Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We talk about
our life in Nelson, New Zealand.
With the collection of all of our (sometimes traumatic) experiences over the first couple months back from our month-long holiday in New Zealand, the thought of planning early retirement in the country became the focus of conversation between us. But soon it was March, then April, and we became swept up in the pace of life, readjusting to the quickness and expectations. Still, we would have conversations here and there over the next several months of what it would be like to settle there when we were a bit older
Sometime in July 2005 we must have been talking about the possibility of New Zealand during one of our many conversations. Neither of us can recall what suddenly spurred us to act, to consider emigration and moving everything, but something did. Work was hectic, Angela was drained and run-down from her stressful job and Don had lived the corporate life for more than 10 years. We’d really had it, that much we remember. We were ready for some change, any change. The bigger, the better.
We started doing research on the web on retiring in New Zealand and quickly learned that one could not simply move there and live out one’s old age. Most countries probably have such a regulation: in New Zealand if you are older than 56 and not a resident or citizen, you must leave the country 6 months of each year and live elsewhere. This ensures you are not part of the public health system and receiving benefits without contribution. It sounded fine to us, but we're not independently wealthy, so that option was nixed.
At some point, Don remembers Angela saying, "Let's just do it. Let's move there now." (Sound familiar, Vicki?) So often we would talk about the future, making this big change in the future, but only then did it dawn on us that we could do it now. We always had in our minds the financial implications of doing anything "crazy" because we are always so financially responsible and never want to jeopardize saving for the future, for our early retirement. We'd never before thought of a crazy thing like moving abroad (realistically) simply because doing something like that would definintely disrupt contributions into our retirement accounts. Perhaps more than anything we got sick of hearing ourselves say we'd do it in the future, or when we retire.
But once Angela uttered the words, a fire was lit under both of us, and we became so excited we could hardly stand it. Let’s move to New Zealand and live there NOW.
back to Part 1: Holiday in January 2005 | Immigration home | on to Part 3: Research into immigration possibilities
