The 41 -year -old American moved to France and lives on $ 3,633 a month

when Adria Sanders She says Paris for the first time in 2017, she immediately felt at home.

Sanders told CNBC.

Sanders returned to Paris several times as she continued to work as a general advisor to a public trading company in Washington, DC at the time, and she was getting 286,656 dollars a year and lived in a studio apartment where she paid about $ 3,000 a month, according to the documents reviewed by CNBC.

“I haven’t enjoyed work and expected to work all the time, and I may be one of the only lawyers who say it, but I don’t think it is an intellectual stimulus,” says Sanders. “I was deeply and real at the bottom of my little heart and my little soul. I knew he was not sustainable.”

Three years after that initial trip to Paris, Sanders left her job, broke the lease and began obtaining a French visa. It landed in the city the day before France closed its borders due to the Covid-19s.

“The slow world means that France has rushed,” Sanders said. ” “I arrived on the day before the blockage, so no one was completely wrong.”

When Sanders moved for the first time, she lived in a few short -term rents before signing a single -bedroom rental contract. She paid 1550 euros or 1815 USD and lived for two years. Since leaving that apartment, Sanders lives in an apartment of two bedrooms and one bathroom where it pays $ 2540 a month.

Since Sanders signed a rental contract for the so -called “uncomplicated apartment”, this means that it had to spend money to buy its kitchen cabinets, a stove and a washing machine. It is estimated that it spent about $ 5,000 on the kitchen and near another $ 10,000 to make the place feel like at home.

In addition to rent, Sanders spend, on average, about 933 euros or $ 1093 at expenses, which include home bills such as cables, internet, tenant insurance, dry cleaning, electricity, gas, private health insurance, grocery store and a Navigo transport card.

It also has an annual subscription to the Louvre Museum, which costs 95 euros annually and a second museum card that can add 50-100 euros per year to its expenses. Sanders also pays 1069.20 euros, or about $ 1,252, annually to a guarantor service, allowing it to continue renting in France.

Now that Sanders lived in her apartment for more than three years, she plans to review her search for a house to buy. She started looking two years ago, but she stopped after a tour of many places that she felt exaggerated.

“With the advice of friends who recently bought in Paris, I am designed again. Finding the right place will be grinding, but I am tired of leasing in Paris,” Sanders says. I urgently need more space and I want a dog. “

While Sanders want to put its roots in Paris, she also hopes to buy a house in the countryside as well.

“I don’t think it would be good to put a dog like the golden recovery in the center of Paris, where he has no backyard, so this is my dream,” she says.

Living in France also inspired Sanders to follow her true dreams in starting her fashion brand, Adreyel Velez. Sanders says she takes $ 200,000 from her commercial account and $ 70,000 from her personal savings and puts this in her new business. These funds help and enter the content in financing their dreams.

“I love fashion and I am so happy that I can now say that and be in advance because it has been dealt with for a long time as something that made me less dangerous,” she says.

Sanders is financing her self -producing samples and initial models, but she hopes to collect at least two million dollars and to be a group of 10 pieces ready to launch in 2026.

When Sanders used to act as a lawyer, she used to wander around her office building and dream of starting a fashion line, and now you see it still feels vigor.

“There is still a part of me who strives and presses more, so I don’t know if I am completely ready to say I am proud but I feel I am really happy, which I haven’t been for a long time and this is huge for me,” she says.

“My goal and my desire to inspire women – especially black and brown women – just to follow their dreams and goals. When they do it it does not matter. The most important thing is to be bold, move wisely, and go to it.”

Since Sanders had been in France about five years ago, she says she does not think she will return to living in the United States.

“I cannot live there. I cannot work like that. I cannot return to American companies and hold my tongue every five seconds every day,” she says. “I wish I had the courage to move sooner. I wish I had the courage to do so after the first semester of the Faculty of Law, either leaking or registering at the College of Business Administration and doing something different that would have give me more options.”

References from the euro to the US dollar were made using the OANDA rate of 1 euros to $ 1.17 on July 23, 2025. All amounts are brought to the earliest dollar.

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