I had just graduated from law school, and came straight to New York City.  We settled in lower Manhattan, in the village of Tribeca.

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The life of a Wall Street lawyer had always held a great deal of glamorous mystique for me – in fact, I did not really understand what a Wall Street lawyer did.  I quickly found out.  My job was to draft the so-called “tax disclosure” sections for public securities.  When you go out to buy a stock or a bond, or whatever else, there is a lengthy document – a prospectus - which you will be provided to read. Buried deep within this document, you will find a section entitled “tax considerations” or something along those lines.  You will most likely not read it, but I was one of the faceless many who draft that section to such documents.  Draft them generally on a moment’s notice, under tremendous time pressure and in the wee hours of the morning while the prospectus is actually being printed. 

The really gifted tax attorneys find the tax law to be very fascinating.  I used to wish that I did as well, because I am sure that I would have found my work life more interesting and meaningful.  In fact, I found the substance of the work tedious and the surrounding lifestyle to be almost unbearable.  The obvious answer would have been to quit, do something else.  But I was reluctant to do it.  I was just starting out, and I had put three years of hard work in to get my law degree (and to get the grades it takes to get hired by a big New York firm).  I decided to tough it out for as long as I could, but to do that, I needed a survival tool to get through the days and evenings while I worked. 

My basic survival tool was that I would dream of living in Paris.  Whenever my schedule permitted me to take a vacation, and whenever this opportunity came at a time when my wife’s work schedule permitted a vacation, we would take a trip to Paris for a weekend just to have a taste of the dream.  And then we would return to the grind.  Sometimes the dream felt only like a fantasy, just a way to escape from reality, like watching TV or going to a movie.  On those days, the dream only served as a reminder of how badly I needed to get out of New York, get off Wall Street, and get into a society with a completely different set of norms and priorities. 

About a year into my legal career, I decided to make an escape plan.  I knew that it would take years to accomplish, but the plan was to build just enough of a nest egg that my wife and I could quit our jobs, move to Paris, and live for as long as it might take us to put together a new life without having to worry too much about running out of money. 

The first phase of the plan was to buy our apartment in Tribeca.  It was small, and cost what seemed a king’s ransom at the time.  But I bought it with a little money I had inherited, and took out a mortgage to cover the rest.  I never ate lunch out, rarely went to Starbucks for coffee.  I recycled my shirts to keep the dry cleaning costs down. I paid the mortgage off as fast as I could.  From that point on, my monthly costs dropped to the hundreds, rather than thousands, of dollars, and I started to plow those savings straight into investments: about 50% into a Standard and Poor’s 500 Index Fund, and 50% into money market accounts.  I continued to avoid eating lunch out, and kept my splurges down to a bare minimum – a new pair of shoes, a replacement coffee mug, and that sort of thing.

New York City was changing.  The internet revolution was minting millionaires and then, soon, billionaires.  A new society of wealthy people migrated into Tribeca.  The homosexual couple down the hall, one was a paralegal, one a retired professor, moved to New Mexico, and a principal at a modest sized hedge fund moved in (in a year, when his fund was not so modest anymore, he purchased the entire top floor of our building). The Greek diner across the street closed, and a champagne bar opened up in its place.  Meanwhile, associate life in the big firms remained fairly steady, although the really bright young attorneys left to join investment banks.  The really bright ones joined internet start ups.  The years went by, and I stayed behind, recycling my shirts to keep dry cleaning costs down and drinking office coffee instead of $4 lattes.  A lot of the time, I felt a bit like a chump, but I was getting modest raises each year.  An associate in a large New York law firm could make up to $200,000 a year at that time – far less than an investment banker, and nothing like a successful internet entrepreneur.  But by a normal person’s standards, my salary was not that bad at all.  I didn’t have any rent to pay, which meant I could save a substantial chunk each year. 

