NIF number

Why do you need a portugese person to go with you

I don't think you do. I goy my NIF by providing passport details and address to my lawyer, who then applied and got the NIF for me.

What are the costs of a lawyer

Well, we got a lawyer to help us with paperwork and applications for purchase of property and application for residency etc., and the NIF application is included in the lawyer's service package. So it's hard for me to estimate what just a NIF application would cost, but I imagine it would be that much as we got the NIF after just a few days.

I dont really have a lot of money so I was hoping to do it the cheapest and easiest way..

Because Switzerland is not in the EU.. So I was hoping sb has experience with this.

Getting a NIF is the very 1st thing people must do when moving and living in Portugal. I would recommend that you contact a lawer and get a quotation for help with NIF application. It's quite bureaucratic in Portugal and all doc's are in local language. I would estimate the cost to 100-200 Euro.

Good grief people!   You can walk into the local NIF office with your passport and ID (we used our driver's licenses) to get the NIF number.  Why you need a Portuguese person is because you need a guarantor (someone that will guarantee that you will pay taxes for the next year)).  It is a very simple process that took us about an hour total and only cost the paperwork fee which was about €20 per person   Now we didn't speak Portuguese, so we hired a Portuguese college student that we had worked with on our exploratory visit to translate for us and he was our Guarantor. His rate was €50 for 4 hours of work (we used him for opening our Bank account after getting our NIF numbers and some rental property searching too).

You don't need a lawyer unless you aren't in Portugal or just don't want to spend the time in the NIF office.  But you will need a Guarantor, which I guess the lawyer does for those people that hire them.