Moving and living

Whether it's you, your family, or your retirement — the visa, the bureaucracy, the money, and the life on the other side, mapped by someone who works across both countries constantly and knows exactly what an American finds strange, slow, or genuinely hard.

Americans don't usually get Italy wrong because they were careless. They get it wrong because the internet answers a different question than the one they're asking. The forums are full of people who moved in 2015. The blogs conflate a visa with a residence permit with registered residency — three different things, obtained in three different places, in a specific order. And the single most consequential decisions get made early, casually, by people who don't yet know they're consequential.

Four of them drive everything: which visa you enter on, where you live, when your Italian tax residency is triggered, and what your work and income picture looks like once you're there. Get the visa wrong and you may not be allowed to work. Get the residency sequence wrong and you spend months undoing it in an office that opens three mornings a week. Choose a town for the tax break and discover the nearest good hospital is ninety minutes away.

Then there's the American-specific layer that most relocation advice simply doesn't cover, because most relocation advice isn't written for Americans: you keep filing US taxes forever, some Italian banks would rather not take you, Medicare does not travel, and your US driving licence stops working sooner than you expect.

What's usually missing isn't information. It's someone who holds the whole picture at once — the bureaucracy, the money, and the cultural reality of actually living there — and who will tell you plainly when the answer is don't.

That's us: a US firm, US contracts, run by a dual US–Italian citizen who works across both countries constantly, reads the Italian paperwork natively, and works alongside an Italian attorney, fluent in English and well versed in international law. We will tell you when the honest answer is that you shouldn't go, or shouldn't go yet — and in that case, when the right moment is and what to do between now and then.

Which move is this?

The path changes completely depending on who's moving. Find yourself here first.

You, or you and your partner. The cleanest version — but the one where the visa choice does the most work, because it determines whether you can earn, for how long, and what it leads to.

Your family, with children. A different move entirely. The school decision is per child and it drives the calendar; whether the accompanying parent can work depends on the visa; and if you're separated or divorced, consent to relocate a child is a legal question that has to be raised early, not discovered late.

Your retirement. Yours is a tax and healthcare question wearing a lifestyle costume. The 7% pensioner regime is real and it is genuinely attractive — but how it treats a US citizen's Social Security, pension, IRA, 401(k), and Roth is the part most people get wrong, and the towns that qualify are not always the towns you'd want to grow old in.

Every rung below comes in all three framings. Tell us which you are and the whole engagement reshapes around it.

1 · Understand it

Five 50-minute sessions plus a scoping call, in one of three versions.

From $800 · Premium from $1,500

Moving to Italy — whether Italy is right for you and what the move actually costs; the full visa menu for Americans and a clear recommendation on which door is yours, and where it leads afterwards; the arrival sequence in the correct order, from residence permit to codice fiscale to registered residency to digital identity; Italian banking, how tax residency gets triggered, the favorable tax regimes you may qualify for, and the US filing obligations that follow you forever; then building a life — enrolling in healthcare and what it really costs, how renting connects to your visa, and a sequenced first ninety days.

Family Relocation — the fit conversation run child by child, plus the trailing-spouse question; how your spouse and children sit on a visa, whether your spouse can legally work, and consent to relocate a child if you're separated or divorced; the Italian school system and the real choice per child between public, international and bilingual; your children's pediatrician, the mandatory school vaccinations, childcare, and how a family's day differs from an American one; then the long game — helping each child and each parent settle, keeping the door open to US universities, and your children's citizenship and your family's path to residency.

Retiring in Italy — the honest fit conversation, counterweights included, and the case for renting and visiting before you commit; the elective residency visa and the 7% pensioner regime read pension by pension for someone who still files US taxes; healthcare and long-term care as you age, and the trade-off between the best tax towns and the best hospitals; money, inheritance and succession across two countries; then choosing a town you can grow old in, what happens after the ten-year tax window closes, and keeping the move reversible.

Premium, in any version, adds a session built entirely around your situation and a 3–5 page roadmap you can act on — your visa route and a bureaucracy checklist, or a schooling plan per child and a timeline built backward from the first day of school, or a town shortlist and the brief to hand your tax advisor and estate attorney.

From $800 · Premium from $1,500

Choose this if you're still deciding — whether to go, where, on what visa — and what you need is the whole landscape from someone who will name the counterweights, not just the postcard.

2 · Get a plan built for your situation

Tailored sessions over four to six weeks, ending in a written working document — not a course, and not a template with your name in it.

