After 35 years of live and work in Hong Kong, my wife, Wendy, and I are returning home to the United States. There are so many things to consider when planning our retirement.
Leaving aside fears about whether we’re jumping from a frying pan into a fire (ongoing crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong against political breakdowns in the United States), we have many other problems to solve.
We do not have credit scores or credit cards
Take for example, our credit rating: We do not have it. In Hong Kong, we have always paid our bills on time and are conscientious consumers. But that means nothing to the credit agencies in America, where we don’t even have a credit card, much less a car or house payment.
My wife and I are third-generation Californians, but who retires to Los Angeles unless they have a hit or a reality TV show? Perhaps we would be better off in a number of other states with low taxes and affordable housing. It’s a decision many retirees face.
For us, it’s also about knowing where we will send the large shipping container which will soon cross the Pacific. Wendy and I have to decide if it’s worth spending more money to return to the good weather and laid-back lifestyle of our past if it means we’ll have less money to spend in the future. We decided to buy a house because we would like to leave it to our children. But that may not be realistic.
Additionally, it might be better to not buy a house and rent one. Wendy and I are both 66, so we hope to have another two decades before the inevitable move to a Assisted Living Facility. Like many other retirees, we’re calculating how much money we’ll need to pay the bills and take a few vacations before that day arrives.
Social Security is a source of income that most other Americans our age rely on. For us, this won’t be a significant amount since most of my privileged years were spent overseas, working for Hong Kong companies. I wasn’t putting any money into Social Security, so I won’t get much out of it. I never had one of those lucrative expat packages that paid for an apartment, a car and the kids’ tuition. I loved my work, both as a journalist and in the nonprofit sector, but it was never about high-paying jobs and I was always a “local employee.”
I can not wait to return
I have no complaints about the last 35 years and only a sense of impatience to return to my homeland.
Being away for so long with only an annual return to visit family always gave me a sense of how special the United States is and how open and helpful Americans are. I hope this will be the case when I visit the Department of Motor Vehicles in my new home state and they realize that I haven’t had a valid driver’s license since 1988. However, I don’t Don’t expect kindness when I take out car insurance. No accidents in 35 years? Where, you say? I’m preparing for big bonuses.
I share many of the same concerns as Americans my age who have remained in the United States. But a few other questions might be unique to my situation, like what happened to cable TV.
businessinsider
