Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: Moving to France
571 Talent or Freelance Visa for Moving to France with Daniel Tostado, Brenna and Jeff (Nov 9)
[00:00:15] Introduction
Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 571, cinq cent soixante et onze.
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
[00:00:32] Today on the podcast
Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with immigration lawyer, Daniel Tostado, and friends, Brenna and Jeff, about moving to France on a talent or freelance visa.
Annie Sargent: Discover the realities, challenges, and insider tips for securing your French visa, whether as an artist, entrepreneur, or retiree.
Annie Sargent: Learn from Brenna’s experience as a published author and Daniel’s expert advice on navigating bureaucracy, healthcare, and taxes. Ah, taxes!
[00:01:06] Podcast supporters
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Annie Sargent: And you’ll find everything at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Annie Sargent: If you’d like to find out more about the boot camp 2026, and actually in real life join us in France, browse to joinusinfrance.com/bootcamp2026.
Annie Sargent: The dates of this boot camp are October 3rd until October 10th. And I hope you can join me in France for seven days of hanging out with fellow Francophiles, visits of wonderful sights around Toulouse, and optional language classes.
Annie Sargent: There are five spots left for this unique experience as I record this.
[00:02:06] Magazine segment
Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Daniel, Brenna and Jeff, I’ll briefly answer the question, why is the Join Us in France Facebook so small?
Annie Sargent: And also, the catacombs, which are going to be closed until next spring.
Annie Sargent: If you’d like all the links, and the full episode transcripts, go to my website joinusinfrance.com/episodes, and look for this month’s shows.
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[00:02:52] Guests Welcome
Annie Sargent: Bonjour Daniel, Brenna and Jeff, and welcome to Join Us in France.
Daniel Tostado: Thank you. Thank you for having us.
Brenna: Merci beaucoup.
Annie Sargent: It’s wonderful to have you. We have a big topic today. You are both my friends, Brenna and Jeff, and you have been talking about moving to France for a good long time, and now you’re actually taking steps.
Annie Sargent: And Daniel Tostado here is a lawyer, immigration lawyer in Paris. His assistant reached out and said, you know, "I’d love to be on the podcast to talk about my services because it is a subject that interests a lot of people." And I told him, "Okay, but why don’t you help my friends in return?"
Annie Sargent: And I want you to know thatno money is changing hands in this. This is not a sponsored episode. It’s just that we have somebody who knows French immigration and somebody who needs French immigration and so let’s see what we can do.
[00:03:51] Daniel’s Journey and Expertise
Annie Sargent: So why don’t we start with you, Daniel. Tell us a little bit about your services and what you do.
Daniel Tostado: That sounds great, yes. So hello, everyone. My name is Daniel Tostado, and I’m from San Diego, California, and 10 years ago, I moved to France myself. I had started the law school in America with the goal of finishing it here in France, and I did. And then I sat for the New York bar, got that, and then the Paris bar, got that. And my whole practice is helping people move to France, to get French visas, residence permits, and naturalization, and what I call as live your best French life. And it just so happens that I’m also incredibly passionate about talking about the topic of what does it mean to move here to France, what are the cultural clashes between especially the American culture and French culture. I find it’s more fun for us to live abroad because American rules don’t apply to us anymore because we’re not in America, and the French rules don’t apply to us necessarily because we’re not French, and so we’re allowed to make our own rules. And that’s in part why I like moving here.
Annie Sargent: Okay. Make your own rules. I love it. Very good. Okay.
[00:04:55] Brenna and Jeff’s Background
Annie Sargent: Brenna, just introduce the two of you, please.
Brenna: Well, Jeff and I are a married couple, also from California, little further north than Daniel, we’re from Orange County area. We’ve lived here for a long time. We’re empty nesters for the second year running now. Our kiddos are in college or beyond, and we are kind of looking at the next stage of life.
Brenna: And it’s funny, like Annie said, we’ve been talking about it for, dreaming about it for years, you know, probably talking your ear off, Annie.
Brenna: And so, we decided maybe we need to finally get off our seats and start doing more than just thinking and dreaming about it. So that’s why we’re here.
Annie Sargent: Brenna and I have known each other since we were in our early 20s. So-
Brenna: Yes.
Annie Sargent: … we go back a while. She’s one of my oldest friends.
Daniel Tostado: 10 years.
[00:05:46] What difficulties are they facing?
Annie Sargent: Yes. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about your project, Brenna. What are you guys trying to do and what are the difficulties that you’re facing?
[00:05:58] Passeport Talent
Brenna: Well, as Daniel, I’m sure, will elaborate, when he gets a chance to talk again, that there are many different visa possibilities for Americans to pursue when seeking the opportunity to go and live in France. And I’m learning that the one I want to, or that we want to pursue is a rather rare one. It’s referred to as the Passeport Talent or the Talent Passport. And I am a published author. I’ve been writing books, contemporary romance and women’s fiction books for about the last 12 years published. For the last 10 years, it’s been our sole source of income, our little small publishing company. And we also co-write some books together in the fantasy genre. So we’re seeking to go for the Talent Passport.
Brenna: Actually, has several sub classes as well, and the one we’re looking for is the artist visa or the Passeport Talent.
Annie Sargent: Right, so Daniel, is that something that’s commonly done? For an author, are there other avenues to look at?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. So I’ve already got a lot of reactions on this, so I’ll just do a thought drop on all parties involved.
[00:07:10] Talent Passport Visa Details
Daniel Tostado: So yes, since 2016, they’ve rolled out this category called Talent Passport, which is serving to bring in the highly skilled workers into France. That it’s really favorable because it lets you sponsor your spouse, and the spouse can work in any manner on the Talent Passport family. It lets you bring in your minor children, and they can come here, and then age 18, they can stay and, you know, join the workforce themselves.
Daniel Tostado: So it’s really nice. And that, the subcategory in question is the artist visa, which basically, I’d say for Brenna’s purposes, that there’s two major requirements.
Daniel Tostado: One is be able to demonstrate that you’re an artist…. and demonstrate that you’re making money off of your art. So artist is kind of the bigger, you know, larger sense of the word, that it could be a musician, it could be somebody who’s actually painting or a photographer. It could include writing. I have a couple of hesitations when I recommend it to anybody right out the gates, that I find them to be unnecessarily strict on this sub-category of visa. Versus, a person has exactly the same identical project, but they apply for the entrepreneur visa. I found out the French consulate’s more inclined to give the entrepreneur visa.
Daniel Tostado: We had once a young woman who was the creative director for, like, a magazine shoot, and she had some real stars in her, you know, listings, and they didn’t give her the artist visa, and then we re-filed a month and a half later on the entrepreneur visa.
Daniel Tostado: And they said, "Okay, well, madame, you’re in the show business. I think you’re more business than show. We’ll give it to you, and then you’d have to come here to France and do the same thing." So in Brenna’s case, my first thought and reaction is, okay, it’s great that you’re an established author. And Brenna, you sent through your resume to me before we got started today, so that was really handy, because I can see that you’ve got 56 published titles, a really good number of them, 15 are in English and then 13 are already in French. You’ve got stuff in Italian and German, Dutch, you know.
