Why this American tech worker moved his family and career to France: 'We want a different pace of life'

CNBC

5 days ago

Jason Nellis has been on the move for the last three months: He and his wife Jennifer and their two sons, a 4-year-old and 9-month-old, have spent the summer traveling through Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. They've taken every mode of transit possible and stayed in about a dozen hotels or Airbnbs since May.
By the time the school year starts for 4-year-old Kit, the family will have officially relocated from the Washington, DC, area to just outside Cannes, France.
The adventure has been more than eight years in the making and involved almost 18 months of planning, Nellis, 41, tells CNBC Make It.
When Nellis began dating his wife, she was about to move to Berlin for her career but ultimately stayed in San Francisco to give their relationship a shot.
"When she made that decision she half-joking, half-seriously said that I now owed her three to five years of living abroad," Nellis says. "And so when we got married, I made sure to include that in our wedding vows."
The couple revisited the idea of relocating after Kit was born, and in 2024 began working with a law firm to draw up the paperwork. They considered cities in Australia and Southeast Asia, but ultimately landed on Europe to be closer to work and family in the U.S.
"France was just the right combination of standard of living, quality of education available to us, and because I work in media and tech, access to places like Cannes" for conferences and events, Nellis says.
They paused their plans after the birth of their second son, Ace, but then resumed by early 2025.
The family will be able to live in France for up to four years on Jennifer's talent visa while she builds a hospitality business in the country. Nellis estimates they spent roughly $20,000 on the move between the cost of obtaining their visas, booking flights and shipping their belongings. They sold their car and spent a month selling other furniture on Facebook Marketplace.
"Getting all that together made us realize the real investment of what we were doing," Nellis says.
The family officially landed in France in May and have been traveling throughout Europe for the summer, living on their budgeted $12,000 to $14,000 per month (about what they lived on in the U.S.) and prioritizing stays at kinderhotels, a type of hotel in Europe that offers services like child care, family-friendly activities and all-inclusive packages.
While Jennifer, who has experience in marketing and senior leadership, builds her business, Nellis continues to work for his U.S.-based company, SuperBam, as a chief product officer. The company has about 25 employees and is fully remote, which made Nellis' pitch to relocate a little easier.
The biggest adjustment has been shifting his schedule to work 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. Central European Time to have about five hours of overlap with colleagues in both Eastern and Pacific time zones. He takes a break from about 5:30 to 8 p.m. every night for dinner, family time and bedtime for the kids.
"It's forced me to be much more judicious with my time and making sure that I am as effective as I can be with every minute," Nellis says.
He and his wife also hold a weekly check-in with each other to go over their work schedules and split child-care responsibilities.
"When new things pop up on our schedule, we have to make sure that we don't just put it on each other's calendar," Nellis says. Their solution is "a constant stream of communication, of sharing when things are high priority and needs to be addressed, or when they're lower priority and they can be shifted around to accommodate the other person."
Nellis says moving abroad hasn't shrunk his career ambitions, but rather expanded them.
While he previously prioritized climbing up the career ladder, he now is curious about growing his career impact on a global scale — like bringing SuperBam, a U.S.-based digital rights company for creators, international.
A lot of Americans move abroad in search of a lower cost of living and higher quality of life.
Nellis isn't sure that he and his family are seeking a better quality of life, "but I would certainly say we want a different pace of life."
Though Nellis recognizes the U.S. is a global economic powerhouse, "I don't know if it's always healthy for boundaries," he says. "I don't know if it's always healthy for family relationships. And so part of the impetus for the move was really also an opportunity to slow down a little bit and really build a foundation for our family and for our sons."
Nellis and his wife hope that by raising their sons in an environment that doesn't emphasize career and finances as much as the U.S., their sons don't grow up thinking they need to follow the same corporate paths as their parents.
Ultimately, "we want them to feel that sense of broad culture, which isn't to say you can't find it in the US, but we want to be here where it's a lot more distinct," Nellis says.
For example, "My older son will be fluent in French probably within a few months, and the younger one will probably grow up as it just being one of his natural languages," Nellis says. "The opportunities yet to come, I think, is something I'm really excited about."