The music stopped in 2000.  The internet start ups folded, and the banks started to trim their staffs significantly.  Then came September 11th, 2001.  Some people in our neighborhood had to sell their 5,000 square foot designed lofts in a jiffy, but we stayed.  I did one thing different, though.  Barron de Rothschild once famously said that the time to invest is when the blood is running in the streets.  I would walk past the New York Stock exchange on my way to work each day during the months after September 11th wearing a gas mask, through smoke and ash, past armored vehicles.  I figured I knew what Barron de Rothschild would have done with his money.  The stock market was in a tailspin, and I put everything we had in it.  When the market recovered, I came out farther ahead than I had imagined, and was close to what I had started to call “The Number.”   We were getting closer now, and I had become almost obsessed with The Number.  The Number had always been in the back of my mind, ever since my first few months of working on Wall Street.  The Number was my meaning.  I could taste it now.  I started shopping for a house in France using the internet, and at the time, was pleasantly surprised by how inexpensive they seemed relative to what you could get for the same money in New York.  The Euro was still somewhat new, and not clearly understood.  Back then, the Euro was cheap against the dollar. We could almost do it.  Almost.

By the time the war in Iraq broke, The Number was nowhere in sight.  By the summer of 2002, the Dow Jones was trailing lower than it was right after the planes hit the World Trade Center, and we had taken a potent beating to our portfolio. The dream of escaping to France was growing more and more distant as the stock market grinded lower and lower, but oh, by now, I was nearly frenzied with The Number.  I could barely concentrate at work, and the thought of working another day on Wall Street was almost unbearable, let alone another ten years.  Misery and greed.  Be very, very careful when you combine misery with greed. 

In retrospect, I made a foolish choice.  A gambler’s choice, driven more by greed than logic.  We used to rue the fact that the charm of our slightly funky neighborhood had been replaced by fabulous restaurants and ten figure business tycoons, but realized that our little apartment was probably worth far more than we ever thought.  We asked a broker and found out that we were right.  In the summer of 2002, we sold the place for almost 5 times what we had paid for it.  We rented a place located between China Town and downtown, close to ground zero, where few people wanted to live at the time.  The space was cheap, with no view, and almost no outside light.  It was three floors over a nightclub, and there were mice.  We took the cash from the sale or our old apartment and put almost all of it into the stock market.

Some of my more clever friends who had left the law firm to join investment banks had been fired after the internet bubble burst, but not all. Those who remained in the investment banking world, the super stars, told me that I was insane for investing in the stock market because the worst was still yet to come.  Ironically, I took this prevailing “expert view” as a sign that all the heavy selling by the big money that was going to happen had already happened.  We got all the way and stayed in. 

By 2003, the bet had paid off.  Only now, the Euro had suddenly come to life, and houses in France were no longer selling for what they had been in 2001.  I used to sit in my office, long past midnight, and when I was done drafting, I would sail the internet and dream.  The Number was somehow always getting bigger and bigger.

A year went by.  And then another.  In fact, things at work were starting to look up.  I was becoming used to life in a dark, noisy apartment – I was almost never there.  And I was used to the hours at work.  The pressure didn’t get to me so much anymore, and I was finally starting to get a feel for the tax code and how to close deals.  As far as the Number goes, we felt like we were really on track, and each year we would say “maybe another two or three years.”  It was how we got by, and we were getting by. 

I had an abrupt reversal in 2005, which is that I was fired.  It did not come as a total surprise.  In fact, the writing had been on the wall for almost a year.  I didn’t grumble or complain at work, but I never took initiative either.  With more senior attorneys, large New York law firms want to see some passion and energy, whereas I was always the sort who just did what he was told, and did it competently but rarely brilliantly.  When you are fired from a New York law firm, it is not like getting a pink slip on your desk.  You are taken into an office, the situation is explained to you, and you are given time to find a new job.  In fact, the process is very polite and, to be honest, considerate.  I lined up two new job offers within three weeks.  I had not reached The Number, but figured another few years would do it. 