Daniel Tostado: So you’ve got a certain corpus of work around you that can base it off of France, though, two things that I would kind of keep in mind and then I’ll let you react, because I tend to talk without anyone jumping in on me, is that we’d want to see a France-based project. So what is it here in France that you’re going to be accomplishing in particular? And secondly, how are you going to make money off of that project?
[00:09:15] Financial Requirements and Project Proposal
Brenna: Yeah, so my project,I also sent you my very rough draft of my project proposal, but one of, I actually had three aspects of my project proposal. I’m not, normally not a non-fiction author, but I wanted to start working with Annie on producing a series of books based on her podcasts, because we’ve been talking about that for years too, and how that would help maybe.
Annie Sargent: Yes, we have. And I’ve also, I’ve told you many times, I’m not an author. You know, I wrote a cookbook, but I find it, it was like a pandemic cookbook. A lot of very nice listeners bought it, but I, I’m just not a writer per se. So now that you say you’ll cooperate with me, ah, maybe I have a chance now that you’re on my side.
Brenna: Well, you have so much amazing content, and not all people can process this type of information, or, you know, even when they have, and they absolutely love your podcast, to be able to have a searchable reference book at their fingertips, to be able to take something with them while they’re on the road traveling, I think it would be a great way to extend your platform even further, into print.
Annie Sargent: Right. So now the question is, would this sort of thing be considered a good project for as far as the visa is concerned? Or again, is this more of a entrepreneurial kind of freelance sort of work?
Daniel Tostado: So when it comes to the artist visa, and I reviewed yourthree-page business plan about what you’re going to do, or I would actually call that an artist plan. You know, for the entrepreneur visa, we have like a really solid business plan. For the artist visa, it’s like a three-pager, you know, "What am I going to be doing here in France?" Three to six pages. And that’s essentially what this is.
Daniel Tostado: The one question that stood out to my mind was the finances, because they want to get a sense around, well, how are you going to make your money off of this?
Daniel Tostado: How much are you going to realistically expect to be making off of this? One way in which we did this successfully was we had a client who was well-established like you. You’re a bestselling author under USA Today. I’ve worked with a gentleman who was a bestselling author under New York Times, and he had a project that was connected back to a major French historical figure. And for that, we needed to go to the archive, he needed to do research in the libraries, and so forth. And so it was a project that needed him to be here in France. And because he is already really well-established, the one of the name of the more- you know, four or so major publishing houses had given him an advance that he could say, "Okay, well, I’ve got the France-based project and I’ve got the financing lined up, and here it is."
Daniel Tostado: Because when it comes to writing in today’s day and age, one could be seated basically anywhere and working from a desk, and does one actually have to be in France for that? Especially if, like, let’s say the book that you’re working on was not necessarily connected back to France, one could be elsewhere for it. There’s a lot that I like, Brenna, about your profile. The fact that you’re established as an author. The fact that you’ve got external recognition bythe USA Today being on their bestseller list, I would kind of have that be one of the various pages within the application. On your CV you mention that you’re on a couple different guilds and honor rolls and that there’s, like, certain recognition that you can demonstrate. That’s good. So there’d be a part, I’d usually say it’s 30 pages of demonstrating your artistry. So demonstrating that you’re out there. And then the second section is demonstrating how you make money, like, basically the royalties that you have in place off of your different books that you’ve got going on. The project in France I think is solid enough to be the basis for the Talent Passport artist visa, that you’re going to do some kind of collaboration based off of Annie’s podcast. That’s exploring, you know, the lesser-known, the corners of France. I think that’s a great angle. I’m always putting people off to Paris or Nice. Like, my clients end up going to, I don’t know, Dordogne. And so it’s good for them to kind of get out and see new neighborhoods and for France to be promoting those various places.
Daniel Tostado: The question is then the finances. Based off your prior track record, how much can you really reassure the French authorities that you’re going to make money off of that? So I think it’s the second half of your application which is going to be the financial projection and expectations, that’s going to be what’s going to drive it home for them.
Brenna: Okay. So my question is, what they are requiring financially, is that you have a guaranteed income every month of, what is it, 70% of minimum wage, French minimum wage, and I’m like my question, since I do have a pension from when I taught, I used to be a French teacher for several decades, so I have a teaching pension which I receive, and that covers that requirement. Is there more I need to show as far as what am I making off of my books on top of that? Because like I said, the pension covers that minimum income, more than covers it. But are they looking for how much do I make on top of that with my books currently and in the future, obviously with future projects I’ll be making, you know, different amounts, so…
Daniel Tostado: They want you to be primarily an artist. That’s actually one of the, I don’t want to call it a dangerous part of it. We have sometimes the clients that come to us and say, "Oh, I’ve got, you know, 200,000 that I’m getting from whatever, you know, rents or capital gains or what have you per year, and I want to be an artist but I’m on, you know, more of a minum- still on the earning side, like, still trying to grow, eh, in my earnings."
Daniel Tostado: And it almost sabotages the music category because they want this to be for artists that are making 51% of their earnings are coming from the art. It’s for people that are living primarily as an artist. So it’s great that you’ve got a teaching pension. One of the ironies, I was saying the comments before about the entrepreneur visa, is that in the entrepreneur application, we freely mentioned that, "Oh yeah, I’ve got money coming from the US side. I’ve got a US pension. Therefore, I don’t need to get up to French minimum wage, which is 22,000 euros for the entrepreneur visa, because I’m already covered for the first, you know, 17,000 of that. So I’m less of a risk factor."
Daniel Tostado: I always think about it this way that it’s like there’s two buoys on the water and you’re trying to sail your boat through it, and buoy number one is don’t take a job that belongs to a French person, and buoy number two is don’t become dependent on the system. And if you can sail your boat between those two buoys, France is happy to have you, whether it’s for the visitor visa because you’re going to be not active on the French labor market, and you have your own health insurance, whether it’s you’re an entrepreneur and you’re creating your own job and it can earn you more than French minimum wage, or it’s an artist and so you’re coming in to do your art and you can make a living off of your art. So in this case, I think it’s helpful that you’ve got a teaching pension. But I would want to have more of a focus on your royalties. Are you comfortable talking about that, Brenna? How much on a monthly basis do you get in royalties?
Brenna: He’s the business end of this, so.
Jeff: Yeah, it varies a lot from month to month but right now between 4,000 to 6,000 US a month.
Daniel Tostado: That’s lovely. That’s great. You’ll be able to continue relying on that after you’re here in France, and you’ll say, "And this is artist …," like, "I’m a writer."
Annie Sargent: Yeah, because sorry to interrupt but the income they’re looking at is not just the income from that one book that has to do with France, but all her, all their income, yeah.
Brenna: It’s the body of work, right.
Daniel Tostado: Yeah, and the most classic definition of an artist in my mind is a painter. And so painter usually makes a tableau, they sell it for, you know, 800 euros, and then there’s no more royalties to be going with it. So then the act of being a painter is you make an art and it is sold once, and then you kind of compile all the number of pieces of art that you sold in that year and you say, "Okay, look. Well, I can make a living as an artist because I sold enough."
