Retiring in Bali: The expats dillema

Living here in Seminyak I run into quite a few retired people. When I say retired, I don’t mean geriatrics, wheelchair bound with home-help, I mean people who are in their 50’s, but have made enough coin, to choose what they do with their time.

A decent percentage of them have told me personally, that they have nothing to do, their days consist of getting up late, going for lunch, getting into the booze and drifting from day to day. There are actually people out here, who make a life of that.

After living in the US for 13 years, I’m very familiar with the good old American work ethic, ‘if you ain’t working, you’re a sinner!’ I think that mentality is a bit extreme in the other direction, but I do believe that a certain amount of work makes people happy.

One of my neighbors in Seminyak, who will remain annonymous, is a guy from Europe. I see him sitting in a warung around 11am getting into his first large Bintang. I can spot him around the area, at all hours of the day, getting into a large Bintang. The other day I stopped and asked him how many he drinks in 1 day. He said he drinks 20 large Bintangs a day! I’d be dead if I did that. “I do this because I have nothing to do.” he said. “You seem like you have something to do.” (Glad somebody notices!) “People think when you can pick the money from the trees (being retired), you will be happy, but the best years of your life, are when you have to work for the money.” he said.

We all have fantasy ideas of what we would do, if we had unlimited time and money, in Bali. I think what happens is, people lose track of time and direction. Unless you schedule stuff to happen, it won’t, and many people feel comfortable, taking the path of least resistance.

Moving to Bali means in many ways, you have to re-invent yourself, look for new challenges and create a new chapter to the book.