Sharon Ackerley flashes her phone around to show views of lush rice paddies and a swimming pool at her budget accommodation in Vietnam. The 55-year-old empty nester is on a video call from her latest destination: a $20-a-night homestay in Hội An, where she arrived the night before after a long train journey. In April, Ackerley quit her job, rented out her Hastings house and took off on a one-way ticket to Asia. She’s been nomadic ever since.
An hour out of Berlin, Leigh and Phil Cooke are caring for two cats in return for free accommodation. The couple also took a one-way ticket, seeing destinations in Europe they never saw when they went on the traditional Kiwi OE in their 20s. Leigh is continuing to work part-time as an accountant but Phil has temporarily paused his job in real estate. The empty nesters in their mid-50s sold their Lower Hutt house and have no idea when they’ll return home – possibly some time next year.
Social media groups are full of New Zealand empty nesters and retirees exploring the world. The internet has opened up ways to live abroad on a budget as travellers rather than tourists that weren’t possible a decade ago, either working as a digital nomad or travelling and living in other countries in mid-life or retirement.
Put the term “mid-life gap year” into Google and you’ll get many hits. Social media group Budget Slow Travel in Retirement has 114,000 members. At the same time, pet-sitting, house-sharing and house-sitting sites are rising in number as people look for ways to travel for extended periods – a luxury once available only to the privileged.
Working from home is now possible for many employees – a global study by Statista shows that in 2023, 28% of employees were working remotely, up from 7% in 2015.
An estimated 58 countries now offer a “digital nomad visa”, allowing travellers to work remotely for a foreign company while living somewhere for an extended period of time.
Those receiving NZ Super are allowed six months out of the country before they get their superannuation deducted or stopped; New Zealand also has pension agreements with 11 countries, including Australia, Greece and the United Kingdom, which allow some or all of the pension to be paid if someone stays beyond that time.
Wake-up calls
Ackerley and the Cookes are part of a rising demographic of mid-lifers and seniors who are fit and healthy enough to disrupt their routines and explore the world. But they want to do so slowly – they don’t want to rush from one place to the next, join a tour bus or take a long cruise. Instead, they want to live like locals.
The Cookes have an adult daughter living in Auckland and a son in London on his own OE. Earlier this year, they reviewed their lives and discussed what they wanted for their next chapter. They had lost friends to cancer or other illnesses, and watched their lives change drastically. “We’ve been mindful of that, and we also didn’t want to work our butts off for 45 years,” Leigh Cooke says.
After selling their four-bedroom home, they packed their necessities into backpacks and flew out of New Zealand in May, first to Dubai, where they cared for two cats in a third-floor apartment for a fortnight.
“We didn’t want to get to the stage of thinking, ‘Oh, we’re too old and we’re too tired or we’re too sick to actually enjoy it all now,’” she says. “We’re in a fortunate position that we can take this break. I know that it’s not something everybody can do.”
The internet has opened up ways to live abroad on a budget that were never possible a decade ago.
They’re travelling on New Zealand passports, which allow three months in Europe (within a six-month period) and six months in the UK. The Cookes are hoping that bilateral agreements to stay in Scandinavian countries will allow them another 90 days in the Northern Hemisphere. At this stage, they’re not applying for digital nomad visas because they’re not staying in one place long enough to warrant getting them.
They’ve signed up to a couple of pet-sitting websites, and over the height of the European summer, secured nine house-sits, which they estimate saved them about $10,000 in accommodation. The low Kiwi dollar is hard to travel on, so Leigh continues to work part-time and they usually shop locally to cook at home, rather than eating out in pricey restaurants catering to tourists.
“One thing we love about house-sitting is we’re living like locals, rather than as tourists. We go to the local shops and markets and see how different communities live rather than rushing through a place.”
Leigh talked to the Listener in late August from an apartment in a town about an hour from Berlin, where they were again cat-minding for a fortnight. They arrived in Germany in mid-July after travelling through Austria, Croatia and Romania. In Germany, they hopped around four different towns, feeding cats and enjoying free rent in return.
Their foreseeable itinerary has Denmark and Norway next, where Leigh wants to fulfil a lifelong dream to see the Northern Lights. After that is London to see their son, and Egypt for Christmas.
“Patience and flexibility with location is the key,” she says. “There are so many people who are just travelling around house-sitting. Some people, that’s all they do now; they just travel around the world and house-sit and they don’t have a permanent base any more.”
And they’re not sure when they’ll get back to New Zealand. Although they eventually hope to buy another house, they’re also not sure where that might be.