• Family Relocation Sprint — the right visa with a straight answer on whether the accompanying parent can work, a researched shortlist of best-fit schools for each child with cost and availability, a healthcare, vaccination and childcare plan, and a move sequence built backward from the first day of school. From $2,200 — plus $1,000 to add our attorney on custody and consent to relocate a child.

• Retiring in Italy Sprint — an honest 7% and elective-residency read run against your actual income, pension by pension; a shortlist of towns that qualify for the break and sit near good hospitals and a flight home; a healthcare plan; and an organized brief of the exact questions to take to your cross-border tax advisor and estate attorney. From $2,500 · $3,500 with a cross-border estate review by our attorney.

If you've already done the corresponding bundle, we credit its personalized portion toward the sprint.

Choose this if the decision is made and what you need is the specific plan — the school shortlist, the town shortlist, the sequence — rather than the education.

3 · Have it handled

This is where we stop advising and start executing: booking the appointments, sitting in them, speaking Italian in the room, and carrying the deadlines.

• Visa / Residency Application Project — project-managed application support for the route that fits you: Elective Residency, Digital Nomad, or Investor. $3,000–6,000

• Relocation Concierge — the full move, over six to twelve months. We assemble and manage your team, run the residence-permit and registration steps alongside your immigration attorney, secure a home and a lease that actually supports your residency, enroll you in the health system, set up banking and brief your Italian accountant, place your children in school as your liaison, and handle the utilities-and-driving-licence layer that quietly eats people. Standing weekly check-in, one point of contact, and a complete handoff dossier at the end with every account, deadline and renewal date in one place. Framed for an individual, a family, or a retirement as needed. $12,000–18,000, milestone-billed

• Bilingual Meeting Representation — one high-stakes appointment where you need someone in your corner: the health office, the bank, the school, the questura, a landlord. In the room or virtual. $500–1,500 per event

Third-party costs — government fees, translations, professional fees — are always billed at cost, with no markup.

Choose this if you'd rather not spend your first Italian year as an unpaid project manager in a language you're still learning.

4 · Keep someone on call

The Galanti Bridge Retainer, in two tiers. Planning — async support while you're still deciding and preparing, with a defined response time. Post-move — your person in Italy after you land, for the letter you can't read, the appointment you can't book, the thing nobody warned you about. From $200/month (Planning) · from $300/month (Post-move)

Choose this if what you need isn't a project but a standing answer.

5 · Not sure yet whether it works at all

Every rung above assumes the move is going to happen and the question is how. Sometimes it isn't. If you don't yet know whether your income qualifies you for a route that lets you live the way you intend — or whether the accompanying parent can work, or whether the 7% regime survives contact with your actual pensions — that's a smaller question and it should be answered first.

The Move Viability Read gives you a straight read in writing. You send us your household, your income and where each part of it comes from, and your timeline. We talk for forty minutes. About a week later you have one to two pages: which visa route is likely open to you and why not the alternatives, what it requires measured against what you have, whether your spouse can work under it, the two or three things in your situation that will cause friction, and a realistic first year with a cost range. Same read whether you're moving alone, moving a family, or retiring — it's the same first question in three costumes.

$500, about a week, credited in full against anything you go on to do with us.

The Legal Layer —  — add a session with our Italian attorney, plus a one-page written summary of where you stand and what to do next. He's a Milan-based lawyer who works in English, with a practice covering property, contract law, and relocation for foreigners moving to Italy. Focused here on whichever pressure point is yours: the legal soundness of your visa route and the US-side coordination to plan for; consent to relocate a child where parents are separated; or cross-border estate and succession, so your will does what you intend in two countries. From $500

Where this leads — Buying Property in Italy if the move involves purchasing rather than renting · Italian Citizenship by Descent if your ancestry might make all of this considerably easier · the Italian Cultural Deep Dive if what you actually want is to understand the country you're moving to.

What this isn't — we don't give legal, tax, immigration, or medical advice, and we don't file for you. Your visa's legal soundness and anything touching custody goes to our attorney; your pension and tax coordination to a cross-border tax advisor; your will to an estate attorney; your enrollment to the health service. We tell you plainly when you've reached that line, and which conversations to start early — for a retirement, roughly two years before you move. Government timelines are never ours to promise. What we guarantee is the work that gets you there, done well and done with you.

Thinking about moving to Italy? Book a free 30 minute call. If the honest answer is that you shouldn't go yet, we'll say so.