Daniel Tostado: And that’s where books and films are different from, you know, the painter style of artistry because you make the product once in 1994, and then you continue to benefit from it as the years go on.
Daniel Tostado: What I do want to do is just quickly switch over to what is the technical definition in French of what they’re asking for, for the talent passport as an artist because I like the wording on it, and I think this helps us in this situation. So vous pouvez… and so I’ll say it in French and then I’ll say it in English for the audience, I’m used to having a bilingual lifestyle. Vous pouvez obtenir le statut de talent professeur artiste et culturel si vous etes artiste interprete ou auteur d’oeuvres litteraires ou artistiques, et si vous remplissez les conditions suivantes concerning your financials that… 51% of your money comes from your art, and that’s above 1200 euros per month.
Daniel Tostado: So that first part, the reason why I read that is because it says you can go for the talent passport artist if you are an artist or interpreter or if you’re the author of literary works. So it’s right… You existing is right there in the title. Like, they know that your type exists. You’re an author of literary works. Bingo. Yes, you, Brenna.
Daniel Tostado: So, that’s why I believe in this case, why I think, all things equal, you’ve got more than a 50% chance of getting it, because they have you in mind for it, your royalties are much more than I thought they were going to be and I’m really happy to hear that number, and you’ve got a face project. So all things equal, I believe in your case file and I think this could work.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. People love the romance genre. It’s… you know, like… The people who love that genre love that genre and they read a lot of it. And so that’s wonderful.
Brenna: Top selling genre in almost every language actually.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, almost every language, that’s what sells the best.
Annie Sargent: So another question I have is, okay, so you think she has more than a 50% chance of getting the talent visa, which is wonderful, superb. But that means there’s a 50% chance that she might not, and so that’s a big chance.
[00:18:27] Alternative Visa Options
Annie Sargent: Could she then say, "Okay, I’ve been denied on this line, but I can apply again as a entrepreneur, kind of freelance type of visa"?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. Honestly, if you would… that’s what I’d have you do first and foremost, is shoot for the artist visa, and then it… what I’m constructing in my mind is a plan A, B, and C. So plan A can be a Talent Passport artist, plan B could be the entrepreneur visa, and then plan C could be the long-stay visitor visa.
Daniel Tostado: With the long-stay visa it would be less interesting for you because it wouldn’t let you have French contracts and French publishing or what have you. It would let you be here and sit in France, but then you’d be, you know, effectively making money on the US side. What we generally say in the industry is that there’s like a two-strikes system. So you could file once, fail, turn around and re-file, and it’s not really a problem. But you probably wouldn’t want to have two failed visa applications because then maybe the French authorities would start looking askew at any further, you know, application. I had one of my friends file for the Talent Passport artist visa this past summer, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to get it. Because he was still on the growing curve of finances when it comes to selling his artwork. And so we worked out a plan A, B, and C, and we filed for it, and this summer he got the artist visa. So it did work out. I think, Annie I was saying 50% try to be more conservative and not oversell things, because in this industry you have to be very careful. It’s very easy to oversell and say, "And I guarantee it… and take on my word as a lawyer, because I don’t think everyone trusts lawyers, but in any case, … I’m just trying to be honest that it could very well… It’s a very subjective category, and it’s hard to get, and so I think you’ve got a really good shot at it. That’s my read of the room.
[00:19:59] Visa Application Process and Considerations
Annie Sargent: Okay, so perhaps you could explain to us what the repercussions of each of these visas. So if she gets a talent visa, does she automatically get a 10-year carte de séjour or do you still have to renew your carte de séjour every year?
Daniel Tostado: Great question. This is complicated, so I’m sorry, I don’t… I don’t have a simpler way of explaining it.
Daniel Tostado: When you file at the French consulate, and you, Brenna and Jeff, you’re down in Southern California so you’d file in the location in LA, and it’s no longer with the consulate. Since 2018 they now use a third-party service provider that as of April of this year is now called TLS. So you’d go to the TLS office and file there. They’d send up all your documentation, your passport, your photos, yourcase file off to the French consulate in DC who centralizes all the decisions, and then they mail you back your passport with your visa sticker inside. And it’s either going to be a three-month sticker or a 12-month sticker.
Daniel Tostado: But let’s assume that you got it and it’s the artist status. So if it’s a 12-month artist status, you’re good, you come over here to France, you do what’s called the validation of the visa with OFII, the French Office of Immigration and Immigration, and then you’re good for that first year with that visa sticker. It’s a VLSTS, a Visa de Long Séjour Valant Titre de Séjour, a long-stay visa that has the validity of a residency permit card.
Daniel Tostado: And then at the end of that year, and then two to four months preceding its expiration, you file online for a renewal, and then you’re off to the races on a multi-year card.
Daniel Tostado: And it can either be, you know, four years… Sometimes for artists, for international renown, they deliver two years for a weird reason, for the very first status. But the Talent Passport’s meant to be a four-year status.
Daniel Tostado: And then what usually happens, it might be one year and then four years upon renewal, and then after five years being here, you can get a ten-year card. So that’s what that route looks like.
Daniel Tostado: Or they can do it weirdly where they give you a three-month visa sticker, just a VLST, Visa de Long Séjour, so that you get here to France, you find the lease agreement and you immediately file online for a multi-year card. I like that less because it’s a bit of a scramble. You’re getting here, it takes like a month to get a lease, to find the right lease in the right city, in the right neighborhood. And then nothing in France moves quickly because it’s France, right? And there’s bureaucracy, and if there wasn’t bureaucracy, I wouldn’t have a job, so here we are.
Daniel Tostado: So it depends on where you’re moving to. Paris is the least worst prefecture, and there’s 95 prefectures. If you’re moving to the southern part of France, they move slower, and they’re not going to be accomplishing anything within two months’ time. And so then it becomes this uncomfortable period of time where you’ve filed and Jeff is waiting for you to contribute a foreign number so that Jeff can then file online, and then it’s going to take longer than three months, and then one fine day they give you a phone number and then Jeff can file. And then what they may end up doing in any case is issue you a one-year card or a two-year card or a four-year card, you know? We’re a little bit at their mercy as foreigners and that’s okay.
Daniel Tostado: Because we’re the piece they chose to play on their board game because it’s cooler and it’s in French. And then once that’s set us up for… So you got three-month visa sticker gets followed by some kind of length residency permit card, and then you’re off to the races for trying to get that ten-year card, maybe eventually aiming for citizenship.
Annie Sargent: So, okay. So the talent visa could lead to ten-year card and citizenship?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: The long-term kind of visitor thing cannot lead to ten-year card and citizenship, right?
Daniel Tostado: The visitor visa, the long-stay visitor visa can lead to the ten-year card.
