Whether you’re 40-plus and feeling burnt out, or 50-plus and approaching retirement, this is the perfect book for you. Find out how to live an exciting and comfortable but cheaper life

overseas—on a long term or trial basis.

Sell Up, Pack Up and Take Off tells you about people who are living the dream in Asia and Europe, making their dollar go further—with better houses, a better social life, more luxury

and more adventure.

And you can do it too. In this book you’ll discover the pros and cons of the great countries you can live in at a quarter of the cost of Australia; the tricks of buying or renting a house; how to get a visa; and how to manage your health insurance,

pension, super and tax.

Now that 60 is the new 40, it’s time to get positive and go for it. A better life is yours for the taking.

Want to have a more luxurious lifestyle and better house at a fraction of the cost?

Everything you need to know about• visas • buying or renting property • living costs

• health care • tax • insurance and the cost of living for Bali, Thailand, Malaysia, Spain and moreCover design: Alissa Dinallo

Cover image: Thomas Flügge/Getty Images

L I F E S T Y L E

G L O S S L A M I N AT I O N

Stephen Wyatt and Colleen Ryan are both economists with majors in accounting. Colleen worked as a tax accountant for an international accounting firm in her early career and Stephen was a banker with

Merrill Lynch. They have lived overseas several times, most recently in Shanghai, where they were the joint China correspondents for

the Australian Financial Review from 2004 to 2010.

Every effort has been made to provide accurate and authoritative information in this book. Neither the publisher nor the author accepts any liability for injury, loss or damage caused to any person acting as a result of information in this book nor for any errors or omissions. Readers are advised to obtain advice from a licensed financial planner before acting on the information contained in this book.

Extracts on pages 112 and 113 from Jon Swain’s River of Time (1997) are reproduced by permission of the author.

First published in 2014

Copyright © Stephen Wyatt and Colleen Ryan 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Email: info@allenandunwin.com Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74331 785 3

Set in 11.75/14.75 pt Minion Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

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The paper in this book is FSC® certified.FSC® promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.C009448

Contents

Introduction vii

Chapter 1 Bali 1

Chapter 2 Thailand 20

Chapter 3 Malaysia 50

Chapter 4 Vietnam 76

Chapter 5 Cambodia 106

Chapter 6 Europe 128

Chapter 7 Superannuation 158

Chapter 8 Pensions 167

Chapter 9 Taxation 175

Chapter 10 Health insurance 188

Conclusion Thoughts in the bath 197

AppendicesProperty 207

Visas 213

Acknowledgements 235

About the authors 237

vii

Introduction

It is a time to be free.There are not many periods in life when you experience freedom.

Most of us enjoyed freedom in our late teens, twenties and even our early 30s; pre-marriage and before the kids arrived; before mortgage and debt and work took on a great seriousness.

But once the kids mature and become self-sufficient, and once debts are paid and your working life ends, suddenly you enter another period of immense freedom. It is back to your twenties again.

And you can enjoy it now just as you did when you were young and free.

All you need to do is be clever and brave enough to change your lifestyle and leverage the benefits of freedom.

It doesn’t matter if you are 40 or 70. If you have reached a turning point in your life then clean the slate, look at all the options, be brave.

And if you are facing retirement then remember that it is an opportunity, not a death sentence. It is an extraordinary opportunity to grasp afresh at life; to live life to the full. After all, at 60 there really isn’t a lot of it left. We need to make the most of it.

This book gives you an alternative. It offers up the chance for another life. A new life in another country for a year, a few years or forever and a cheaper life that will make those dollars go a lot further.

viii Sell Up, Pack Up and Take Off

Another time for big decisionsThere are a few critical decision-making times in life. One such time was back in your youth when you were deciding on which career to follow, who to marry, where to live, whether to have children.

Now is another critical time when you need to make decisions about how to live a new phase of your life. Do you stay put, and live as you have lived for the past thirty or so years, or do you ‘sell up, pack up and take off ’?

Whether you are 40 and burnt-out or 60 and facing an entirely new landscape, decision time can be daunting.

If you are a baby boomer the chances are the kids have grown up. The dog is dead. The job has ended or it’s just too intolerable to put up with any more. The house where you have lived for decades is now too big. And you’ve still got maybe twenty good years ahead of you.

