More and more New Zealanders are opting to live out their days in retirement villages. David Hill explains why he and his wife won’t be moving anytime soon.
Beth and I are over 80. We live in our own home. We have a spare bedroom. So we’re selfish.
We get that message, overtly or covertly, when the topic of moving to a retirement home v staying in your own place comes up. It’s an issue that makes people startlingly passionate.
Or maybe it isn’t so startling: after all, you’re declaring how you want to end your life. I’ve heard comments ranging from ”Staying in your own place is facing up to life; going into a retirement home is running away from it” all the way to ”Hanging onto my house, having my kids worrying about me, having to check on me all the time – that’s so thoughtless”.
Some statistics. The NZ Seniors website estimates that about one out of seven New Zealanders in my/Beth’s age bracket live in retirement villages. There are over 470 of those complexes, and they’re growing all the time. Odds are you’ve seen one going up in a suburb near you.
My cuzzie J lives in one. Her address begins ”Apartment 1032…” and there’s an immediate reason why we don’t want to move into such a place. (I wouldn’t be accepted, anyway. Their ads make it clear I lack the wardrobe, the hairstyle, the denture-glittering smile.)
I don’t mean to dismiss retirement homes and their ilk. My cuzzie is content in hers; it suits her socially, medically, financially. We know others who aren’t just content in such places; they’re delighted, wish they had moved there sooner. Excellent.
But Beth and I have vowed to stay in our own place. Why? The usual reasons, I guess – plus a few possibly eccentric ones.
Finances come into it. The NZ Seniors website notes that the initial lump sum payment to buy into a retirement unit is ”generally the cost of a small house on its own”. Then comes the deferred management fee, deducted from any refund when you – euphemism alert – ”vacate the unit”. That fee may be around 25% of your initial payment. Yes, there are discussions going on about those refunds (which currently can take two-plus years to get) in parliament, but nothing will happen till sometime after the election.
To all the above, add on marketing and refurbishment fees. Then add more costs while you’re living in your retirement home: a weekly payment (typically $150 – $200-plus) for external maintenance, rates, amenities. Then power and contents insurance. Then the things you eat/drink/wear/sit on, sleep in, et al.
Seems to us you can pay a fair few bills, buy a fair few handrails, non-slip shower mats, even medic alert bracelets for such a sum. Again, we know people who’ve researched all the figures meticulously, and think a retirement home is still a decent financial deal.
For us, along with potential financial stress goes what one friend calls ”the stress of the strange”. Shifting to a new home has always ranked high on lists of life’s traumatic events. When I was a high school teacher, one common School Certificate essay topic was Moving House. Nearly every effort on the subject included variations on the line ”Mum/Dad said ‘never again!’ ” And yes, we know folk who didn’t find it a stress. They called it a stimulus.
The most over-used word in explaining the Your Own Place option came in a conversation a while back with our two 20-something grandsons. ”What do you think you’ll want most when you’re our age?” I asked. Their eyes glazed as they tried to picture themselves ever being so fossilised. Then came the identical replies. ”Independence.”
We know that staying in our own place won’t make us fully independent, of course. We already call on medical and lawn-mowing and ladder-climbing and cellphone-comprehending tradies more than we did five years back. Five months back, actually. What we do hope is to remain autonomous for as long as possible: making the decisions, selecting the options, accepting or rejecting the services.
”No man is an island,” John Donne noted as he registered for his Gold Card. Same for other genders. Beth and I are on a sort of tidal peninsula at the moment, with trips to the mainland becoming more frequent. But we cherish our degrees of independence.
We also want to stay in our place because it’s full of friends. They’re totally inanimate friends, voices unheard by others. But that Michael Smither painting we bought for our first wedding anniversary (25 guineas; we learned creative ways with mince for a month), that set of Maurice Gee novels, signed by Maurice himself over the years, are among the host of companions on our shelves that hold silent dialogue with us every time we see them.
I can wear shabby clothes in our own place. (See wardrobe ref above.) I can go unshaven for three days.
Being in our own place means familiarity, and in this case, familiarity breeds content. And safety – we know the place intimately: which front step to watch out for; where to sit so the sun eases back and neck. (I speak as a self-inflicted cervical spondylosis sufferer.)
It also means we’re constantly doing something – which doesn’t mean sprawling in a patio chair, simpering ”the lawn just mowed itself”, as one retirement village ad shows. Instead, we’re creaking out to cut a cauliflower; dabbing paint on the bit of the letterbox that one of us – no name; no blame – hit while reversing into the garage; conferring with Andy the mower about that weedy side patch.
Tennyson’s Ulysses talked about ”How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use”. Staying in our own place helps as a rust-repellent. I believe I’m healthier, physically and mentally, from living there.
Next to us live Jim and Jenna, in their early 60s. A bir further along are Thom and Sally, mid 40s, with Caleb, Theo, Liselle, 15, 13 and 11. We get pleasure and stimulus from their sheer variety. We get knowledge, too: without my occasional chats with Caleb, I’d never have been able to distinguish between heavy metal, thrash metal, death metal, funk metal, and – my favourite – viking metal. ”Do they wear horned helmets?” I sniggered about the last. Caleb gave me a cool stare. ”Of course.” What chance of my learning that in a retirement village?
In return, I reckon/hope that those good neighbours get something from us. An example, maybe, even a model. You can be 84 and still function. You can still have a purpose. You can still show interest in hearing about grindcore metal. Sorry, Caleb: forgot that one.
Anyway, why should I want to live in an environment almost solely composed of my own age group? There’s a fair few of us that I find bitter and boring.
We help taxpayers by staying in our own places. MoneyHub NZ says in-home support is a more effective economic option for the state than rest home care, where a standard room may cost $1,500 weekly, a sum frequently topped up with public money. Fascinating factoid: in October 2025, when the government announced extra funds for elder care, an additional $44 million was tagged specifically for home and community support services. Compare that with – ready? – an increase of $96 million for aged residential care – and we’re hearing now how that’s nowhere near enough. Beth and I should get a badge for all the taxpayer cash we’re freeing up.
I began by mentioning our spare bedroom. Should we be offering it to a younger – or even older, because there are some – member of our whānau?
Ezra Pound hated the idea: ‘‘Oh how hideous it is / To see three generations in one house gathered together. / It is like an old tree with shoots / And with some branches rotted and falling.”
That’s telling them. Yet though a median-priced New Zealand house price may have dipped to represent about seven years’ salary – always assuming you have a salary – it would still seem a decent, a responsible thing to do.
And of course a number of cultures do it, as a natural, laudable option. As Madeleine Chapman asked a while back on The Spinoff, how often do you see Māori or Pasifika people in retirement homes or residential care? So should we be thinking about free board for a grandson, while he gets on his financial feet? Maybe. In the meantime we’ll keep giving them both petrol vouchers.
Another poet to end with, since they sometimes get things spot on. Our hope at the moment misquotes Lawrence Binyon. ”We shall not grow old / As those who have left grow old.”
I accept that it’s the most vulnerable of hopes; one disintegrating joint, or – more emphatically – one fragment of plaque peeling away in an artery could end it. But it’s ours, and it reminds me that I’d better go and touch up that bloody letterbox.
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