Daniel Tostado: Almost every category can lead, after five years of being here, to the ten-year card, with the exception of a couple handfuls like the student visa. The French Ministry of the Interior just clarified in May that they’re no longer letting most cases of retirees who’ve never worked in France, they’re not letting them file for naturalization because they’re really keen on people working here in France and having worked here in France more than five years to kind of earn your stripes and really understand what France is about and have the center of your economic interests coming from France in order to then let you join the French club and become French. So they’ve gotten tighter under Bruno Retailleau, who is the current Minister of the Interior. Although in French politics you’re never really sure who’s the minister, who’s the prime minister…
Annie Sargent: It won’t last. That’s for sure.
Daniel Tostado: That’s the next episode, Annie.
Daniel Tostado: So it depends on you know, if a person’s really looking to move here to France to have a, you know, the anchoring of your financial interests here in France. In your case, Brenna, you’ve already got royalties coming from the US, you’ve got the teaching pension coming from the US. It effectively would mean that you have to still earn more than all of that combined on the French side to start being a candidate for a 10-year card. So, for the naturalization, I’m so sorry. The 10-year card is very doable and realistic, and for the 10-year card, they don’t care where your money’s coming from. It could be American, it could be French. They want you to be anchored in France to join the club.
Annie Sargent: Very good. Okay. And so, now what if they decide to go with the freelancer kind of tact? What does that change? Does it change anything?
Daniel Tostado: Not so much. So, it would definitely be, if they went for what’s called the entrepreneur and liberal profession, entrepreneur profession libérale, that would be a one-year status, so one-year VLSTS visa sticker. And then upon its expiration, you would be filing with the local prefecture for, ideally a four-year card.
Daniel Tostado: Sometimes if they’re mean, they give you another one-year card, because they’re not sure how the business is going to do. But otherwise, it goes one year, four years, 10 years. And also at that, after being here for five years, you can go for naturalization. So that’s another route that’s doable as well.
Annie Sargent: Okay. Questions from Brenna and Jeff?
Brenna: Yeah, I have several, but you want to go first?
[00:25:04] Talent Spouse Visa
Jeff: I just wanted just… Because I know if she does get the talent artist visa, I can get a talent spouse visa, so when do I apply for that?
Brenna: That was one of my questions too.
Daniel Tostado: Great questions, simultaneously. So you put in your application the same day at the TOS office in Los Angeles that, Brenna, you’re filing for a talent passport, or, and which, by the way, they just renamed from talent passports to talent, this summer. That’ll take me years to get used to saying correctly. But it’s not a passport, it’s a visa, so it was never correctly named in any case, so here we are.
Brenna: Yes.
Daniel Tostado: That you would file at the same time for the talent artist visa, and that, Jeff, you would file for the talent family status, and that you both get visas. And Jeff, your steps would never be longer than Brenna’s. So if Brenna gets a four-year card, then you can ask for a four-year card, and if it expires on June 1st, 2030, then you can get a card through June 1st, 2030, et cetera, et cetera.
Brenna: I The entrepreneur visa, can you just basically, also for the sake of the listeners as well, what are the different requirements for that? Because you went over the requirements for the artist, but the entrepreneurs, I believe it’s different, right? The requirements for that one are slightly different, right?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. They’re looking forfour requirements that you have a real and serious business idea that can earn you more than French minimum wage, which is €22,000, with at least one client, not just one single client, which some are at least theoretically located here in France. And so in that case, maybe it’d be a matter of trying to line up how you could have a client or at least potential partners here in France writing support letters in that application. And it’s much more about the business, and they don’t really care if you’re an artist or not, because in any case, you’re not asking to be an artist. You’re asking to be a business runner here in France. It’s a lot about understanding in the business plan who’s on the market, who are your competitors, and then a financial projections years one, two, and three. What’s your overall cost? What’s, you know, overall turnover? What is your total expected cost? What is your expected profit margin? I think both dossiers are very big case files to end up filing, but different documents go into that.
Brenna: And is that the one where you have to have a certain amount of money set aside towards the business, or is that, is that… Am I thinking of the profession libérale, or is this the… I’m sorry. I’m getting confused now because there’s a different one where you’re going to start a business, but I don’t think it’s under the talent visa, right?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. You know, Annie, for your viewers’ sake, I’ll give you a metaphor. I was in a mattress shop once, and I was testing out mattresses, and then the seller said, "You know, we usually don’t try to have you test out more than three mattresses, because otherwise they’re all going to start to blur together in your head."
Daniel Tostado: And I took that as like a little lesson to say when I do consultations, I try to reduce the number of visa categories I talk about, because after a while, about five or six, then all of a sudden it feels kind of overwhelming. But we’ve done a good job keeping it relatively tight so far, that there’s the artist status, which I think we’re all clear on. What we’ve been talking about so far, in the past couple minutes is the entrepreneur level profession, visa category. And then to the side, we were also talking a little bit less about the visitor status.
Daniel Tostado: So Brenna, to your question, there’s a cousin category, what I call it, for the entrepreneur visa, is the talent passport corporate creation. They’re very, very similar. And for that talent passport corporate creation, that one does require the €30,000 investment, versus entrepreneur doesn’t actually require any special number of money set aside. They want you to open a French bank account, and we got it for a young gentleman, who does, like, movie trailers out of New York with €1000 euros sitting in the French bank account. So there wasn’t a certain minimum threshold for that, for the entrepreneur one.
Daniel Tostado: The entrepreneur one is not a talent passport though, so you would not be able to sponsor Jeff on it versus a talent passport corporate creation, which does, is it, as any talent passport, lets you sponsor your spouse.
[00:28:33] Bringing over dependents over 18
Brenna: Okay. Excellent. And a more general question, for anyone getting any type of visa or this specific type of visa, if you have adult children who want to be able to stay either, you know, they’re home for the summer and it’s going to be longer than 90 days, which is the normal amount of time that you can stay without a visa, right? Or they’re…… in between a job, or they’re doing a gap year or whatever, is there a possibility of bringing over a dependent, because our kids are still in their early 20s, a dependent but over 18 kid?
Daniel Tostado: No, not for this. Once you become an adult, you are on your own two feet. And so like, let’s say, somebody’s in their early 20s, I usually lean towards the student visa, whether they’re coming with their master’s or an undergraduate degree, or if they’re coming over here because their French is not as good as it would need to be for them to live in France for the rest of their life. So they enroll in intensive French, which is a 20-hour week class. And then once you’re here on the student visa, it’s wonderful because you can work part-time. And then when you’re working here in France, the employers start to get to know you and they fall in love with you, and then they want to hire you. Versus if you’re just some random email from Seattle or wherever, they’re not going to hire you. And so, in France, it very much, if your face is here, then we’ll start to appreciate you. So that’s usually the route in for a person in their 20s to France.
Brenna: Okay, great. Thank you. We’ve already talked about that possibility with bringing them over as students to profound their… They’ve taken French in high school, but it’s even though their mom was a French teacher, they weren’t quite as serious as maybe they should have been. Or maybe it was because their mom was a French teacher, I don’t know, but…
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Annie Sargent: Maybe this is a silly question, but isn’t there a thing where if you are in France for 90 days, then you go to a non-Schengen country and you come back in and it resets your clock or something? I don’t know anything about this.
