A better retirement,
expertly orchestrated
for you.

Aelos is built for Americans making France a long-term retirement home, on either side of the move. If the move is still ahead of you, Move Concierge runs the relocation end to end. If you're already settled in France, Membership handles the annual layer: taxes in both countries, renewals, and a concierge. If you're a short-term expat, a digital nomad, or planning to split time 50/50 between countries, you probably don't need us, and we'll say so on the consultation. Our home ground is real assets, real cross-border tax exposure, and a multi-decade horizon.

Yes, that's actually half of what we do. The Membership exists for Americans already settled in France who want one place to handle compliance every year: US tax filing, French tax return, FBAR (the annual foreign-account report), Form 8938, carte de séjour (residence permit) and visa renewals, and a coordination calendar across both countries. Most people who find us this way have spent two or three years stitching together specialists themselves and want to stop. If you're already working with some providers and you want to switch to us, we're happy to help with the migration.

Very common. Most of our consultations are couples where one person has been researching for months and the other is along for the ride. The 30-minute call is designed to give both of you the same picture at the same time — taxes, healthcare, cost of living, what's actually involved in the move. We don't pressure decisions. If your spouse leaves the call with hard questions, we'd rather help you both think them through than push toward a yes. Some of our best clients took six months between the consultation and signing on. France isn't going anywhere.

Generally, no — and we'll tell you that on the consultation. Aelos is built for people who plan to build a life in France. If you're planning to spend three or four months a year in France and the rest in the US, you don't need most of what we do. We're happy to point you toward better-suited resources during the consultation.

People do, and that's fine. You can return to the US whenever you want. Your carte de séjour can lapse, your French tax obligations end the year you stop being a French resident, and your Medicare coverage can be reactivated through a special enrollment period if you've kept Part A. The bigger question is what to unwind: a French apartment lease, a French bank account, your mutuelle (top-up health insurance), any French-source income arrangements. We help with the return path the same way we help with the outbound one. Roughly one in ten people we talk to ultimately decide France isn't right. We'd rather you figure that out before you pay us anything.

Most people contemplate the DIY path first. No single piece is impossible on its own. The problem is that everything has to happen in the right order, in two countries, in two languages, with deadlines that don't forgive lateness. Even a non-willful FBAR miss carries penalties of up to ~$16,500 per year; willful violations run at least ten times that, or half the account balance. A late carte de séjour renewal can cost you legal residency. Most US estate plans don't survive French succession law, and most French expert-comptables don't know how the US taxes an IRA withdrawal. Aelos exists because nobody is currently coordinating across both sides, and the cost of a mistake can easily be the cost of several years of Membership. If you genuinely enjoy researching tax codes and vetting dozens of experts, you can absolutely do this yourself. Most people don't.

Relocation agents move your boxes, find you an apartment, and help with the visa, then stop the day you arrive. Tax firms file your return once a year and stop when the return is filed. Neither one owns the cross-border picture. Aelos is the layer above both: we coordinate the relocation specialists during the move and the tax, legal, healthcare, and banking specialists every year after. Rather than replace those specialists, we orchestrate them on one timeline, with one point of accountability.

No. Aelos is a coordination platform. We're not a law firm, not a tax preparer, and not a registered investment advisor. Every regulated service — your US tax return, your French tax return, your estate plan, your insurance enrollment — is delivered by a licensed professional we've vetted and partnered with. Our value is in choosing the right specialists, sequencing their work correctly, and making sure nothing falls between them.

In most cases, yes — but it depends on what they actually do. A US-side CPA who's experienced with FBAR and Form 8938 can keep filing your federal return; we coordinate with them on the French side. A US estate attorney needs to coordinate with a French counterpart. Most US attorneys don't have a counterpart, and we provide one. US financial advisors are trickier: many lose the ability to advise you once you're a French resident, and most aren't fluent in PFIC rules (the US tax rules on foreign investment funds), French wealth tax thresholds, or how French residency affects your IRA withdrawals. We'll give you a straight read on each of your existing advisors during the consultation.

Documents are always encrypted in transit and at rest. Access is limited to the specific partners working on your file (with your consent, and just for their needs). We never sell your information, and your documents and everything you tell us about your situation stay with the people working on your file. Everything we host runs on SOC 2–certified cloud infrastructure, and authentication and access control run on that same certified platform rather than systems we rolled ourselves.