What the hell are you going to do?Stay in that family home? Get another dog to make you feel like

you have kids again? Hang about to look after the grandchildren? Count your pennies and scrimp because those retirement savings do not go nearly as far as you thought they would? Go to the same club, pub, restaurant or golf course that you have gone to for the past ten years? Watch your friends die? Watch a lot more TV? Do the lawns a little more than you need to and get those edges really sharp?

Well, you could. But why would you? It sounds pretty mind-numbingly boring. There is a terrible sameness to it.

Sadly, that is the box that most retirees and indeed most people decide to confine themselves to. This is the conventional mindset, but it shouldn’t be. There is no need to raise the white flag on life. These days, the old 60 is the new 40. Get positive. Go for it.

There is a lot more living to do.This book speaks to those who see retirement not as the sunset

years, but as the dawn to a new and exciting freedom. However, it also speaks to those, of any age, who want the adventure of living in another country, even if it’s only for a few years. It aims to help people climb out of a dreary box and start living again.

ixIntroduction

Once the kids mature and become self-sufficient,

and once debts are paid and your working life ends,

suddenly you enter another period of immense freedom.

It is back to your twenties again.

Life has changed—we live longer, healthier lives

Many Australians ‘found themselves’ by travelling overseas when they were young. And they haven’t stopped.

A very popular travel book, first published in 1975, was South East Asia on a Shoestring. It was the bible to youth travel in Asia back then. Today, it’s more likely to be called something like Retirement in Asia on a Shoestring.

Since the baby boomer generation came of age, trips with the kids to Bali and Thailand and Malaysia have been the norm. Many Australians have worked and found partners overseas. And they’ve embraced medical tourism, whether it is a facelift in Thailand, a new set of choppers in Bangkok or a full medical service in Singapore.

Life for Australians today is much more global than for previous generations—and retirement will be too.

It is no longer a radical step to go and live overseas. Look at the fly-in-fly-out workers in the mines of Western Australia. Many base themselves in Bali today. It is not a big step to retire there.

And for the first time ever, technology allows us to live interna-tionally but also stay close to loved ones. Technology has destroyed the barriers historically confronted by those living in another country. Jet travel allows you to be home in less than half a day from most places in Asia. Email, Skype, smart-phones, iPads and computers allow constant contact from anywhere.

When it comes to keeping in touch, living in Chiang Mai today is not that different from living in Byron Bay and remaining close to friends and family in Sydney.

So here is an alternative. Here is a new approach to life.

x Sell Up, Pack Up and Take Off

Sell up, pack up and take off

Sell that suburban house. Tell the kids and grandkids you love ’em to death. Tell them that you are about to embark on an adventure, but so, too, are they.

You want them to share in your new life and this will offer them excitement and an adventure as well.

Add all or some of the funds from the sale of your house to the superannuation fund. Call a taxi. Go to the airport. Get on a plane. Go and live in splendour. Get a house on the beach in Malaysia, Bali, Thailand, Cambodia or Vietnam.

Get some house help and really enjoy a G&T at sunset. Go for a swim each morning. Forget watching the nightly TV news. Enjoy the exotic life. Have the family over to visit—they’ll love it.

And guess what? It can be done at a fraction of the cost of living in Australia. Sure, there are a few financial constraints and visa issues, but these can be easily handled—and you can still receive income from your superannuation or receive your Australian pension.

Radical or sabbatical?

Of course, selling up, packing up and taking off is the radical approach to change. Any move overseas needs a lot more research, and this is what this book is about.

Change can be modest or aggressive.For example, instead of selling up and taking off forever, some

may prefer renting out the family house in Australia rather than selling it, then renting a home for themselves in Thailand or Bali or wherever, rather than buying there.

Also, the move may be just for a few years—a type of sabbatical or extended holiday from your Australian life.

And you needn’t have reached those mature years of life, either. You may be 40 or 50 and just burnt out and sick of the life you’re leading. You might be feeling like you want to stop the world, get off, run away from that daily grind and try a different life for a while. Or you might just want the adventure. Escape is for all.

xiIntroduction

The escape spectrum

There is a spectrum of escape: from running away forever, to escaping for just a few months at a time. To put it simply, your options are:

• Sell up, pack up and take off: the plan would be to live somewhere else, perhaps forever.

• Pack up and take off: keep the family home in Australia, rent it out, then go and live for an extended period in a country you have always wanted to live in.

• Take off for the lifestyle change: refresh and recharge. This may mean living for six months in Australia and six months in another country, or three months here and nine months elsewhere, or nine months in Australia and three months overseas, and so on.