[00:30:21] Understanding the 90-Day Rule in France
Brenna: But you have to be out for 90 days, I think. It’s 90 in, 90 out.
Annie Sargent: Oh.
Brenna: You can’t just go out for a day or, you know.
Daniel Tostado: Right, otherwise, there’d be a big run around, people just be popping over to London for three hours…
Brenna: Yes.
Daniel Tostado: … hitting reset. Effectively, the way I like to frame it is, it’s a 90-day period, any 90-day period over a period of 180 days. So it’s not necessarily purely 90 days in, 90 days out because it could be a little bit mixed. And there’s these really handy Schengen calculators where people can put in their entry and exit dates and track it basically. And then after a certain number of days, 180 days, then days start to reset.
Daniel Tostado: So yeah, I mean, on the tourist side, it’s lovely. And I think, I always recommend that too, to give Paris, you know, a couple kicking the tires test runs, you know, see if France is a good fit as a tourist for a couple months stays. And then if you feel like it is a good fit, then you go back to America to get the visa filing done at the TLS center.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, that’s a very good advice for people who don’t know France very well.
Annie Sargent: I mean, Brenna and Jeff have been here many times and have been to lots of different areas, she knows it better than most visitors. But it’s true that for most people, they should just start by coming over here for three months and see how they get along, you know?
[00:31:29] Importance of Learning French
Annie Sargent: And sign up for language classes and see how that goes for them as well, because I really think if you can’t learn the language, France is not good for you. Eventually, you’re going to regret this.
Brenna: Yeah, I think it’s the make or break factor for my clients, is whether or not they put in the time to invest in French. That if you’re going to dinner parties and they talk in French, and then your plumber comes and your banker and your roofer person, and they’re all wanting to talk in French because their English is not that good, because they’re not that comfortable in English, it’s up to you to be as we’re in a foreign country and now it’s time for us to speak in French back to them. As Americans, our French can never get better. Like, we can always improve our French. Yes, as a former French teacher, I’m a very big proponent on acquiring the language and not doing a year of Duolingo, you know, string of Duolingo and consider that your French class. I mean, while that’s good introduction, it’s definitely not going to get you the language acquisition that you need to be able to function in, you know, basically in society. But you don’t have to be perfectly fluent when you go over there either. I mean-
Annie Sargent: No.
Brenna: … as long as you’ve got that basis and you’ve got the mentality where you are going over to learn instead of, "I’m just going to learn the basic phrases and then hang out with expats for the whole time here." I suppose that is a plan, but it’s not one that’s going to be as enriching as, you know, being able to actually…
Annie Sargent: You will be denied that possibility, Brenna. That will not happen with you.
[00:32:58] Challenges of Opening a French Bank Account
Annie Sargent: You mentioned bank accounts. I know it used to be a huge deal getting a French bank account. Is it getting easier now, Daniel?
Daniel Tostado: I’ve heard it’s getting easier. I still think it is a huge deal. So when we are Americans and we’re living abroad, and this is me putting back on my lawyer hat for a quick second, there’s two things we have to keep in mind, FATCA and FBAR.
Daniel Tostado: So, FATCA is not really on our desk, it’s on the French bank’s desk. And that’s for them to say, "You’re an American citizen so that we, the French bank, have now to be compliant with US regulations." And that’s why they don’t love us as clients, because we’re making them do extra homework in a foreign country. And so if you walked in, Brenna, today to a French bank and said, "I’d like to set up this bank account." They’ll say, "Well, Madam, you don’t have a visa, so we’re not really interested." And the only bank that lets you get around that is BNP Paribas. They let you set up an account before you get here as like a pre-resident. And then you can convert it into a resident bank account after you have moved. But I don’t really need my clients to get a bank account before they get here in most cases, because what are you going to use it for?It’s also fun to come into France, then have the visa in hand, and then hit the pavement and, you know, pick where you’re going to live and then pick that bank that’s nearby. You can tell I don’t work for banks because I’ll tell you right now, I don’t like any of the banks in France. I don’t find any of them to be particularly friendly to us as clients. So you pick your neighborhood bank, whether it’s Societe Generale or Credit Agricole or… I’m with Banque Populaire. I don’t love them. They don’t love me. And then after that, then you’re set, then you’ve got the bank account, and then you could use the bank account to pay for the lease agreement, and then you could use the proof of address and the bank account to get the cell phone number, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:34:30] Does France Like Online Banks?
Brenna: What about brokerage accounts like Wise? Because we do have one set up to…
Jeff: It’s not a brokerage account.
Brenna: Oh, I’m sorry. What is it? He knows what it is.
Jeff: No, a brokerage account, you’d buy stocks on there. Now Wise does… it’s made to transfer money, but they also… you get an IBAN number. I’ve read you can use them to pay for stuff in France, but some places don’t like it because the IBAN is Belgian, not French.
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. I’ve got a lot of thoughts. France is a country, and Annie, you can chime in on this if you’d like. I’d never use the word innovative to describe France. France would love to be innovative. They invented the talent passport to bring folks like you in, and then you heard me describing all the hullabaloo about, you know, Jeff getting the foreigner number to then file, but is it a three-month thing or, you know, 12-month thing?
Daniel Tostado: So, France likes brick-and-mortar bank accounts with, you know, established banks, and that whether it’s one of these online banks, and the most popular one is actually Revolut. Revolut, as of last year, now has a French IBAN, called a RIB. So that is a possibility, and in theory, one can use that then to complete payments. But I’ve just seen it that I’d recommend you get here and then you open a brick-and-mortar bank account. It just, things work more fluidly in that manner.
[00:35:40] Visa Requirements and Proof of Address
Brenna: And they do need a lease as well. They need to prove address and have, like water bills, and phone bills, and things in their name, right?
Daniel Tostado: Not for the visa, thank goodness. So this one, whether we’re talking about artist visa or entrepreneur, you don’t yet have to have proof of address. For the visitor visa, you do. And for the visitor visa, they want to see three months of address. And so happily, the consulate’s let us know that they confirm accepting three months of Airbnb. So if… in any case, you’re going to show up at the Charles de Gaulle Airport and then you’re going to go somewhere that night, so you might as well already have some kind of proof of address lined up for your own personal living. But if it’s not for the visitor visa, then you don’t necessarily need to have three months of proof of address. I don’t think it takes three months to find a lease agreement in France. I think it takes three to four weeks. And so what I like to recommend is that folks line up three different one-month-long Airbnb bookings if they’re going, for example, for the visitor visa. So maybe during that first month, they get that lease and then they can cancel the latter two bookings.
Brenna: But that only matters for the visitor visa. If you’re going for a different visa, you don’t need this anyway.
Daniel Tostado: That’s right, yeah.
Brenna: I mean, you do need a place to stay.
Daniel Tostado: Yeah, she can stay with you, Annie.
Brenna: Yeah, crashing in your guest room. Yeah, yeah. We’ve talked about this. We have a guest room. She’s been here a few times.
