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Retirees and New Zealand - A Perfect Match
By Stephen J. Butler |
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As your retirement planner, it is my self-imposed, sworn duty to search the corners of the earth for cost-effective, leisure-time locations. I started my recent trip to New Zealand at the Hertz counter asking if there was any possible way they could rent me a conventional car I could drive on the right-hand side of the road. I wound up driving on the left like everyone else, of course, but what I did get for my twelve-hour flight was the joy of spending strong dollars and the exchange of a California winter for a New Zealand sub-tropical summer.
I learned almost immediately that you can play golf at beautiful, 18-hole, seaside courses for greens fees ranging from $7.50 up to $30.00. At the Moorings, a world-wide yacht rental facility, you can charter a new, 50-foot sailboat with four staterooms for about $500 per week. The exact same boat in the Caribbean would be $2,500. The country offers some of the best fishing in the world---everything from trout to marlin. After gourmet meals with great New Zealand wines, you come away shaking your head as you realize that the cost for two dinners totaled less than twenty U.S. dollars. A rental car for two weeks was about $400. We stayed in terrific BnB's like the Shipwreck Lodge right on the beach in Ahipari for less than $60 a night.
In the face of these inexpensive opportunities, there were signs of prosperity everywhere. There were lots of expensive foreign cars, high-rise office buildings, and no evidence of any homeless people. New
Zealand and Sweden were the first countries to adopt the "cradle-to-the-grave" approach to collective responsibility, and it seems to be working favorably in this small country. Traffic, as we know it, does not exist.
New Zealand today reminded me of the Greek islands back in 1963 where I met retired Greek-Americans who lived upper middle class lifestyles on their social security checks alone. In a past column, I described the affordable lifestyle opportunities to be found in Mexico, but New Zealand is even better in many respects, because it is clearly a first world country. You don't even need to learn a foreign language. However, you do need to listen carefully to people who tend to mumble and who use English phrases you've never heard before. "Glob-slapped," for example, is their word for "blindsided."
"Kiwis" would cringe at the thought, but their country feels more like a 51st state than a foreign nation. It starts with the fact that their money is referred to as "dollars" just like ours. However, we saw other evidence of American encroachment as virtually every major American company is represented there. We even saw a hot rod show featuring American custom cars. The scene reminded me of "American Graffiti."
World economic forces open windows of opportunity from time to time, and we are there now. Our strong dollar, thanks to low inflation and other factors, has created a tremendous opportunity for retirees or people between jobs to travel and live overseas under very favorable economic conditions. It has not always been this way. Back in the '80's, a glass of orange juice in a hotel in Tokyo could have cost as much as $15. A subsistence-level trip to Europe in those days cost too much to enjoy.
Today's favorable balance won't last forever. The relationship between currencies tends to seek an equilibrium sooner or later. As we used to say in Vermont, "make hay while the sun shines." If you're one of these American "snow birds" traveling south for the winter in your motor home, you may want to park it now and hop the next flight to New Zealand. It could be cheaper and more interesting than that annual road trip.
New Zealand is trying to attract professionals and younger people from elsewhere in the world to offset the "brain drain" of their own young citizens. Educated New Zealanders have tended to emigrate to other places in the world where they can earn more money. This creates opportunities for Americans who want to go where they can spend less money and enjoy what for many would be an improved lifestyle.
Preparing for retirement, then, includes more than just saving and investing money. Knowing about locations in the world where dollars seem to stretch forever can be just as valuable to retirees or younger opportunists than sweating over the challenges of accumulating and maintaining assets. At the LA airport, we paid $10.00 for two coffees and two banana nut muffins at Starbucks. For only $20.00 back in New Zealand, we could have been sitting in an ocean-side restaurant enjoying oysters, a rack of lamb, the catch of the day, coffee, dessert and a bottle of chardonnay that tasted like a pad of butter.
The prospect of living or traveling outside the U.S. offers many positive incentives. In a future article, I will explain the mysteries of currency valuations. For planning purposes, we need to appreciate that our dollar's exalted status may not last forever.
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