I left my job and my wife and I decided to take a trip to Paris for two whole weeks while I considered which new job offer to accept.  I had lined up a position as general counsel at a reasonably successful hedge fund, and another job at a similar law firm to the one I had just left.  We rented an apartment for two weeks in Passy.  The owner’s name was Michele.  He was a bachelor who would rent his place on the internet for a little extra income, and would then stay with a girlfriend while strangers used his place as a short term rental.  His job seemed to consist of self-initiated projects, and he carried no less than three different business cards.  He brought wine over once or twice, and we became friends. During this trip, I didn’t think about my career, or The Number, or the noisy nightclub downstairs from our apartment in New York.  It was like, the blinders were finally off and I could suddenly see in a few new directions. One day, I walked into the Goyard shop on Rue Saint Honore, and indulged myself with a preposterous purchase of fine luggage.  We drank good wine, did food shopping, and cooked at the apartment.  At any grocery store in Paris, you can find flavors you would never find in the United States, flavors like pistachio or chestnut.

One morning, I was shopping for yogurt for our breakfast, and decided never to live my life for The Number ever again.  It was over just like that.  I suppose that is how it happens for some people.  One day, you are buying yogurt in a foreign country, and you suddenly know that you aren’t going home again.  It’s a realization, more than a decision, something that a place like Paris gives to you.

You see, I am in love with Paris.  Like anyone who visits here, I appreciate the beauty of this city, I am fascinated by the history here, and I enjoy the people here.  But that is not why I am in love.  I am in love because Paris provided me with a revelation about my life at a time when I was searching for meaning.  If you can, try to come here sometime when you are facing important choices to make.  Do not stay in a hotel.  Rent an apartment, do laundry, avoid the museums.  And turn off the chatter in your mind.  Maybe, if you are lucky, you will fall in love with this place, too. 

As it happens, we did go back home.  I did not take either new job.  My wife gave her employer two weeks notice, and we called Michele to see if he could help us find an apartment in Paris.  Fortunately, he had a friend with a small place on Quai Louis Blerriot, who had been transferred to the United States by his employer, and who wanted to keep his family’s space in Paris.   Better still, he wanted to be paid in dollars.  There was no paperwork, the deal was strictly on a “friend of a friend” basis.  Every synapse of my lawyer’s brain quailed at the notion of going to France with no more than a gentleman’s understanding about where we would live.  That’s not how you would do it in New York City, but that’s exactly how you’d do it here. 

We sold our furniture on Craigslist, and what we could not sell, we left on the street to be picked over and taken away by the homeless people that lived near our building.  I donated my work clothes to the goodwill for underprivileged men to use at job interviews, and we bought a couple of laptops.  One month later, we had a send off party with some close friends at a trendy restaurant in SoHo, and the next morning, we boarded a plane for Paris.

It was not smooth sailing, once we got here.  First of all, the ephemeral guidance I had felt that day while buying yogurt was nowhere in sight.  We spent the first few days taking care of basic, important tasks.  The first basic task was to open a bank account.  Most bank in Paris require various proofs of legal residency, none of which we had.  We found that we could open a non-resident account at Citibank, on the Champs d’Elysses, which we did.  The account enabled us to withdraw a limited amount of cash, and to write checks.  We bought local cell phones, and used pre-paid mobicarts.  For credit cards, we still use our American Express, but keep purchases to a minimum.  We reorganized the apartment a bit.  And then, we caught our breath and had a couple of days of silence. 

I waited and I listened.  I think the question that I was asking Paris was “what do we do now?”  Over ten years of planning and building and dreaming, and now, we had our goal.  We were here.  But how do you make personal progress, when you finally achieve what it is that you want in life?  What comes next?  I started to take long walks at night along the river, each night walking a little farther.  I would toss coins into the river, sometimes muttering questions quietly under my breath so other walkers wouldn’t think I was a complete nut.  I waited for the city to provide me with an epiphany.  And waited. 

I haven’t had any breakthroughs yet.  Instead, the answer has been seeping in bit by bit.  The main thing is that we have become comfortable with not knowing what to do or what we are going to do.  We live a more intuitive life now, there is no Number, there is no goal or plan on how to get there.  The change is that we are not as disturbed by this anymore.  Building, making progress towards a goal, these are ways to live, but not the only way to live.  We find daily projects now, and are far more engaged in the moment than we ever were before.  We have got to know one another, and the place where we live.  I suppose that our goal-setting mindset went out with our furniture, personal belongings and my suits, only it took a couple of months to realize it.  Maybe Paris has been speaking to me, but it’s a longer conversation now that comes in hints and whispers.   To some people, my wife and I might come across as uninvolved with life.  That doesn’t bother me too much now, either. 