Brenna:
[00:36:56] French Language Proficiency for Visas and Citizenship
Daniel Tostado: Jeff, how is your French on a scale from not so great to getting there?
Jeff: It’s… I mean, I can order in a boulangerie or a cafe, but that’s about it. I mean, I’m working on it now, because obviously I need more French. The one question I kind of had is, say eventually if… because it, Brenda’s French is very good, soour plan is after five years, she applies for citizenship, but how good would, like, my French need to be for me to stay as her spouse? I mean, is it are they rated? Do I need to get up to, like, a B1 level of French to stay or…
Daniel Tostado: Mm-hmm. So, there’s zero required level of French to get any of these visas right out the gates when you’re filing from Los Angeles, so that’s fine. For a talent passport, they don’t require having any level of language to get the multi-year card. For other categories, if you’re trying to get a multi-year card, like a multi-year entrepreneur, they’re, as of this summer, putting that into place where now they’re requiring, like, an A2 level of French.
Brenna: So, for everyone listening, A1 is beginner-beginner. A2 is advanced beginner. The B is intermediate, so B1 is lower intermediate, B2 is advanced intermediate, and then C1 is usually as high as an American can get in French, it’s near fluent, and C2 is native speaker. For getting a multi-year card, they’re looking for A2. Up till now, for the 10-year card, had been, the choice was A2, but as of 2026, it’s going to switch over to B1, so lower intermediate. And for naturalization, the standard had been for years and years B1, which I never felt was that hard because B1’s not that high, all things equal. And they’re shifting it now as of 2026 to become B2 level French. So they want people to speak French well in order to join the club. Which for me makes sense, but I feel like it slightly discriminates against people that are coming from countries or contexts where they don’t have good classes, where a person doesn’t have the occasion to study French well. Because then it’s a certain type of immigrant who’s had a certain type of education who can manage to get up to B2 in French. But that’s for citizenship.
Daniel Tostado: That’s for citizenship, exactly.
Brenna: We’re not there yet, Jeff. You got a while.
Jeff: The plan’s definitely for me to take lessons once we get to France, because being able to talk to people is nice.
Brenna: The problem is he’s a little bit insecure about language acquisition, and I think this might be the case for a lot of people, because he took some years of Spanish, as most people in Southern California will when they’re doing their high school requirements, but they’re not very motivated. They’re just doing it to get through high school. I feel like motivation is, at least from the teacher side of things, motivation is a huge factor in acquiring a language. You’re in there every day trying because you know it’s going to affect your quality of life daily. That was my two cents for encouraging him or anyone looking to acquire a language later in life especially.
Annie Sargent: I think you’ll get there, Jeff. It’s just a matter of spending time here and opening your ears and taking some classes probably, and then you’ll be good to go.
Daniel Tostado: And I think it’s very linear, like learning an instrument. Like the more hours you put into it, the more you’ll have mastered the rarer verbs and, you know, how French actually say things. Because how we position word after word after word in English is not going to be the same way that we do that in French.
Annie Sargent: Do you have any general advice, Daniel, for people who are looking to do this?
[00:40:03] Political and Social Considerations for Moving to France
Annie Sargent: Like, I think your motivation has to be strong. You have to know why you want to do things. You also have to understand that there’s a lot of political turmoil right now in the US, a lot of changes happening, and there are a lot of people telling me anyway that, they would like to get out of there.
Annie Sargent: But it might not be that much better in France. We have our own issues. So I don’t think just escaping the politics is enough of a reason. I don’t know. What do you think, Daniel?
Daniel Tostado: I mean, it’s depends on how people define themselves, right? So, I mean, for me, I’m incredibly political, and so that I feel like my personal beliefs align with the politics of the country where I’m living, you know, for me that’s a high priority. And we see different groups are impacted differently.
Daniel Tostado: So the biggest increased group that I’ve got this year in 2025 is transgender folks. They don’t feel like they’re being supported. They feel like they’re being antagonized by the US government changing their gender on their passports when they’re filing for renewals back to their birth gender and so forth. Academic freedom. I’m still waiting for some late night comedians to ask for some visas with me. I haven’t gotten that inbox yet. But, you know, it’s very critical right now. We’re seeing a lot of changes rapidly happening on the US side. And a lot of, you know, it’s like action-reaction. On the US side, I forget which year that was now, when the US Supreme Court reversed its position on Roe v. Wade and undid that. France’s reaction was to concretize in the French constitution the right to an abortion. So it was almost like France was looking at what the US was doing and saying, "Oh, by the way, we’re the opposite of that."
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. Very true. It was like… within a few weeks. That was fast for France. That was very fast.
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. And that even within, you really don’t want to quote me on this, but even within the Rassemblement National, the French National Rally, which is Marine Le Pen’s party, that it wasn’t homogenous. It wasn’t like, oh, we are all uniformly against that. It’s that, you know, modern day France is not that religious, and oftentimes it’s religion that’s a source of the question of abortion. Oh, and also on the question of gay rights and gay marriage, marriage equality.
Daniel Tostado: So yeah,France doesn’t really have a gun problem. You know, France has healthcare as a human right for documented and undocumented, and it’s more affordable than on the US side. For people that are Democratic-leaning, France does have a lot to offer. For people that are Republican-leaning, maybe less so. But I think it’s a bit of a self-selection process in terms of who moves, makes a move over here to France.
Annie Sargent: Oh yeah, definitely.
[00:42:31] Healthcare and Taxes in France
Annie Sargent: We didn’t talk about healthcare. How quickly would they be able to qualify to apply for a Carte Vitale?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. So the three big things, Brenda and Jeff, that we always want to keep in mind when you’re moving here to France is, what is the right visa for me and how does that all work? How does healthcare work and how does taxes work?
Daniel Tostado: So on the healthcare side you file for it shortly after arriving. On the talent passport you can file immediately after arriving. For other categories, including visitor it takes three months of waiting, and then you’re allowed to file for healthcare. Roughly two months later, you can get a temporary Social Security number and you can use that to get medical reimbursements on your medical expenditures. And then roughly eight months later you’ll get the Carte Vitale in the mail. And the Carte Vitale is this green, you know, ID-sized card that you flash at the doctor’s office and the pharmacy to get reductions on your medical expenditures. And it takes off 70% of costs of things. If the doctor costs 30 euros out of pocket, then it only costs you nine euros out of pocket. That 30-euro amount, if you were totally uninsured, is already less than a lot of US-based copays. And that what a lot of people then do is they get what’s called a mutuelle, which is a type of insurance to cover the remaining 30%. So that, you know, that’s what I’m on. I’ve got a mutuelle and the Carte Vitale and I’m 100% covered for all my medical expenditures, so I’m paying nothing out of pocket. So that’s generally speaking how healthcare works. It might be a good idea for you to have some kind of short-term travel insurance if you’re coming into France so in case you trip and fall you have some kind of coverage here. On the visitor visa it’s a requirement but not for entrepreneur, not for the talent passport artist. And that’s… that’s how health works.