The beauty is that no matter who you are, how rich or poor you are, or how old you are, there is an escape route that will suit you.

Often, the need to escape, or the need to embrace change, is triggered by external factors—like a financial crisis, an illness or death in the family, an inheritance or the end of one’s working life.

We need to adapt. Many new retirees have dropped a bundle in the latest global financial crisis when the stock market halved in 2009. And who knows what Australian house prices might do over the next decade?

If your nest egg has been crushed or if, in fact, you never had much of a nest egg at all, then life in Australia can become cripplingly expensive. One solution is to move to a cheaper country and make that nest egg go a lot further.

Add all or some of the funds from the sale of your house to the superannuation fund. Call a taxi. Go to the airport. Get on a plane. Go and live in splendour. Get a house on the beach in Malaysia, Bali, Thailand, Cambodia or Vietnam.

And it’s doable. There are few financial constraints and visa issues can be easily handled.

xii Sell Up, Pack Up and Take Off

We have ‘escaped’ several times over our lives. We lived in Papua New Guinea in the mid-1970s, moved to London for two years, then returned to Australia for our child-raising years.

We had two gorgeous kids and waited as long as we could before packing up and taking off again.

Our first move with children was to Washington DC in the mid-1990s where we worked as journalists. Our son Hamish was eleven and our daughter Georgia was fifteen. We stayed for two years. It was politically fascinating but socially stultifying. And we realised that eleven and fifteen were not the right ages to shift children about.

So we came back to Australia and stayed for five years as the kids finished school. But the call to adventure returned and as soon as Hamish completed year 12 and began university, we were off again: this time to Shanghai, both working as journalists for an Australian newspaper.

It was wonderful and enriched our lives and the children’s lives.Hamish had a year or so off university and wrote for the Shanghai

Daily, the English language newspaper in Shanghai. Georgia also had a year off from university and travelled widely with her brother, and with us when we were on assignment to the backwaters of China. Such trips enabled Georgia to witness terrible poverty and illness and corruption. It had a profound impact on her and brought to her a greater understanding of social injustice.

We were in China for six great years through to 2010, when we returned to Australia. Not only did we witness the economic renaissance of the most populous nation in the world, but we were immersed in a new culture, new language, new politics and a total-itarian system to boot, in a dynamic new city and country.

And it was wonderful for the dynamics of the family. There was space created between our children and us. This, we believe, explains a lot about the great relationship we have with our children today. Eighteen and 21-year-olds are not easy to live with. They want their independence and parents find this transition very difficult. Parents want to keep control. Georgia and Hamish are now 28 and 31, well adjusted, successful and happy.

xiiiIntroduction

We are telling you this because our experiences overseas enriched our lives and our children’s lives. And also, because we have ‘done it’, we feel that we have some justification to write about it; to talk about selling up, packing up and taking off, particularly as it becomes such a popular idea for so many people.

A new mega trend: life goes internationalThe trend of moving offshore for a new life is accelerating. You are not going to be lonely.

Governments in the developed Western world are increasingly unable to look after their aging populations. At the same time, investors are targeting the growing global retirement market. It represents a big new band of consumers.

Today, there are more than 3 million people, or 14 per cent of Australia’s total population, over the age of 65.

This will more than double over the next 35 years to hit more than 8 million people, about 23 per cent of the population, according to the Australian Government’s Intergenerational Report of 2010.

Australia is on the brink of a retirement savings disaster and the government may not be able to fund the shortfalls. It is the same story in the US and other developed economies. Over the next 40 years in the US, the number of people over the age of 60 will more than double to a staggering 80 million.

The implications are clear. The cost of health care will soar. Medical services in the West will be stretched to the limit and certainly become increasingly expensive. Demands on governments to service an aging population will increase exponentially.

In Australia today about 25 per cent of total government spending goes to health, age related pensions and aged care. The Australian Treasury expects this to increase to 50 per cent of total government spending by 2050.

Governments in the West will struggle to deliver services or financial assistance. Government budgets are already stretched. Debt levels in most developed countries are crippling even now.

Governments in the East, however, see this demographic change as a new trigger of growth and employment creation.

xiv Sell Up, Pack Up and Take Off

There is going to be a new diaspora—an international diaspora of people aged over 50 moving from the developed world to the cheaper developing world.

