On topic, so long as you want

comment by Lerradinho (U21557)
posted 50 minutes ago
Genuine question, how affordable would London or NYC be for retirement? Let's say you were middle class and sold your current house in Europe for 200k-250k and your pension income was around 1,5k each month (or double with spouse).
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i can only speak for myself, and for work reasons i ended up living in the posher parts of each city - upper east side and marylebone - but the last time i rented, decent apartments, 2 beds, though not huge, i was comfortably paying £2k+ in rent alone a month, and that was 10-15 years ago.

so even if i downsized a bit, with rental appreciation over that time, i would budget on £2-2.5k in rent a month. and before anyone says "oh don, you're such a tedious snob", it looks like it would cost you £1600 a month to get a 2 bed maisonette on camberwell:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/83819938#/

so "not very" is, alas, the answer.

comment by Don Draper's dandruff (U20155)
posted 52 minutes ago
comment by Lerradinho (U21557)
posted 50 minutes ago
Genuine question, how affordable would London or NYC be for retirement? Let's say you were middle class and sold your current house in Europe for 200k-250k and your pension income was around 1,5k each month (or double with spouse).
I-----------------------------------------------
i can only speak for myself, and for work reasons i ended up living in the posher parts of each city - upper east side and marylebone - but the last time i rented, decent apartments, 2 beds, though not huge, i was comfortably paying £2k+ in rent alone a month, and that was 10-15 years ago.

so even if i downsized a bit, with rental appreciation over that time, i would budget on £2-2.5k in rent a month. and before anyone says "oh don, you're such a tedious snob", it looks like it would cost you £1600 a month to get a 2 bed maisonette on camberwell:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/83819938#/

so "not very" is, alas, the answer.

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Fack me

You’d only have needed to save three years of rent at £2k to buy - outright - our two bed detached house, just under 150m2, 250m2 of garden, walking distance to five beaches, sun 300-and-odd days a year, five years ago.

London is mental.

comment by rosso - it’s not good enough to be right; you have to be effective (U17054)
posted 2 minutes ago
comment by Don Draper's dandruff (U20155)
posted 52 minutes ago
comment by Lerradinho (U21557)
posted 50 minutes ago
Genuine question, how affordable would London or NYC be for retirement? Let's say you were middle class and sold your current house in Europe for 200k-250k and your pension income was around 1,5k each month (or double with spouse).
I-----------------------------------------------
i can only speak for myself, and for work reasons i ended up living in the posher parts of each city - upper east side and marylebone - but the last time i rented, decent apartments, 2 beds, though not huge, i was comfortably paying £2k+ in rent alone a month, and that was 10-15 years ago.

so even if i downsized a bit, with rental appreciation over that time, i would budget on £2-2.5k in rent a month. and before anyone says "oh don, you're such a tedious snob", it looks like it would cost you £1600 a month to get a 2 bed maisonette on camberwell:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/83819938#/

so "not very" is, alas, the answer.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fack me

You’d only have needed to save three years of rent at £2k to buy - outright - our two bed detached house, just under 150m2, 250m2 of garden, walking distance to five beaches, sun 300-and-odd days a year, five years ago.

London is mental.
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Ridiculous ain't it

comment by rosso - it’s not good enough to be right; you have to be effective (U17054)

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Fack me

You’d only have needed to save three years of rent at £2k to buy - outright - our two bed detached house, just under 150m2, 250m2 of garden, walking distance to five beaches, sun 300-and-odd days a year, five years ago.

London is mental.
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i know, these days i spend £700 a month, and my property is nicer than any i lived in in london. even by capital city standards london is eye-watering, i've looked into moving to rome, and reckon that rents there are c. 30-50% lower, even with sterling being weak against the euro.

curious thing, as far as i recall, is that most other things in london are no more expensive than elsewhere - food, drink, clothes etc, so it's probably a great place to be homeless.

So come on, if you prefer Pontefract, let's be having it.
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Don't knock West Yorkshire until you try it.

London is crazy for prices. When I lived there I paid around £1050 a month for a small 2 bed in the lovely Tower Hamlets.

In Sydney the rent is priced weekly which makes it quite scary - I pay $570 a week which is around £1300 a month. I’ll never be able to buy here unless I move into Western Sydney which is fairly shiiiit so my options are the Gold Coast or Perth. First world problems, I know.

comment by Lerradinho (U21557)
posted 2 hours, 14 minutes ago
Genuine question, how affordable would London or NYC be for retirement? Let's say you were middle class and sold your current house in Europe for 200k-250k and your pension income was around 1,5k each month (or double with spouse).
I think living in USA the medical bills would F you up eventually. Barcelona seems doable atm, but 10 years back property was even more affordable (<150k).
Australia seems lovely, but I would defo not be able to cope with the weather, spiders and snakes, lots of snakes
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Depends what area of London.

I know somebody who rented a top floor flat in West London (about the W4 area) not too far away from Kensington. The top floor flat, just the top floor (which was a tiny kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom) was £625,000 to buy outright.

£625,000 up here I could buy potentially 4/5 reasonably sized houses and rent them out, for comparison.

Thanks for the input guys. It's basically as I assumed, that even if you have a decent windfall due to inheritance and/or lucky investments in stock (both which I might end up with), its still not very feasable to retire in good/decent parts of London or NYC.

Let alone nobody has talked about the elephant in the room, which is climate change! One of the big reasons I like it here in The Netherlands/UK and always assumed I would retire here is the moderate climate. But the last few summers in which we saw long periods of 30-35c and even 40c made me reconsider, especially when living in cities (smog alerts...). Southern Spain and Italy are basically becoming nightmares with 40c and very dry weather the entire summer, so it's hard to pick a place...

I loved both the Causeway Coast and Howth in Northern Ireland/Ireland. Green, peaceful and with amazing cliffside scenery. Somewhere like that, for me.

La Gomera - Nice climate, minimal tourism, great hiking.

Alternatively, The Azores, climate better than UK, again minimal tourism, and they grow their own tea