You'll meet them by name. Sarah is our immigration specialist — visas, residency, renewals. Lisa handles healthcare enrollment. Benjamin, a CPA, files the dual US–French returns. Thomas, a tax attorney, covers estate and succession. Claire, a certified translator, prepares the sworn translations. Emily manages pet relocation, and Ben handles currency transfers. Several of their firms appear in the partner strip near the top of this page, and you can ask your concierge for the current list at any point — including before you buy. These are the same people every time, not a marketplace.

Membership covers an extensive list: US and French tax filing, FBAR, Form 8938, carte de séjour (residence permit) and visa renewals, healthcare and mutuelle guidance, banking issues, treaty questions, the day-to-day “is this email from CPAM serious?” kind of help. Things outside the plan are handled by our partner network at their own rates, with Aelos coordinating — for example, complex estate restructuring, setting up an SCI (a French property-holding company), or dealing with a serious illness. You'll never be on the hook for a partner cost you didn't approve first.

We'd want to hear about it specifically, but most retirement-stage complexity is handled within our partner stack — multiple income sources, US rental properties, partial-year residency, capital gains, foreign investment accounts (PFIC issues), Roth conversions, US trusts, and French social-charge exposure like the cotisation subsidiaire maladie (“taxe PUMa”) for households living off investment income. For truly complex cases — large estates, business ownership, expatriation planning — we bring in a French avocat fiscaliste or a US cross-border attorney as needed. We're upfront on the consultation if your situation is more than a routine retirement file.

They come with you — with the right sequencing. US brokerages have different policies for customers with foreign addresses (some restrict trading, a few close accounts), so we check your custodian's policy before you change anything. One of our standing rules: don't update your brokerage address until the strategy is set. For the mail that needs to keep a US address, we help you choose a virtual mailbox provider and get the notarized USPS Form 1583 done before you leave. You contract with the provider and pay their monthly fee directly. And Social Security keeps paying: if you want your benefits in euros, we walk you through the in-person Federal Benefits Unit appointment that switches your deposit to your French bank. Payments then land at the official conversion rate, with no US wire fees.

A 30-minute call with an Aelos advisor. We'll walk through your situation: where you live now, your retirement income picture, your healthcare situation, what's drawing you to France. By the end of the call you'll have a Go/No-Go read, a rough sense of timing, and a clear answer on whether Aelos is the right partner for you. If we're not, we'll tell you. If we are, we'll send you a written summary and the pricing — no pressure to decide on the call. About a third of our consultations end in “not now,” “you can do this yourself, here's how,” or “France isn't right for you” — roughly one in ten conclude the last one. We consider that a good outcome: you should only pay us if we're genuinely the right partner.

For pre-retirees in the US, plan on six to twelve months from consultation to landing in France. The visa runs six to ten weeks start to finish — preparing the dossier, applying, and getting the decision, which itself usually takes a couple of weeks and at most 45 days. The work around it — passport renewals if needed, choosing a region, securing housing — runs longer than people expect. Move Concierge runs it as one sequenced plan once you're committed and your visa application is in motion — the order of the work is fixed even when consulate dates move. After arrival, validation, Sécurité Sociale, banking, driver's license, and your first tax cycle take another six to nine months to fully settle. By year two, life is steady.

Medicare doesn't follow you to France. Original Medicare (Parts A and B) covers almost nothing outside the US, and most Medicare Advantage plans terminate when you move abroad permanently. The good news: France's universal healthcare system, PUMa, is available to legal residents, and a mutuelle on top covers the rest at a fraction of US costs. (One thing to know: if your income is mostly from investments, a French health contribution — the “taxe PUMa” — can apply; it's the kind of thing our tax partners handle for members.) We'll walk you through what to keep (Part A is free for most people, so we recommend keeping it, especially if you might return) and how to time the transition to avoid coverage gaps. Whether to drop Part B is a real decision. Done wrong, it can carry a lifetime late-enrollment penalty, so it's one we work through with you carefully before you decide.

No. Most Aelos members keep US citizenship and file US taxes every year for the rest of their lives — that's just what being American means, regardless of where you live. The US–France tax treaty makes this work cleanly: you generally don't pay income tax twice, and on US-source income you often pay less in France than you did at home. (The treaty doesn't cover certain French social contributions — notably the cotisation subsidiaire maladie, the “taxe PUMa,” which can touch investment income for retirees without pension income — so we review whether it applies to you in the consultation.) Renouncing US citizenship is a serious decision with significant tax consequences (the exit tax) and rarely makes sense.