But what they do notice is how much travel is changing, thanks to the internet. The world is opening up and they can connect with family and friends back home on a daily basis for free, as Wi-Fi is everywhere.
They have taken their New Zealand phones and inserted European Sim cards that give them data in 34 countries. How things have changed: when the Cookes were on a working holiday in London in their 20s, phone calls back to New Zealand were exorbitant and they kept in touch with friends and family via postcards or a quick collect call.
On his blog, Matt Kepnes, author of the New York Times bestseller How to Travel the World on $50 a Day writes: “Lately, there’s been a growing trend among boomers taking sabbaticals, early retirements, and buying vans and just saying, ‘Screw it! Let’s go!’ when the kids move out. More and more of my emails come from boomers looking for advice – not young college kids. It’s an awesome trend.’’
Angela Laws agrees as she talks to the Listener from London, where the head of PR for global house-sitting company Trusted Housesitters is looking after a 14-year-old cat, Teazel. Theirs is a long relationship, dating back to when he was a kitten.
The company is one of a growing number of home- and pet-sitting businesses. With 230,000 members in 130 countries, there’s a mix of pet parents, pet-sitters and house-sitters. Membership has surged since 2022: it’s attractive to those seeking a cheaper way to travel, and Laws notes it particularly appeals to women.
“The solo female traveller is a huge growth market, with the 50-plus being the largest cohort and the fastest-growing,” she says. Pet sitting is a safe and comfortable way to plan slow and purposeful travel.
And not only is there a connection with pets, travellers meet like-minded humans, too. The connections made through minding someone’s home, cat, dog or canary can be enduring, says Laws.
“We can and do build lifelong friendships. You might travel alone but are never alone, unless that’s your choice.”
The staff of Trusted Housesitters themselves work remotely, and they’ve certainly noticed the post-pandemic rise in others working flexibly from far-flung places, visas and tech permitting. “As long as we have a stable and reliable internet connection, we can work anywhere.’’
Work on the go
Speaking from San Francisco, Richard Petrie, a former New Zealand cricketer, runs his architecture marketing consultancy from wherever he happens to be. In June and July, he liaised with American and New Zealand clients from a dining table in Italy’s Cinque Terre, where he and his wife, Julia, rented a house for six weeks, stopping there after a holiday in Croatia.
He taps into video calls with his consultants based in Israel, Italy, the United States, the Philippines and New Zealand. With no physical office or employees on his books, his only limitation is travelling on a Kiwi passport – the couple often stay in Europe for the maximum 90 days, and visit their 22-year-old son, Max, in the UK, where he is playing cricket.
About 16 years ago, Petrie, now 57, began rethinking his life and decided he didn’t want to work a 9 to 5 job any more. He set up his firm three years later. “My theory is you design your life first and then you design a business that fits in with the life that you want. My life is more important than my business.’’
After the Petries’ three children left home, the couple decided to spend three to five months overseas over the winter months. He says you need to be either empty nesters or close to it, and you need to have a partner who also wants to live in different countries, which Julia does.
“You also need to be independently wealthy or have a business that doesn’t matter where you are in the world as long as you have a laptop. You need connectivity so it doesn’t matter where you are to run your business. You need those three things, and not everyone can do it. Not everyone wants to do it, either.”
Petrie was an early adopter of online webinars for clients. When he started offering those 13 years ago, “we had to explain to people what a webinar was”. Now, it’s standard business practice.
“In the old days, you used to have to have photos of what your office looked like, the staff standing outside wearing suits and ties. [Now] I’ve got a fake backdrop on my Zoom, and off we go.’’ This spring, the couple will be in Wānaka, renting a property while they build their own house. As Petrie sees it, if you’re able to work remotely and you’re renting, why not do it from somewhere you’d really like to be?
“We’re either swapping a house or we’ve got our house rented out. And we were just renting ourselves, so we were really flexible when we were in New Zealand.’’
A swap in 2022 involved a French family taking the Petries’ Wellington home, and the couple moving to Sallanches, in the French Alps, for three months in return. Their three children, by then all in their 20s, joined them at various times.
The couple follow the philosophy that you don’t know what’s around the corner. “I think 45 to 60 is probably the perfect time to do this, because you’re young and fit enough to do it,” he says. “You’ve got enough money and the kids have just left home. If you leave it till 65, you never know what’s going to happen.”
That was Sharon Ackerley’s attitude when she packed her suitcase and left in April after a hellish 2023. Long divorced, she worked in the office of a special needs school. Last year, she lost friends and colleagues to illness and cancer.
