Where would you retire?

[DR]

This is a topic I have researched a bit ( having retired at age 57 a few months ago) and my response will probably not be what you would like to read but it is based on the experiences of a number of people who I have spoken to.

There are issues with leaving wherever you are now to retire and going to an idyllic location like Hervey Bay or anywhere else. (BTW, I lived at Hervey Bay for three years 27 years ago and it was wonderful! I also lived on the Gold Coast for a while and the traffic there made it like living in New York - hardly idyllic at all!))

The issues relate to support structures, family connections and your sense of community.

Often a couple will retire to a remote locale and find that they are disappointed because they no longer have their familiar infrastructure - eg their bridge club or bowling club friends who they have known for years and years. Loneliness can set in.

Often, everything will be fine until one of them dies or becomes infirm and without the support of family around them, it is really difficult for the remaining spouse, or healthy one as the case may be.

Similarly, grand-mums, in particular, miss seeing their grand-children and when the family is back in the big city and you are living in paradise, you will be the ones traveling to see the grand-kids, not the other way around - at least not after the first year or so. Families, especially when they enter the teens have their own society and world of weekend sporting and social events that will keep them in the big city. Likewise, their working parents are likely to be so buggered at the weekends that they just want to flop at home and not load up to take the grand-kids visiting the oldies four or five hours drive away.


The real tragedy that besets so many people when they sell up their long-time home and move to a far off place to retire is that when they do decide to leave paradise and return to the big city, often they cannot afford to do so. Real estate prices have moved and what they can afford is a modest unit or retirement home - not quite what they had in mind.

Talk to your friends who may have moved somewhere in retirement and see what their experiences have been - but only those who have been gone three years or so - after the halo effect of the new location has subsided.


Buying and selling homes and shifting costs a lot of dollars. Those dollars might be better spent on some long off-season holiday rentals in paradise but still having your home in its familiar environment to come back to.

If the old house in not quite what you think you need in retirement, you can always renovate.

Charlie is on the money...
stay where you are near to family & friends & take extended holidays as required...become grey nomads..

[Peter4]

Charlie is on the money...
stay where you are near to family & friends & take extended holidays as required...become grey nomads..

I agree with Charlie & DR. I am a financial adviser to retirees and those that have the most successful retirements generally stay close to family and friends.

This gives them a good family and social network and keeps them busy.

A successful retirement is when you are so busy doing stuff that you wonder how you ever managed to fit in time for a job. Nobody wants to sit around and do nothing at all!!

Regs

Pete

[danryan75]

im only 15 but i already have it planned out.


woodgate beach.

[alleycat]

Nathalie, if you want country living and great fishing thats near the water then go for either, ballina, yamba iluka or maclean, or south west rocks, all great climate and great coastline and fishing.

[Chimo]

As Charlie and others have said and I couldn't agree more, you do need to maintain family etc connection as well as meet the objectives you set as your chosen attributes. You also need to accept compromise

You cannot be sure to get everything you want so some things will score lower eg Gold Coast traffic would be lucky to get a 1 on the matrix method. It used to be probably a 2 or 3 but its got busier.

On the other hand job choice is a 5 and there are plenty of boat ramps and as a retired person why would you want to use either the roads during peak hrs when the roads are in full use or the boat ramps in peak times at weekends?

The other good point that has been made is try before you buy but remember the mood and feeling during a holiday is not the same as when you live there.

In our case we could have stayed where we were; a la PinHead, and where we had spent more than 15 yrs but we would have seen the kids and other family for very short periods at best.

So we moved to where MOST of our needs were likely to be met and where the kids were likely to visit or maybe even follow (which they all ultimately did) because of the choices available to them by way of jobs / career and of course the lifestyle offered by the location which was one of our reasons for moving too.

Also get advice before commiting to a real estate agent, there are some shockers out there but also a few good ones that you can trust and boy does that make a difference to your outcomes

Where we are and you may move to may not be perfect, but for the time being, or until something else comes up at which time we and you can always do it again; it will do.

Hurry slowly with this decision or at least don't burn any bridges and don't blow the savings real estate wise either.

Chimo

[hoodunnit]

I`ve got a few years work left yet but i`ll be off to Port Vila,great weather,people,fishing,food.3 weeks in Bris.1 week in Vila, that`s the plan.

[charleville]

im only 15 but i already have it planned out.


woodgate beach.

Then save your money with a real purpose,young fella, and buy a block of land there in a prime spot as soon as you can. You won't regret it when you are older.

[kingtin]

( once they get some heart surgeons)....

Spot on OB, that's something else to consider.

