Thread: Can i have a decent life there?

SF, love to have you in the country to spread your expertise. Not only is there competition between Sydney and Melbourne, but also between east and west. Queensland is a great place, only exceeded by the west (I can say that having lived in both, in fact in every state).
One concern - $750 a week ($36K pa) for two is okay, but not a lot to live on here if you want a car, house, be fully insured etc, especially if you can't access medical help at low cost, want to have some go away holidays etc.
Others will comment more. Cheers Gavin

Originally Posted by Pinelli

You can calculate the Present Value of an annuity (like a pension), which is basically how much money you would need to invest now, to withdraw $3000 a month for so many years.

eg, to withdraw $3000 a month for 20 years, with the money earning an interest rate of 3% per year (or 0.25% per month, which is a bit more than inflation), you would need $540,000 now. So your pension (assuming you love another 20 years) is worth $540,000.

Not sure if the government will see it that way, but in theory you could be able to take out a loan for that amount, and promise to use your pension to pay it back. Once the visa is sorted, maybe pay it out from your capital, and get your pension back.

This is all highly speculative, of course, but you can do the calcs online at a places like this.

That makes sense to me and I was going to suggest the same. That plus the 300K for your home would get you well over the line.

Make sure you get very good advice about this as Australia is not as welcoming as it once was.
You could live very comfortably in Malaysia, Thailand or The Philippines on those numbers. They all have retirement visas.

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I know that asian and central/south american countries are easy to reach and cheaper but i have a soft spot for Australia i dont know why .... but i'm not gonna struggle to get there if they dont want me with what i have that's for sure...as i said, next choice is Nicaragua.

It's not that we don't want you, its just that we have been burned many times, so have to have provisions that can unfortunately badly affect the genuine ones. Maybe we just need better legislation?

IMO every civilised human being should be free to go anywhere on this planet as long as he doesnt have a criminal record and won't brake any law ... if somebody has 750K AUD doesnt mean it was gained correctly, i have 31 continuous honest working years on my back and couldn't save that kind of money .... but i dont want to turn this discussion to be political, each country is free to protect itself against imigrants as it thinks it's better.

I just had a look at the Border protection website for retirement visas.
They require a minimum of AUD 50K income.

You should be aware that AUD 3000 per month is about the amount of a married pension in Australia so is the very minimum you could live on if you have a partner. This would be a very basic existence with no money for holidays or luxuries. "Experts " reckon you need at least 50K to have a comfortable life .

The big problem is Health insurance. You are not eligible for Medicare and have to have private Health Insurance and this can cost at least $6000 per year and as you get older and sicker the additional costs you have to pay can be crippling. I have a UK friend who has retired to The Sunshine Coast in Qld and he now has heart problems which cost a bomb.

So mate as much as we would love to have you in OZ , it would be difficult for you. I do note that you can work 20 hours a fortnight and of course there is a thriving "cash in hand" economy in OZ, but as you got older this could be a problem.

I am in a Probus club in my area and we have had several British retirees whose kids moved to Australia move back to UK, as they can live well there on their pension while they are poor in Australia.
Regards Philip A

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Oh, and Melbourne is very multicultural.