What It Means To Be Wealthy In Portugal

CNTraveler's 2024 Readers' Choice Awards recently placed Portugal in second place for The 20 Best Countries In The World (after Japan).
Benefitting from an increasing number of direct flights from the U.S. to Lisbon and its second city, Porto, it is now on a par with Spain and Italy in terms of what it has to offer travelers in terms of delicious cuisine, rolling hills, wineries, and beach towns, plus it has the exceptional volcanic landscapes of the Azores. Porto is undergoing a tourist revival, and it was named one of Europe's best small cities to visit in 2023.

Its capital, Lisbon, regularly tops lists of the most liveable and happiest places to visit, as determined by its residents, and the country lures expats to set up home through its affordable healthcare, free when you become a resident. It also ranks highly in terms of safety, regularly hitting The Institute for Economics and Peace's top ten in the annual Global Peace Index due to low crime rates and political stability. In 2024, it came 7th.

In Mercer's Quality of Living Report 2024, Lisbon ranked 27th in the best cities for expats to live out of 241 global cities, measuring the climate, disease, and sanitation standards, physical remoteness and ease of communications, the political and social environment and violence and crime in each city. Life expectancy at birth is 82, a little higher than the OECD average of 81 years–the average man can expect to live to 79 and women to 85.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Portugal is in 12th place for Americans searching for countries to visit or move to in 2024 on Numbeo, the global cost of living database.