Retire where you are overseas or return "home"?

[Hnjk67]

Hello, pondering retirement options although still someway off. If you've been living overseas for significant portion of adult life, do you consider returning "home" for retirement (e.g. to UK) or to another new country entirely? Or do you foresee staying in current location? Why? Or have you done this already and how has it been for you? Missing lots about the UK and the wonderful scenery and coastline (away from urban centres), miss the dawn chorus, sense of humour, easy access to low cost sports and activity clubs for retirement years. But worried about potential regrets of giving up place that has become my adopted home with years of happy memories 🙂

I'm not in this position, although I have lived OS for portions of my life and am a dual citizen so have another country I could go and live in again at any time. I guess moving in retirement is the same as at any other stage of life really - you weigh up what your priorities are and which place is going to meet your needs best.

If you haven't lived in the UK for a long time, perhaps come and spend some extended periods here - and not just in the summertime when it can be lovely. To discover if you want to live here full time though you need to spend time here in the winter. I find UK winters increasingly hard as I get older - dark at 4pm and not light until 8am, months of cold, grey, rain, everywhere muddy and miserable, the garden a sodden mess, etc.

I don't know where you live now, maybe it has a similar climate? But if it doesn't, don't fall into the rose-tinted spectacles trap of thinking it's June all year round in the UK. I can assure you it isn't!

We lived overseas for 25 years and retired in the UK. It’s been fine for me as I am used to starting again in a new location, but more challenging for dh as he doesn’t have that ready made social group that work provides. Dh retired at 53 so most people he has contact with are a lot older than he is.
the closest friends I have made since moving back are not originally from the uk and that shared experience of living in other countries has been very important for me.
dh’s parents are still alive and one of our children is still at university so the uk is the right place for us for the next 4 years.

I would think very carefully if you actually do want to move back, or if you're just feeling a bit homesick (which as pp suggested, can be overcome with a few trips back home).

Life in the UK is very expensive, the weather is miserable, and if you come back and then decide after a year or two that it's not for you after all, you will have the added stress of having to move again. Which in your retirement years isn't exactly ideal.

I'd weigh up where you can live a comfortable life with reasonably straightforward trips back to the UK and see if that's doable.

@FeistyFrankie yes that is exactly my concern, moving back "home" and then regretting it and wanting to undo it all.

@cheezncrackers good points! Somewhere in the depths of my mind I do recall the neverending dark winters, trudging to school and later driving to work in the early hours, dark, windy, raining. Never ending rain hammering sideways into the house windows all night. LOL everytime I've been back in winter it has always been mild and pleasant weather!!! I guess it does need to be an extended period to really test out.

Do you have any close relatives, and where are they located?

This may not be at all relevant to you - but my DH is the immigrant, and we have always made serious plans to retire to his home country. But his desire to do this has softened over time as it looks like our kids will be settling in UK and his ties with his home country have weakened over time. So now we've got both countries on the table again.

It's a tough one!

We’ve been abroad for over 20 years. Although we’re close to retirement, I don’t see us going back to the uk. We may stay here, or move to a different country (I have EU passport) but I can’t think of any reason to go back to the UK

@Starrystarrysky relatives in UK currently but no idea if they will still be there when I retire. That might have some influence on the decision, if lesser connections there.

I would also factor in quality and cost of health care

OP where do you live now? We are pondering whether to leave the UK once DC have finished school. We can see how the country has become poorer and how future governments will have no choice but to rinse ever lower tiers of earners/asset holders to attempt to make up the shortfall (which will still fall short). Don’t want to keep paying over the odds for increasingly poor services.

Has anyone moved abroad to a country where they have no familial link?

We have the right to move to Australia, New Zealand and possibly the EU.

New Zealand is SO far away though and so much smaller. However the health system is pretty good and there is no IHT at all unlike Australia. It will obviously also depend on what our by then almost grown up children will want to do.

We are in UAE so can only retire here by investing a very large sum of money, potentially by buying property that we don't really want to be committed to. We are resolute that we are not going back to UK permanently even though DC are there (and currently 3 out of 4 elderly parents, 1 has passed).

I’m not in this situation, but do kids in the Uk. We have an ageing population, with a growing pension and NHS bill. If working adults choose to leave the Uk, the are presumably paying tax wherever they move to, but nothing to the Uk coffers. If they then move back at retirement, they might not be entitled to a state pension, but presumably they are likely to access healthcare and possibly even carers or care homes on the state, depending on their assets/income for the latter. Morally, I don’t think this is very fair - imagine if everyone did it! If the government has a way of “charging you” your equivalent in NI contributions from the missed years that would be different.

My friend’s parents retired abroad to their holiday home, stayed there for around 20 years or so and then moved back to UK fairly recently. I think the health care was better in their adopted country but all family in the UK so I guess they want to end their years with family around. I’m not sure whether there was an impact of Brexit on them .

No idea why you think NZ is so much smaller than the UK - it’s 10% bigger, it just has a lot fewer people!

I lived there for years and it’s a lovely place to live, though it is very far away. Which has its uses!

@whirlyhead sorry I meant smaller in terms of opportunities, outlook and population. Badly phrased by me - my fault! I spent my childhood there 😅. It is indeed lovely and has the best coffee and wine but for a Europhile like me who likes nothing more than reading a book outside a cafe in a cobbled lane before heading to a museum it is just devoid of any physical signs of history: ie architecture. There is a lot more cultural diversity there than when I was very young but it’s just not enough and the cost of living is so high while earning potential is low.

Pensions will play a part here. Expats in Canada, New Zealand and Australia have their UK pension frozen as soon as they start to receive it thereby missing out on any further increases to it.

God no. I really don't want cold British weather on my old arthritic bones

I have lived in two other countries, one of them my husband’s home country of the USA, and had planned to retire to the other one. For tedious reasons, that’s no longer an option, and neither of us have any desire to move to the US.

I have been exploring other possibilities, and have decided (I’ve been retired a few years now) that the list of wants and needs are the same wherever you go as you age: walkability; good public transport both locally and nationally; access to culture that interests me; functioning public services, and good healthcare, including GP, dentist and hospital, within easy reach by walking/public transport; friends, or enough stuff locally to join so I can make some, and a manageable journey to see family fairly regularly. For others, being close to family would be more important. The weather is a consideration, but not one of the key ones, although even a few years back I would have ranked it much higher.

In your shoes, I’d be very practical and hard- headed about where is likely to best meet your future needs, and provide a good quality of life.

I've spent 30 years mostly out of my home country, some of them in the UK, now in my home country in my 50s, will stay put till DS is launched, and then think about moving somewhere else for a bit. Unfortunately DH prefers Italy and I France.

We are having this discussion too. ATM our kids are still in school, and I’m a little younger than DH plus we don’t have a huge retirement pot - so it’s still on the far horizon. We have been in France for 17 years, NZ for 5 years prior to that. I think NZ is too far away (though one of our boys was born there and has a kiwi passport). ATM we are thinking about a move to northern France - can’t stand the summer heat where we currently are. And tbh that’s a massive consideration for me - I find myself dreading 4 months of the year now that it’s so hot.

Moving back to the UK, I think we’d regret it. It’s not the place we left. Our families are in the UK but they are shrinking and ageing. once our parents are gone we will have one sibling each here, and only my SIL has a child - so in a generation or so there won’t be any family left to visit ☹️. The healthcare / NHS is on its knees and I can’t see that changing.

so yes, we are aiming to get the kids through school and uni, then retire to a little country place in Northern France, where it’s easy to get back to the UK for visits / emergencies.