Consider the example of Geoffrey and Michael, who we met and interviewed in Ubud, Bali. They moved there mainly for financial reasons. They built and live in a Balinese-style home that flows out onto tropical gardens. Heliconias with their striking orange claw-like flowers, gingers with leaves the size of elephant ears and lush green cordylines surround us as we chat on the verandah that overlooks a pool.

When Geoffrey and Michael retired they realised that they faced a life of poverty in expensive Australia. Now they live a life of plenty in Ubud with staff to cater for their every need. And they have money to spare.

The really great news is that they can do this on an Australian pension.

Geoffrey and Michael are at the forefront of a new wave of emig-ration. Migration will begin to reverse. Rather than from developing economies to the developed, the trend will be an increasing drift from the developed to the developing.

Life goes international

Once, the end of a working life meant greater freedom to travel around Australia. This gave rise to the ‘grey nomads’ roaming Australia in campervans.

Or it meant a sea-change or a tree-change from the city to the coast or the country.

That’s what Stephen’s parents did. They sold their city home and business and bought a little farm near Orange, New South Wales. They found a new life and celebrated the learning that goes with a whole new experience. Their years from 55 to 80 were wonderful.

But the domestic sea- or tree-change does not give you any great cultural diversity. Nor does it allow you to spin those limited funds out for many more years, nor live in a much grander style in a different environment.

xvIntroduction

Staying within Australia was understandable 30 years ago. That was really the only choice. Moving to another country was extreme and dramatic. You virtually said goodbye to family and friends. That was before the computer, before email and Skype, and before cheap air travel.

These days, those looking for a change of environment are moving from Sydney to Bali, or Melbourne to Bangkok, or Adelaide to Phnom Penh; not from Sydney to Orange.

And the financial motivation is going to be prime.

There is going to be a new diaspora—an international

diaspora of people aged over 50 moving from the

developed world to the cheaper developing world.

The domestically roaming ‘grey nomads’ will soon be moving internationally, too. They will become ‘international grey nomads’. And it’ll be cheaper than roaming expensive Australia.

Governments in Southeast Asia know that a whole new industry is about to expand. They have seen the surge in medical tourism. Now it is going to be the international sea-change—retirement tourism.

This book takes a look at what sort of life you can have in an Asian country, how much it costs to live there, and how you can fund it. It addresses the financial, medical and visa issues of getting a new life.

And it looks at the different places where you can live—the variety of cheap and safe but exotic countries—and the tricks you need to know when it comes to buying or renting a house. It also addresses the problems posed by illness and the financial aspects of managing your superannuation and tax.

We spoke to many Australians who have packed up and taken off, and they share their stories and experiences—the good, the bad, the ugly and the brilliant. They tell us what it’s like to actually live the overseas dream.

This book, we hope, will offer up the possibility of a whole new existence for those who are ready for the adventure.

xvi Sell Up, Pack Up and Take Off

Ti ps an d tr apsOnce you have made the decision to sell up, pack up and take off, just remember that the secret to every good trip is in the planning.

We include plenty of details throughout the book to help you plan your overseas adventure, but just to get you started here’s a quick checklist of questions you need to address before you leave Australia:• Visas: How do I get a long-stay visa in my chosen country?• Taxation: Am I better off being a resident or non-resident

of Australia for tax purposes (even though I might be living in another country)?

• Superannuation: Can I keep Australia’s generous tax conces-sions for my superannuation?

• My house: Will my family home in Australia still be capital gains tax-free if I rent it out when I leave these shores?

• Pension: Can I still get the age pension when I am living overseas?

• Health insurance: Do I need private health insurance in Australia, can I get Medicare benefits when I return to Australia on visits, and do I need health insurance overseas?

237

About the authors

After more than 20 years in financial journalism, Stephen Wyatt and Colleen Ryan now live near Byron Bay, where they have planted a rainforest, surf, write and run www.planet-boomer.com.

Married with two adult kids, they have packed up and taken off overseas to live several times—in Papua New Guinea, London, Washington DC and, most recently, in Shanghai, where they were the joint China correspondents for the Australian Financial Review from 2004 to 2010.

Both are economists with majors in accounting: Colleen worked as a tax accountant for an international accounting firm in her early career and was later editor of the Australian Financial Review; Stephen was a banker with Merrill Lynch for 15 years, before turning to journalism.

Stephen and Colleen believe their experiences living abroad have enriched both their own lives and those of their children. They are passionate about the benefits of selling up, packing up and taking off at various stages of life, especially retirement.