Working in UK, living in Bulgaria.

If your partner has a pension it's possible to apply for D visa on that basis.

If you are travelling back and forward monthly you may not exceed 90 days in 180 so you potentially wouldn't even need a visa at this point. But I've not yet heard of anyone post Brexit obtaining D visa based on self sufficiency. There are other posts in this forum where income figures or amounts of cash in the bank required will supposedly secure the visa. Also last I heard only certain categories of visa are being processed at the moment, and I don't believe retirement is one of them.

I'm not sure what you mean by temporary residency, it needs to be renewed periodically whoever you are, some people are granted longer than others.

That's great advice thank you.
I'll keep an eye out on the embassy website - might even ring them in London for direct info.

I've lived in NZ previously, so know the hoops to jump through and the misleading info from their embassy too!

As 1 of us will be retiring and 1 of us still working, I'm tempted to rent somewhere 1st and then apply. In my limited experience, countries love tax payers.

If you are going in and out regularly, then you don't NEED either a D visa or a Bulgarian Residence permit; with a British passport you can spend up to 90 days in each 180 days.

However, if you're "set on retiring" in Bulgaria, then I'd suggest that you take care of the formalities sooner rather than later. If you're entitled to a pension then you can get a D visa. Once you have the D visa, you can apply for Residence.

All the info for D visa is on these forums. Not sure calling the Embassy is likely to be a good option, but you can certainly email them if you have specific questions.

If you're working in the UK, then you'll be continuing to pay tax in the UK, I doubt this will get you favorable treatment from Bulgaria. :-) Besides, if you have a pension, that's all you need for the D visa, whether you continue to work or not is irrelevant.

You can both apply for a D visa as you both have pensions. And then you can both apply for Residence. Or, if you prefer, you can apply for the D visa... then Residence... and, later, you can apply for Family Reunification to get your wife's Residence permit.

Whether you rent or buy is also not a factor, as long as you have proof of a "home" in Bulgaria you can apply for the D visa (and then Residence). But, again, if you're already pretty convinced that you're gonna retire here, then I'd imagine the sooner you find your Bulgarian dream house, and buy it, the better.

You should note that it's a bit of a sequence... first you apply for D visa (in London)... then you come to Bulgaria and apply for Residence. For non-EU citizens (as we are now), this Residence Permit is "temporary" one, usually for a year. You have to keep renewing this until you've been here for 5 years, when you should be able to get the EU Long Term Residence Permit (= permanent residency).

Some say holding a BG residence permit is supposed to make travel easier in Europe, but I think this is for non-EU passport holders excluding the UK. The UK passport is good for 90/180 throughout EU. However, this changes after 5 years if you get permanent residence. The EU Long Term Residence Permit has rights similar to a EU passport which means you can live, work, retire in other EU countries.

That's a full and perfect response - very appreciated.
As our pensions are from jobs and not state pension, we probably won't be on enough to claim that we have enough to retire on.

However, as I'm working, then our joint account will be healthy enough.

We'll be applying for the d visa and then residency by the looks of things. No big hassle at all. If 40,000 other expats can do it, then I'm sure we can manage it 😁

Thank you very much.

Just FYI, minimum Bulgarian pension is 250 leva/month (125 euros)... and the minimum wage is 600 leva/month (300 euros). So I would be very surprised if your pensions were not higher than one or both of these! (Plus you have two pensions already to show, even before you receive your UK state pensions.) A full UK state pension is about  700 euros per month.

My understanding is that the D visa simply requires that you demonstrate proof of your pension, I don't think that the amount is a huge issue (although I'd guess they'd expect it to more than a minimum Bulgarian pension).

In addition, you have to prove financial means, and the guidance for that is 6 months (as the retiree D visa is granted for this) x minimum salary. So 3,600 leva, or about 1,800 euros.

If you have a healthy bank balance plus two pensions, I'd be very suprised if they questioned it!

