New reports have discovered that six out of ten Britons would rather move aboard than spend their retirement years in Great Britain.
A survey conducted by the benefits consultancy group Aon quizzed citizens around Europe about their hopes for retirement. Less than half of the British folk questioned said that they’d like to spend their retirement days at home, with the majority instead hoping for greener pastures come their later lives. With Britain currently in the grip of a tough new Government regime, austerity measures are in place and new retirement plan laws are also being introduced. Couple this with the trademark, and gloomy, ‘English weather’, and it’s no surprise that people are itching to get away.
Oliver Rowlands, retirement specialist at Aon, said: “Cheap air travel and the communication tools available over the internet means that retiring overseas doesn’t necessarily mean being completely absent from your family’s life, making the prospect of emigration to other countries on an previously unseen scale a real possibility. Not surprisingly, most people want to spend their retirement predominantly in countries with good weather and good social and government benefits, and ideally close enough so that they can get home quickly if they need to”.
Some other European countries saw similar results, in Germany 46 percent preferred to retire at home, and in Ireland 49 percent saw the benefits of a home retirement. Sunny Spain came out on top though, with the vast majority of its residents, 87 percent, seeing no reason to retire abroad.
Read more about expatriate opportunities in other countries in our international city guide section.