I'm an American expat living in Portugal. The country's focus on work-life balance is very different than in the US.

• Kaitlin Wichmann is an American expat living and working in Lisbon, Portugal.
• Wichmann, a freelance digital marketer, moved to Lisbon from Kansas City in 2022.
• She said the country's focus on work-life balance has been a positive change from the US.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kaitlin Wichmann, an American expat living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. Insider has verified her clients with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to Lisbon in 2022 from my hometown of Kansas City.

I'd been traveling for a while and was already looking for a place to settle down. When I arrived in Lisbon, I just had a gut feeling that I was meant to stay longer.

Moving here was pretty simple and it felt like an easy transition. Getting a visa was slightly harder for me than it is now because I was applying during the pandemic when some travel restrictions were still in place. In the end, I had to hire someone to help me open a bank account before I flew over.

My quality of life is higher here because I feel safe and the city is very affordable — the weather is great, too, which is important.

Being self-employed as a freelance digital marketer has allowed me to be more flexible with where and how I work.

I normally work out of co-working spaces, using an app called Croissant to book locations around the city. It's great because it gives me the opportunity to be surrounded by other people but still working on my own thing. It's nice to have some flexibility and not be going to the same place every day.

There's definitely more of a work-life balance in Lisbon — even the focus on taking breaks is different. When we go for lunch, for example, we take around two hours. Sometimes it's even longer and people will go out for an espresso or something like that.

When I lived in the US, most of my coworkers didn't even take lunch or if we did it was a working lunch. Back home, the mindset is that if you receive an email you should reply right away. It's very different here and while that's mostly positive, when you're trying to get something done it can take longer. In Lisbon, everyone goes outside to the park after work which is also very different.

Right now, all my clients are American but I just signed a contract with a Portuguese agency so I'm hoping to have some local clients soon. When I'm interviewing with a potential client or agency, I'm always upfront about living in Lisbon and working Portuguese hours. Over here, the latest I'll ever work is 6 p.m., which is around 1 p.m. Eastern time.

It's really important for me to set these boundaries. Obviously, it's easier for me because I'm self-employed — a lot of my friends work for American companies and it's much harder to do.

Sometimes I think I might lose work because of my attitude but I also think it's worth it because I want to work with the type of people who respect my boundaries.