I could be wrong as I'm not an immigration expert and haven't done it yet, I'm just researching the process ready for my own move!
AFAIK, the minimum amount they want to see for a D visa is the same as the national minimum wage, per person, even for a retirement pension. I believe for 2021, that has risen a little to 650 lev.  Twice that is the equivalent of £576. So provided your combined occupational pensions come to more than that, you should be fine to apply for the D visa as a couple. I haven't been able to find anything saying there are travel restrictions on that visa, so you should be okay to still travel back and forward to do an intense burst of agency work then return to Bg. The Embassy will hopefully be helpful and clarify that for you.
The other way which might work would be for only your wife to apply for the D visa now, as long as her pension is more than 650 lev a month, she settles in Bg, you go back and forward for work using the 90 days per 180 Brits are permitted without a visa, then you apply to join her full-time once you're ready to quit work in the UK.
I hope it all works out for you, whichever way you do it!

That's perfect sense.
Her early retirement monies should cover the retiree component of the visa, we'll have a joint account anyway which will show my earnings going in monthly / every 2 months.

The month on, month off rotation sounds feasible for visa free entry and a D visa application should be fine right now, even if its for a year at a time.

I have another 12 years of work before State pension, so plenty of time to get some money together beforehand.

Thank you for that brilliant reply!

Hi and welcome to the Forum.

One issue that you may want to check is one that we had when my wife was planning her retirement from the NHS (nurse) and our return to the Netherlands.  Although we would both be "retired" in as much that we had no intention of returning to work; it very much depended on the destination countries State Retirement age, so my wife would be too young and would attract none of the retirement benefits in the Netherlands and would in fact be paying significant social taxes in the Netherlands on her NHS pension.

So, it may matter because some taxes are age-related.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

That's a really good point, Cynic! So does it work on whether the person is retirement age in the country they want to retire to, not the country they've been working in?

Here are the retirement ages for Bulgaria. They are raising the age by two months a year. https://www.nssi.bg/images/en/FAQ/table1_2019.pdf

For us it was based on the difference between somebody declaring they had retired (my wife) and what the Dutch state retirement age was:

NL government wrote:

The statutory retirement age is gradually being raised. In 2020 and 2021, it will remain at 66 years and 4 months. In 2022, it will be raised by 3 months and it will reach 67 years in 2024. For those born after 30 September 1957, the statutory retirement age is linked to life expectancy.

The last sentence made me smile.  My wife was 7 years behind the curve; so it was quite a financial penalty - social taxes are a big thing in Holland, enough that it put the plan to return to the Netherlands on hold, probably forever; having moved home 11 times since we got married, we know what's involved and the older you get, the less appealing it becomes.

Luckily, it's no big deal, we have a lovely house in the Yorkshire dales, the kids have all left home and are settled; we're not far from a couple of airports, the Hull ferry is an hour drive away; if we want to go back and see family, or fancy a weekend, it's very doable.

Ouch! I'm glad you're happy where you are for now!
The retirement age thing is keeping me here, too, but I'm hoping for the Bulgarian residency they'll use their retirement age and not the UK one. Four fewer years to wait that way!

We both can retire at 55 years old - being ex NHS employees. Whilst it's early, it's still by definition retirement.

I know there's a double tax arrangement with BG and if I become self employed to do my nursing roles, then I can make payments to my national insurance in the UK and pay my income tax in BG, which I believe is 10%.

Fingers crossed!

denerobt wrote:

We both can retire at 55 years old - being ex NHS employees. Whilst it's early, it's still by definition retirement.

I know there's a double tax arrangement with BG and if I become self employed to do my nursing roles, then I can make payments to my national insurance in the UK and pay my income tax in BG, which I believe is 10%.

Fingers crossed!

You can retire whenever you like; what you can't do is bring forward any state-related benefits, so no state old age retirement pension, bus pass etc etc

I should add.  I first retired 26 years ago; age 40 and just left the Army with a full pension; I think I lasted about 6 weeks before I was climbing the walls.  26 years later, I was better prepared and now really enjoy retirement; just starting my new shop.

My wife - also an NHS nurse, when she retires will take her outstanding holiday, then go back to work doing her old job, but on reduced hours.

A couple of possibilities to consider:

1. For your D visa, as a retiree, you need to show proof of entitlement to a pension. However, if you plan to continue working, you probably don't need it... so you might be able to defer one or both of them. Usually deferring a pension is advantageous in terms of the increased pension amount.

2. If you can work (or live) outside uk, then you could take advantage of the low cost voluntary overseas NICs to keep topping up your state pension(s) entitlement too.

Hadn't thought of that. Perfect!!