Daniel Tostado: And then taxes, just to give a real quick plug on that, it’s similar to America. We file in April of the given year for the preceding calendar year, and then the calendar year is a tax year, January through December. And so voila, those are the major aspects to your move.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. You’re ready.
[00:44:14] Bilateral tax treaty between France and America
Brenna: And did you, for the sake of the podcast, did you want to explain a little bit about, just like a brief overview about the tax treaty between the US and France and how it works?
Daniel Tostado: I love talking about this tax treaty. One of my accountant friends, Jonathan Adida, calls it the bee’s knees for retirees. So what it is is, every country, and most countries have a bilateral agreement with the United States about, okay, you work a little bit here, you work a little bit here, or you reside here, you reside here, and we’ll establish a bilateral treaty on that matter. So there is a bilateral tax treaty between France and America, and they say it’s the most favorable bilateral treaty for expats. If we can poopoo on Italy, for example, if you move to Italy, they’re going to want to tax you on, you know, Social Security, which is your retirement pension.
Daniel Tostado: On the French side, they don’t do that. So the Franco-American Tax Treaty says, "Listen, US-based capital gains, which is stocks, US-based rent, US-based Social Security, those are only US taxable events. They’re not going to get taxed here in France."
Daniel Tostado: So for retirees moving here, they might fill out a tax return and it might say zero. Versus if you’re here working on a work visa, then you would file income tax here in France. And so then you say, "Revenue earned in France, X. Revenue earned worldwide, Y." And then you pay your income tax here in France, and then you turn onto the US tax authorities, the IRS, and you say, "Hey, look, I live in France. I benefit from this tax treaty, so I’m getting some kind of tax credit on the US tax return."
Annie Sargent: Right. That’s what we’ve been doing forever. But you still have to file every year, which is really annoying.
Daniel Tostado: Yeah, because we’re Americans, and Uncle Sam’s coming for you.
Annie Sargent: Yes. He’s a mean uncle, he is.
Brenna: But if you’re paying more in France than you would in the US, right, you’re not paying. You’re actually not sending…
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. I’m not the tax guy, but to put on that hat for a quick second, there’s two types of tax credit. There’s Foreign Tax Credit, FTC, and Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. And so you’d either use one for… or both for depending on different… how you split up your tax return. Yeah, so long as we’re paying more here on, on the French side, we shouldn’t be paying anything on the US side.
Annie Sargent: And typically, filing taxes in France is easier than in the US. So we don’t have an accountant in France, but we have one in the US still after 20 years, because there’s still a lot of calculations that she can do that we don’t feel comfortable doing. Whereas in France, you just like… It’s really simple. And the tax people in France are actually pretty friendly. If you go see them…
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. I want to give you a lot of pushback on that sentence. I feel like French tax is incredibly hard. It’s like any tax system anywhere. It’s like there’s all kinds of exceptions and household, and my son is worth 0.5, so we’ve got 2.5 people in our household, and there’s all kinds of deductions. I think…
Annie Sargent: Yeah. But once you get that, it’s like, okay.
Daniel Tostado: I 100% agree with you that the French tax office, the Centre des Finances Publiques, they’re very helpful there, Center of Public Finance. You can go in and ask questions. But I recommend to people moving here to get… to break up with their American accountant and get some kind of Franco-American accountant, and that’s not me. I don’t touch taxes. So that someone who understands the bilateral treaty, understands FATCA and FBAR, and all these obligations that are on our desk.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, there are some. We haven’t used one so far, but well, perhaps we should. Perhaps we should. All right.
[00:47:28] Final Thoughts and Services Offered
Annie Sargent: Well, we’ve been talking a very long time. I am very grateful for your time, Daniel.
Daniel Tostado: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And I will recommend people get ahold of you, Daniel Tostado again, and there’s going to be a link in the show notes. But I wonder if you’d come back after this is done to see how they did, kind of, you know, talk about what happened and how things proceeded, and then they can tell us, you know, if they have… You know, was it easy or not?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah, I would be very curious. It’s like Shark Tank. You see the people making the pitch, and then a year later, how did the company do? It’s going to be like that for Brenna’s situation to say, "How did it actually go?"
Daniel Tostado: Because sometimes there’s unexpected snafus in the whole process. You know, there’s things they ask for complementary documents that you weren’t expecting, or that it was going to be longer or slower in a manner that you weren’t expecting. And then sometimes, it clicks. One of our artist visas, he was an artist, and his art goes on puzzle pieces, and it was so easy that he thought it was easy. And then when it’s time for renewal, it was… It got incredibly hard. And I was mentally ready for the hard the whole time. But they were not expecting that it’s going to get hard for year two, because year one was such a cinch.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. So you don’t actually file for people. They file for themselves. You just help them through the process. Like if they have questions about the paperwork, or, "Do I need to add this or that?"
Daniel Tostado: Yeah. I mean, for everyone, it depends on their level of autonomy, but we do have like a, what I would call a handholding service where we help put together the case file, make the appointments, fill in the visa forms. And when it’s time for the renewal, if it’s like, for example, certain categories are still in person at the prefecture, then we go with them to the prefecture. So and for the renewals, we do hit submit on their behalf.
Daniel Tostado: So that can be handy. It depends on if a person feels like they’re more autonomous. Like, Brenna, if you were on your own with, you know, 21 years experience teaching French and you feel like you’ve got a good sense of France, you could very well file for this on your own. If you feel like it’s a big and overwhelming process and you want professional help, there’s professional help out there, whether it’s a lawyer like me or an immigration consultant or what have you. I’m not… I don’t care to make too much of a sell, Annie. I like to undersell rather than oversell.
Annie Sargent: No, no, no. But it’s good to… It’s good to know that you can file for people and go with them to appointments and make their appointments and all of that, because there are people, that’s exactly what they want, you know? They need that. And there are people who don’t need that.
Daniel Tostado: Yeah, and the only thing I don’t like is, if they did file for on their own, and then they got a refusal, and then we’ve got already one strike against us, and then they come to me. Then I’m like cleaning up the mess, rather than having done an… you know, nice and tidy the first time around.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. Any last questions, Brenna and Jeff, or…
Brenna: I think I’m good. Just one quick question about, Daniel, your services. Are all of your services related to just acquiring the visa and then proceeding to get the carte de séjour for your clients, or do you do other things as far as helping them integrate into France once they get there?
Daniel Tostado: Yeah, yeah. We also help people file for healthcare, the CPAM, open a bank account, exchange driver’s license. There’s 18 states out of 50, most are on the East Coast or Midwest, that are exchangeable. California, unfortunately, is not, and half of my clients are from California, so here we are. And so yeah, reviewing lease agreements, we’ve decided that, yeah, it’s part of the overall move to be helpful. And then as I said before, we don’t touch taxes, so we refer out to some of these lovely Franco-American tax experts. We don’t do household hunting. That’s people like Adrian Leeds, you know, that are helping Americans find their housing in France.
Daniel Tostado: We’re connected within that network of we all have the same clients, all the service providers, so we all cross-refer each other.
