I Moved to a New Country and Filled 87 Forms in 3 Weeks

87 Forms in 21 Days

I counted every single one.

When I accepted a remote work opportunity in Lisbon and decided to leave Chicago, people told me the hardest parts would be the language barrier, finding an apartment, and adjusting to a new culture. Nobody warned me about the paperwork.

In my first three weeks in Portugal, I filled out 87 separate forms. Not 87 fields. Eighty-seven distinct forms across visa applications, residency permits, bank accounts, health insurance, tax registration, rental contracts, phone plans, and utility setups. Moving to another country means rebuilding your entire bureaucratic identity from scratch. Every institution, every service, every provider needs you to prove who you are all over again.

I tracked them all in a spreadsheet. Partly because I'm a data nerd. Partly because I wanted proof when I told people how bad it was.

What Moving to a New Country Actually Costs in Paperwork

People romanticize moving abroad. Instagram reels of pastel buildings and espresso on cobblestone streets. Nobody posts stories about the SEF office or the 45-minute hold at Financas. Here is the actual breakdown of every form category I encountered during my first 21 days in Portugal:

• Visa and residency applications: 14 forms (D7 visa, residency permit, appointment scheduling, document translations, apostille requests, consulate submissions)
• Banking: 6 forms (Portuguese banks love paperwork. Account opening, proof of address, tax identification link, SEPA direct debit authorization, online banking registration, card activation)
• Health system: 5 forms (SNS registration, health center enrollment, EU health card application, private insurance application, pharmacy membership)
• Tax registration: 3 forms (NIF application, fiscal representative assignment, NHR status application)
• Housing: 8 forms (rental applications, landlord verification, lease agreement, property registration, renter's insurance, building management, mail forwarding, address change notification)
• Utilities: 12 forms (electricity, gas, water, and internet each needed 2-4 forms for account setup, direct debit, and identity verification)
• Phone and internet: 4 forms (SIM registration, postpaid contract, data plan selection, direct debit)
• Everything else: 35+ forms (gym membership, coworking space, grocery loyalty cards, driver's license exchange application, social security, US tax updates, forwarding address for IRS, consulate registration, employer paperwork for Portugal)

Total: 87 forms. And that does not include the forms I filled before leaving the US to close accounts, forward mail, and notify my bank.

The Same 9 Fields, 73 Times

After the first week, I started color-coding my spreadsheet. I wanted to see how many forms asked for information I had already entered somewhere else. The pattern was staggering.

Of the 87 forms, 73 asked for the same core set of 9 data points:

1. Passport number
2. NIF (Portuguese tax identification number)
3. Full legal name
4. Date of birth
5. Nationality
6. Portuguese address
7. Phone number
8. Email address
9. Employer name

That means 83% of the forms I filled asked for information I had already provided somewhere else that same week. My passport number alone appeared on 41 separate forms. I typed my NIF so many times I can recite it faster than my own phone number now.

The remaining 14 forms were genuinely unique. Specific medical history questions for the health center. Detailed descriptions of my apartment for the renter's insurance. A Portuguese-language questionnaire about my professional qualifications. Those forms needed real thought. The other 73 were just data entry.

Week One: 31 Forms, 20 Hours, One Existential Crisis

My first week in Lisbon was supposed to be exciting. Explore the neighborhood. Find a good coffee shop. Figure out the metro. Instead, I spent most of it hunched over my laptop filling out government forms.

I completed 31 forms that first week. It took roughly 20 hours. Some of the forms were in Portuguese. I had Google Translate open in a tab at all times, copying text back and forth to figure out what each field was asking. "Naturalidade" means place of birth. "Contribuinte" means taxpayer. "Morada" means address. I learned these the hard way.

The date format tripped me up constantly. Portugal uses DD/MM/YYYY. I'm American. My muscle memory types MM/DD/YYYY. I submitted at least three forms with the wrong date format before I caught the pattern. One bank form got rejected and I had to redo the entire thing.

By Friday of that first week, I was seriously questioning the decision to move. Not because of Portugal. Because of the paperwork. I came here for pasteis de nata and ocean sunsets, not to type my passport number into a government portal for the 20th time.

The Spreadsheet That Made Me Angry

On Saturday morning, instead of exploring Alfama like a normal person, I sat at my kitchen table and built a spreadsheet. Every form I'd filled, every field, whether the information was unique or repeated. I wanted numbers, not feelings.

The data was infuriating.

• 83% of total form time was entering identical information across different services
• Average form completion time: 38 minutes (including the Google Translate overhead)
• Time spent on actually unique information per form: roughly 6 minutes
• Time spent retyping shared data per form: roughly 32 minutes

Thirty-two minutes per form on information I'd already entered somewhere else. That is not productivity. That is a broken system charging you in time for the privilege of existing in a new country.

A friend from a Lisbon expat group told me she gave up trying to register with the national health system because the forms took too long. She paid out of pocket for private insurance instead, purely to avoid more paperwork. That's the kind of decision nobody should have to make.

Two Filling Profiles, Two Countries

That same Saturday, after staring at my spreadsheet for too long, I searched for tools that could help. I'd used browser autofill before, but it only knows one address, one phone number, one identity. I needed something that could handle two countries at once.

