How Movingto gets paid

Movingto is an immigration firm with licensed Portuguese lawyers supporting Portugal Golden Visa applicants. Clients pay fixed engagement fees when they hire Movingto to run their full Golden Visa application. That is the entire revenue model.

The fund directory, the comparison tools, the email courses, and the strategy calls are free because that is how serious investors find the firm — and the math works out cheaper than paying Google for ads.

What Movingto charges for

• Full Golden Visa legal engagement: legal representation, NIF acquisition, Portuguese bank account setup, fund subscription paperwork, AIMA application filing, biometrics coordination, residency card collection, annual renewals, and the citizenship application at year five.
• Fixed fees, billed in stages, fully quoted before any contract is signed.
• No hourly billing. No surprise invoices. No commission games on the fund side.

Fee ranges are discussed openly on the strategy call once Movingto understands the specifics of the engagement — family size, fund route versus other paths, complexity of US tax position.

What Movingto does not take money for

• No placement fees from fund managers. When a Movingto client subscribes to a fund, Movingto receives nothing from the fund manager. Zero. The fund index ranks funds on verification status, governance, fee structure, and liquidity terms — not on who pays.
• No referral commissions from banks. Movingto helps clients open Portuguese bank accounts as part of the engagement. Banks pay nothing for this.
• No kickbacks from real estate developers. If a client's situation actually fits the (now-restricted) real estate route or any adjacent path, Movingto's analysis is independent of any developer relationship.
• No paid placements in the fund directory. Funds cannot pay to be listed, ranked higher, marked as verified, or featured anywhere on funds.movingto.com.
• No "preferred fund" arrangements. Different investors need different funds. The quiz and the directory are built around that, not around steering clients toward whoever pays the most.

Why the directory and the courses are free

Movingto could pay Google $40-50 per click for generic Golden Visa search terms and land cold traffic on a sales page. Instead, the firm publishes the most comprehensive Golden Visa fund directory on the internet, runs free educational email sequences, and offers free strategy calls. Serious investors find the firm through the work itself. It is a better filter and it costs roughly the same.

This is a deliberate marketing strategy, not charity. The directory brings in the right kind of client — someone who has done their research, compared funds, and wants a firm that actually understands the landscape. That person is easier to work with, stays longer, and refers others. The economics work.

Why this matters for the investor

• When a fund directory is paid by fund managers, the rankings reflect who pays, not what is good. Movingto's directory reflects what is good.
• When an advisor takes placement fees, they have a financial incentive to push specific funds regardless of fit. Movingto has no such incentive.
• When the legal work and the fund recommendation come from the same independent firm, the due diligence on liquidity terms, governance, and fee structures is real. When they come from a salesperson on commission, it is not.

This is why Movingto positions itself as an immigration firm, not a broker. The two business models are incompatible, and the firm chose one.

The honest caveats

• Movingto is a business and needs to make money. If a strategy call does not lead to an engagement, that is fine — but the calls exist because some percentage of them convert. That is the model.
• Movingto only advises on Portuguese residency programs (Golden Visa, D7, D8) and the citizenship pathway that follows. If an investor's situation is genuinely better served by a Spanish, Greek, Maltese, or Caribbean program, Movingto will say so on the call but cannot run that engagement.
• Movingto cannot give US tax advice. The firm coordinates with the client's US tax advisor (or recommends one) but the cross-border tax strategy needs a licensed US CPA or tax attorney. The strategy call will flag the issues; it will not resolve them.

Direct from Dean

I have spent years watching the Golden Visa industry get worse — more kickbacks, more disguised commissions, more "free" advice that is actually a sales funnel for whoever paid the highest placement fee. The investors making half-million-euro decisions deserve better than that.

Movingto exists because there is a real market for an independent, lawyer-led immigration firm that charges fair fees for legal work and lets the educational content speak for itself. The model is simple: do good work, publish useful information, and the right clients find you.

This page exists because if Movingto is not willing to publish exactly how it makes money, it has no business asking investors to trust it with a 500k+ decision.