Annie Sargent: All right, thank you so much, Brenna, Jeff, and Daniel. And we’ll talk again in about maybe a year, maybe less. We’ll see how long these things proceed, you know. Let’s see how we… how we do. Merci beaucoup.
Daniel Tostado: Thank you. Cheers.
Brenna: Merci.
Annie Sargent: Au revoir.
Brenna: Au revoir.
[00:51:20] Thank you Patrons
Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
Annie Sargent: And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Jennifer Bernard-Murkowitz, and Olivia.
Annie Sargent: And thank you Jim Woolridge, Elizabeth L. Martin, Megan Honert, and Bernadette Fernandez for increasing your pledge.
Annie Sargent: Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards.
Annie Sargent: And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
Annie Sargent: This week on Patreon, I published posts about bus tickets in Paris, how to listen to older episodes of the podcast, a video about the Salon des Vins, Terroirs et Chocolat, and I published the dates of our November Zoom calls.
Annie Sargent: It’s been a pretty busy Patreon week, which I love.
[00:52:28] VoiceMap Tours Reviews
Annie Sargent: Let me share a couple of reviews of my VoiceMap tours. One person wrote, "What a great way to spend my first day in Paris. Now I want Annie to do all of the neighborhoods." They started with Les Marais. Thank you. I don’t know. That’s a lot of work. Also about my Marais VoiceMap tour, "Great tour, a fun balance of lively history, quirky details, and local knowledge really added depth to seeing the area. Thank you."
Annie Sargent: Well, thank you so much for taking my VoiceMap tours and for writing reviews.
Annie Sargent: Podcast listeners get an exclusive discount when they buy these tours directly from my website. That’s also the best way to support the show, because it means more of what you pay comes straight to me instead of going to Apple or Google.
Annie Sargent: And to make that purchase, go to joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Annie Sargent: And if you’re planning a trip to France and would like some expert help, you can hire me as your itinerary consultant. If you already have a plan, I’ll help you fine-tune it. And if you’re just feeling overwhelmed by all the choices and not sure what sources to trust, I can design a custom plan for you, and you’ll find all the details at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
[00:53:43] Social Media Presence and Group Management
Annie Sargent: I’d like to chat a little bit about why is the Join Us in France closed group on Facebook so small, and why is the podcast presence on social media so small in general?
Annie Sargent: Long ago, I decided that if I volunteered to work for Facebook or Instagram or any other social media for free, they would gladly let me. And I could have done that by opening the group to anyone who saw this group and asked to join and then spend hours each day trying to keep up with a flood of questions.
Annie Sargent: If you listen to older episodes, you’ll hear me talk about this. At one point, Facebook was sending more than 100 requests to join the group every hour. I was in Paris working on one of my VoiceMap tours at the time, and I said, "Hell, no. Hell, no." So I tightened the rules to join the group even more.
Annie Sargent: Asking people to name the host of the podcast, for example. I absolutely wanted to weed out people who just don’t listen to the podcast, and never will probably.
Annie Sargent: Why do I care if people know my name or not? Am I trying to build a club of adoring fans? No. No, I’m not. But I know if you listen to the podcast, you won’t feel the need to ask the same question over and over and over again. There are groups that are dedicated to travel on Facebook that grow to hundreds of thousands very quickly, within months.
Annie Sargent: I find the quality of questions and answers on these groups very low. And being someone who takes pride in only sharing things that I know is good advice, it doesn’t suit my personality or inclination. There are several volunteers who moderate the Join Us group, and they also share this desire to keep it small and relevant and not an endless churn of people asking, "Where is the best croissant in Paris?"
Annie Sargent: I do not want them either to spend hours answering silly questions. The moderators shut down any nonsense very quickly because the group is small enough. So I hope you won’t hold it against me that I keep my social media presence small and tidy. It’s talking to you, the podcast, that matters to me.
Annie Sargent: Episodes have been listened to 5.6 million times over the years. That’s where I choose to put my energy, even though it’s not as flashy or visible as having a huge Facebook group. And I would love if you shared episodes you enjoyed on your own social media as well.
Annie Sargent: I could use the help, but it’s in your hands.
Annie Sargent: Generally, people share things with outrageous titles that they want to react to, and I don’t do outrageous titles, at least not so far.
[00:56:31] Paris Catacombs Renovation Update
Annie Sargent: The Catacombs in Paris just closed for major renovations and won’t reopen until the spring of 2026. No specific date given, of course.
Annie Sargent: So starting last Monday, that was November 3rd, the site shut down for about six months to tackle two big issues: humidity control and a new visitor experience, or as the museum calls it, scénographie renouvelée. I love it. If you’ve ever been down there, you know it’s not just another museum.
Annie Sargent: It’s a vast network of tunnels about 20 meters underground where the bones of millions of Parisians have been resting for over two centuries. The ceilings drip with condensation, and according to the site’s administrator, Isabelle Knafou, all the moisture is terrible for preserving bone material. Yeah, I bet.
Annie Sargent: These tunnels, date back to the 12th century when they were limestone quarries. In the late 1700s, they decided to use them as an ossuary, a resting place for remains from overcrowded Parisian cemeteries.
Annie Sargent: Today, the catacombs welcome around 600,000 visitors each year, but that steady stream of people, along with bacteria and CO2, is slowly changing the environment underground.
Annie Sargent: As Knafou puts it, "If we don’t ask, we will end up like the Lascaux caves, closed to the public to protect them." So about 5.5 million euros will be invested in this renovation. The plan includes upgrading electrical systems, improving air circulation, and completely rethinking the layout for visitors.
Annie Sargent: But don’t worry, the team insists they’ll keep the catacombs’ raw authentic atmosphere. The bones will stay right where they are, though the lighting and explanations might change a bit to make the experience feel more reflective and respectful.
Annie Sargent: Workers will bring in materials using the same medieval shaft that once carried up the limestone and later lowered human remains.
Annie Sargent: During the renovation, the team will also remove graffiti from the 19th century to today. A bit of a fun fact. Early visitors used to scratch their names or poems in the walls, even though the catacombs has had a guest book as early as 1809, but whatever.
Annie Sargent: If you’ve been, you know that the path is about 800 meters long, lined with walls of bones, femurs, tibias, and skulls. The skulls aren’t structural, they’re decorative, stacked to form those haunting patterns. And yes, sadly, theft used to be common as well in there. Some visitors would pocket bones as souvenirs, which is why most of the walls are now reinforced or even cemented.
Annie Sargent: As Knafou says, "Some people just come to get scared, not realizing these are human remains, our ancestors."
Annie Sargent: When the catacombs reopen in 2026, visitors will see the same powerful space, but with better preservation and maybe a deeper sense of respect for this very unusual piece of Parisian history.
Annie Sargent: My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.
[00:59:54] Next week on the podcast
Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode about van Gogh, his amazing life and work, with Elyse Rivin, who has a great talent of making art and biographies absolutely wonderful to listen to. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
[01:00:15] Copyright
Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.
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Episode PageCategory: Moving to France