Welcome back to Home Sweet Home, where we check out living options for Kiwi seniors. This month, we touch base with our rural community, and hear from farmers who’ve faced the challenge of where and how to set up home once they leave the land. Because the options are not quite as endless as one might imagine!
Retirement-plus-income – Colin and Deb
Colin and I always knew finance would be tight in retirement – which may come as a shock to anyone who doesn’t understand how farm succession works. But when you want your kids to carry on with the farm, you need to leave the bulk of your finances with them. What we did have, though, on our 500 hectare farm, was space to build and neither of us had any desire to move out of the area. So, we chose to build a smart 2 bedroom retirement home on the farm (far enough away to give our sons and their own families breathing space). Close by, but out-of-sight, we also built a small, self-contained farm-holiday unit. It gives us a comfortable retirement income, connects us with some great guests, and it’s not a tie because our daughter-in-law manages it for us when we want to take a break. When we no longer want to run it, she’ll take it over from us. Both properties are surveyed off from the farm, and have their own driveways, so they can be sold in the future, should we need to move again, and take our capital with us.
Shared solution – Marty and Helen
Helen and I have had a holiday home in Wanaka since our kids were school age. The retirement plan was for us to move into it when our daughter and her husband took over the farm. However, that was before Helen was diagnosed with a health condition which meant we’d need to regularly access a major hospital. Without selling the bach, affording the sort of home we wanted in the city, was going to be tight. So, we opted for an affordable one-bedroom lock-and-leave unit in a retirement village. Our friends thought a ‘farmer-in-a-retirement-village’ was never going to work, but we still think of Wanaka as our home, and spend most of our time there. The retirement unit means we can come and go as we need to without having to think about security, or maintaining the grounds or the building. To be honest, it’s helped us feel freer than we ever expected to.
Town mouse, country mouse – Jude and Craig
I always said: “I married Craig, not the farm!”, and although I was happy to live in the wops for my working life, I knew I wanted to retire to town. Craig, on the other hand, was never going to leave the land – not entirely – and when our son took over our beef and dairy farm, he was happy to have his dad close by for support. To make things work, we bought an apartment in town for me, and moved a ‘man cave’ onto the farm for Craig (‘man cave’ is what I call it, but it’s actually a tidy 2-bedroom home with a great outlook over the duck-shooting pond). The plan is, when Craig is no longer up to being our son’s ‘farm hand,’ the man-cave will be used as ‘married couple’s’ accommodation and Craig will move into the apartment with me. At the moment, we’re doing fine: Craig comes to town at the weekends and we enjoy eating out together and going to events. I visit the farm every second week to catch up with the grandkids, and stay over at the man-cave to check on conditions there! It wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but split-living works for us.
Although retiring from full-time farming is never going to be easy, farming families are resilient, and solutions do exist. The secret is to start planning early, and to consider engaging a professional farm succession-planner as part of the picture.