Although Qld health has some of the best heart surgeons in the S Hemisphere, and indeed the world, they are all based at The Prince Charles Hospital. Other major towns and cities don't seem geared up for (complicated) heart surgery and patients are shipped down to Brisbane. OK if it isn't immediately life threatening, but older folk who are prone to heart problems should consider this if they plan a move.

kev

[kingtin]

im only 15 but i already have it planned out.


woodgate beach.

If you can afford it by the time of your retirement. Woodgate is growing fast and demand is outstripping supply = high prices. As Charlie says, get in quick if you can but also bear in mind that the Woodgate that you see now will not be the same Woodgate when you retire. That's what has turned us off Hervey bay, we've seen it change so fast.

kev

[Chimo]

Hi All

We found that the best bit of literature, bar none, on this subject is the book as per the link below. It should be compulsary reading especially for the "advisors" out there as well as us plebs.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Retire-Hap...tag=dogpile-20

Cheers
Chimo

PS You can read bits eg contents etc etc if you plug in to the blocks on the left of the page
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1580...33#reader-link

PPS Peter4, You are probably familiar with How to Retire Happy Wild and Free judging by your earlier comments but if not I commend it to you

[Nathalie]

Hi All

Thanks for the replies.

Chimo – We live at Redcliff, fishing has been a bit disappointing for a while now catching heaps but all babies. I like your Matrix idea I will do that. Moreton Bay I don’t think is what it use to be.

Aleycat – I did think of Ballina as it looks like the place but as Charleville has said, it would be too far for the kids and grandkids, as I suspect (and will not mind) that we will be the ones doing the visiting. So It looks like North is where we will probably be headed, but in saying that though, as you get older it seems time goes by faster so a visit once a year could be affordable no matter where we were.

Cheech – Hervey Bay, Maryborough, Mary River sound OK I will look into that one.

It sounds like around Hervey Bay all round so far. We spent a week fishing at Hervey Bay last year. Would you believe we didn’t catch a thing till the last night at I think it’s called Rufus Reef. We defiantly found the reef, our sand anchor was bent all out of shape that night. But the water was beautiful it didn’t really matter that we didn’t catch anything we had a great time just drifting all over the place. The limited fishing locations were a bit of a concern though. As we only have a 4.6 with not a huge fuel tank we couldn’t go far out, and when you think about it we would prefer not to have to go miles out to catch fish as $ would be limited in retirement and we plane on fishing all the time.

What about Mackay or Bowen any good fishing up that way?

Nat

[PinHead]

Charlie is on the money...
stay where you are near to family & friends & take extended holidays as required...become grey nomads..

I find that phrase totally offensive and should be banned from the English language..I should report you to the Mods for even using..it is totally discriminatory against those of us who do not have enough hair to go grey.

[charleville]

If you can afford it by the time of your retirement. Woodgate is growing fast and demand is outstripping supply = high prices. As Charlie says, get in quick if you can but also bear in mind that the Woodgate that you see now will not be the same Woodgate when you retire. That's what has turned us off Hervey bay, we've seen it change so fast.

kev

I agree with you Kev but if the lad could scrape together some money to get a block at Woodgate by say, age 21 or so, just think of how it would appreciate by the time he was at the age when he might want to use it. Even if he did not want to use it for himself, the "seachange" phenomenon might make it a great investment to be sold to buy whatever he would really like. For a young fella, it would be a much better investment than a rapidly depreciating purchase like a new car on hire purchase.

I had an uncle, now deceased, who built a hut on land at Magnetic Island with four other mates when he was very young and the land was worth zilch. It was a real shack - I stayed there one night and the mossies would carry you away as the windows were just hinged bits of T&G boards that you wedged open with a stick.

Anyway, the long term arrangement amongst these five youngsters was that the hut and land would be left to the last survivor, who just happened to be my uncle. In his later years he sold his house in Townsville and bulldozed the hut and built a tidy little brick home there to which he and his wife retired. Years later after he died, his wife moved to managed retirement living and she sold the little house, which by this stage was in a much sought-after position overlooking Arcadia Bay for a very tidy sum indeed.

So the moral of the story is that in a country where the population just keeps growing and where the propensity to buy quality coastal spots continues to grow, an investment by a youngster in a relatively unknown place like Woodgate may hold very good potential over his lifetime.

[Chimo]

Hi Nat

You really should get a copy of How to Retire ...............

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1580...33#reader-link

I would lend you mine and perhaps still will if I can get it back from my mate, who is also our bank manager!

We are at the stage were we don't know how the hell we managed to fit in going to work. It s getting hard to fit in fishing with all the stuff you end up doing with the offspring etc and there are only 5 days out of the 7 that you can fit it (fishing) in.

Chimo

[DR]

I find that phrase totally offensive and should be banned from the English language..I should report you to the Mods for even using..it is totally discriminatory against those of us who do not have enough hair to go grey.

i actually consider my hair to be 'light brown'.....very 'light brown'