I found Filliny and installed the Chrome extension. The key feature that caught my eye was multiple filling profiles. I created two:

Profile 1: Portugal

• Portuguese address (Lisbon apartment)
• NIF number
• Portuguese phone number
• Passport number and nationality
• Employer details (remote company info)

Profile 2: United States

• US forwarding address (parents' house)
• SSN
• US phone number (kept for banking)
• US bank account details

Setting up both profiles took about 8 minutes total. I typed each piece of information exactly once. Then I switched between profiles depending on whether I was filling a Portuguese form or a US-facing one like IRS updates or bank address changes.

Week Two: 34 Forms, 6 Hours, Zero Existential Crises

The transformation was immediate.

Monday morning, I opened the utility setup form for EDP (Portugal's electricity provider). Clicked the Filliny icon, selected my Portugal profile, and watched 80% of the form populate in about 4 seconds. Name, NIF, address, phone, email. All filled. I just needed to add my contract number and meter reading.

That form went from an estimated 40 minutes (with translation) to 8 minutes. The water company form? Same thing. 7 minutes. Internet provider NOS? 10 minutes. Gas through Galp? 6 minutes.

I completed 34 forms during week two. Total time: roughly 6 hours. Compare that to week one's 31 forms in 20 hours. The per-form average dropped from 38 minutes to about 10 minutes. I actually had time to walk along the Tagus river on Tuesday afternoon. Novel concept when you're an expat: having free time.

The US-facing forms were even faster. Updating my IRS address, changing my bank contact info, filling out my company's relocation paperwork. Switch to the US profile, click fill, done. No fumbling between Portuguese and American data.

What Filliny Gets Right (and Wrong) on International Forms

I want to be honest here, because nothing is perfect and I'd rather give you a real picture than a sales pitch.

• Standard text fields (name, address, email, phone): perfect every time
• NIF and passport number fields: recognized and filled correctly
• Multi-profile switching: seamless, one click
• English-language forms and most Portuguese government portals: worked well
• Date of birth in most formats: handled correctly
• Some Portuguese-specific dropdown menus ("concelho" and "freguesia" selectors): needed manual selection
• Date format on a few older government sites: occasionally defaulted to MM/DD instead of DD/MM, needed manual correction
• PDF forms (some embassy documents): not supported, had to fill manually

My rough estimate: Filliny handled about 70-75% of fields automatically. The remaining 25-30% required manual input, mostly for Portugal-specific fields and document uploads. Honestly, I expected worse. International forms are a harder test case than standard US forms, and it still saved me the majority of the repetitive typing.

The date format thing annoyed me a couple of times. But two manual corrections across 56 forms is a lot better than getting the format wrong from muscle memory on every single one.

The Real Immigration Tax Nobody Warns You About

There is a real cost to relocating internationally that never shows up in any budget spreadsheet. It's not the flight. It's not the deposit on the apartment. It's the time tax of bureaucratic integration.

A 2024 survey by InterNations found that 67% of expats cited "dealing with local bureaucracy" as their single biggest source of stress during relocation. Not loneliness. Not culture shock. Paperwork.

Here is my math. Week one: 31 forms, 20 hours of work. Week two (with Filliny): 34 forms, 6 hours. Week three: 22 forms, about 3 hours. The total across all three weeks was roughly 29 hours. Without Filliny for weeks two and three, I estimate those 56 forms would have taken about 35 hours at the week-one pace. Instead they took 9.

That is approximately 25 hours saved. Twenty-five hours I spent exploring Lisbon, finding my favorite coffee shop in Graca, taking a day trip to Sintra, and actually settling into my new life instead of typing my passport number into a government website for the 40th time.

The per-form numbers tell the story even more clearly. Without Filliny: roughly 38 minutes per form. With Filliny: roughly 10 minutes per form. A 73% reduction in time per form, on international paperwork in a foreign language. I was skeptical it would work that well outside the US. I was wrong.

If You're Planning a Move Abroad

I'm not going to pretend that a Chrome extension solves every problem with international relocation. It doesn't get you through the SEF line. It doesn't translate legal documents. It won't argue with your landlord about the lease terms.

But it does eliminate the single most repetitive, soul-crushing part of the process: typing the same 9 pieces of information into form after form after form. And it handles the dual-country problem that no browser autofill can solve. When you're living between two bureaucratic identities, having two profiles you can switch between in one click is worth more than any "moving abroad checklist" blog post.

Here is what I wish I had known before I moved:

1. Set up your filling profiles before you leave. Create one for your current country and one for your destination as soon as you have your new address and tax ID.
2. Keep a running list of every form you need to fill. It's longer than you think. Budget 50-100 forms for a full international move.
3. Front-load the boring stuff. The first week is the worst. Knock out as many government and banking forms as possible while your energy is still high.
4. Expect the date format problem. If you're moving from the US to Europe, you will get tripped up by DD/MM vs MM/DD. Double-check every date field.
5. Don't skip the health system registration just because the forms are long. My friend's private insurance workaround cost her hundreds more per year.

Install Filliny free and create your first filling profile in under 5 minutes. The free tier gives you 5 fills to test it out, no credit card required. For a full international move, you'll want the Pro plan for unlimited fills across all your forms. It paid for itself by form number 6 in my case.

I moved to Lisbon for the lifestyle. I almost left because of the forms. Don't let the paperwork win.