Working was the core of my existence since I was in college, and frankly, the transition from an office setting to this has been tough at times.  We are technically here as tourists.  We have to leave once every three months, and will need to make sure we don’t stay so long as to become legally resident here for tax purposes.  We plan to travel enough to prevent that from happening, which will pretty much prevent us from taking a regular paid job at an office or at a shop. 

One day, I was reminiscing about old times, and began thinking about tax law again.  Sometimes, I get an idea about a way to do a transaction in a particularly tax efficient way, so I study whether and how the transaction is carried out.  There is plenty of information on the internet about transactions and US tax law available for free or at low cost.  When I get an idea about an innovative transaction, and I cannot find anything, I apply for a patent on my idea through the US patent office.  Once the patent is pending, I send my idea to one or two accounting firms, and even to the firm where I used to work.  I’ve managed to sell an idea on three tax structures to one place, and think I could even make a business at this.  It’s odd, but after one decade of hating the practice of tax law, I’ve grown more interested in it, now that I am doing it on my own terms.  There are no billable hours, no clients, just research and a chance to be creative.  I think I’ve finally figured out why some attorneys like this area.  They get a taste of what I do in my spare time in the evenings over a plate of cheese and two or three glasses of wine.  One of the things that I realized is that almost anyone could work like this.  You can patent all sorts of business ideas – not just tax ideas.  The secret is to think about a business that people are doing, and then conjure up a way to do it a little bit better. 

The idea has to be close to or very complementary to something that already exists, but different enough to support the main criteria for a patent: that the invention is novel, useful, and not widely known.  Once you own the idea, you find companies that could use it and would be willing and able to pay you for it.  Send a proposal on nicely printed, heavy paper, and see where it takes you.  Another thing I have done is to purchase a “virtual office” in New York.  I have a phone number there, and a mailing address that I use for all correspondence.  They forward my mail and phone calls here, which allows me to conduct business in New York in a reasonably professional manner as if I was actually there.  I’ve also been using computer to computer video conferences, which gives me a little face time with potential clients.  The only downside is that I have to shave for these meetings, but it’s free and easy, and it beats having to fly back to New York on business. 

My wife now thinks of herself as a homemaker.  The guardienne at our apartment is an old woman, and my wife helps her sometimes with repair work or cleaning around the building.  It’s a good deed, but what better way to work than to help someone who could use it?  Planting bulbs and polishing brass seems far more appealing to my wife than her former office job.  There is no shortage of things a foreigner can work at here in Paris, if you are willing to do things you never thought you would be willing or interested in doing. 

We’ve found that to make the transition from the everyday world that you understand to life as a foreigner in a foreign land, what you need more than anything is two forms of trust.  First, you must trust yourself.  If you are motivated, you will think of something you can do on your own, and you will think of a way to turn it into a saleable product.  It may be something you related to what you are already doing, only you will go about it in a completely different way. 

Second, you must trust that somehow, the world will give you an opportunity to do meaningful work if your mind is open enough to allow it to.  It will not be what you expected, and that’s what keeps things interesting. 
 

. The Insider Guide to Living in France - Living in Paris is as difficult as it is romantic. Just as anywhere else in the world, life is filled with the practical issues we must confront from day to day. Work has to be secured, papers registered, an apartment or house needs to be bought or rented. When Jean Taquet and his American wife moved back to France after spending time in the US, he begin to better understand how cultural differences greatly affect the practical matters of living abroad.  This fully detailed book is written by a French jurist and associate member of the Delaware Bar Association, specializes in civil, criminal and commercial law. He frequently gives courses about the legal system in France and speaks regularly at Working, Living and Investing in France conferences - If you want to live in France - get this report!  .