Then in December, she was at Hawke’s Bay’s Ocean Beach when a young Korean man drowned. Ackerley ended up consoling the victim’s girlfriend on the beach and taking her back to her house as she had no one else. It understandably left her rattled and began a change in her thinking.
“I decided that this was my time,” she says. “I decided that the window of opportunity was right now. I’ve got four children who have grown and flown, but I haven’t got grandchildren yet. My parents are healthy; in fact they’re so healthy they’ve decided they’re coming to join me,’’ she adds with a laugh.
With her mortgage paid off, Ackerley elected to rent out her home to cover her insurance and rates while she is away and she’s travelling on a modest budget. Staying in a mix of homestays and hostels, she can get by on $20 a day by eating like the locals at night markets.
What she loves is the freedom to not know where she might go next. So far, she has travelled through Sri Lanka, Singapore, Borneo, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and plans to be in Vietnam for at least three months. But her plans stop there.
Asked where she is going after Hội An, Ackerley laughs again. “Your guess is as good as mine. When you’ve got four kids and you’re working full-time and the full-time is a busy role, you’ve got to have so many plans and you have to cross your Ts and dot your Is, and I just got sick of that.
What these women seemed to experience, to varying degrees, was a rebirth in a way.
“I’ve planned a couple of days but ... I don’t know what I’m doing next week. I know I’ll be in Vietnam because I’ve got Mum and Dad coming. That’s about all I know.’’
Women feeling empowered to travel and live abroad either alone or with a partner is something that fascinates academic Barbara Myers. Eight years ago, the AUT management professor studied 21 women in their 50s and 60s who went on an OE, and she coined the term “rewirement’' to describe the impact on each one. This cohort of women took off on what researchers call a self-initiated expatriation (SIE), which led to huge personal growth.
Four went with partners; the rest travelled solo and met people through voluntary work such as live-in caring or WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). They often rented out their own house if they had one, and had a mix of incomes.
“They put down roots and stay somewhere and live like the locals. It was a different experience than those who head off to do the Camino and come back and say it’s a life-changing experience. They’re still only away for a period of time. These are people who lived and had to adjust and work or do voluntary work in return for free accommodation,’’ says Myers.
Some had gone on an OE in their earlier years, but then had to come home. “What they seemed to experience, to varying degrees, was a rebirth in a way, working through whatever it was they were moving away from. Some were being pushed out, some were being pulled away, but after years of often looking after family and others, they were on a search for something better.”
Solo benefits
Judith Rooke has just returned from three months in the UK visiting friends she met a couple of decades ago when she first left New Zealand on a mid-life OE. The 78-year-old puts it this way: “I’ve got my health and I’m not on any medication. I may as well go while I can.’’
She points out that travelling solo has its benefits, allowing this “people person” to meet others. On the trip, she mixed staying with friends with pet-sitting and house-sitting. Rooke doesn’t travel for more than six months in a year, as it would affect her superannuation. She funds her adventures by renting out her Napier house and either house-sitting or pet-sitting at her destination.
With two adult children living in Wellington and Sydney, the divorcee had her first overseas experience when she turned 50. Back then, she signed up with a home-care recruitment company and worked as a live-in carer. When she turned 65, she began house- and pet-sitting, avoiding the Kiwi winter and returning home in time for spring in her garden.
“For 10 years, I tripped through Europe and the UK looking after cats and their homes. Always cats, as dogs are too labour-intensive. Feed a cat in the morning and head out to be a tourist, and they don’t mind. I’ve met some lovely people and had incredible experiences.”
A career pause
Burnout at work leads many in their 40s and 50s to try to find a way out.
The NZ author of Beyond Burnout, leadership coach Suzi McAlpine, pauses when asked what might be driving the growing popularity of OE for mid-life and senior travellers. She then laughs and says, “Gosh, that sounds amazing. I might plan my own.”
What McAlpine does observe is that burnout rates are even higher than when she released her book 31/2 years ago. At the time, she cited a 2018 Gallup international study of nearly 7500 full-time employees that found 23% reported feeling burnt out at work. She now points to an ongoing study by Massey Management School’s Jarrod Haar, who reported in May that burnout was at a record high ‒ 57%, twice the rate recorded last December. It was based on a sample of 1000 representative NZ employees.
As she works with executives and leaders, Nelson-based McAlpine sees many rethinking work pressure, wondering if it is worth it. She works mainly with Generation X leaders and executives – people ranging from their mid-40s to late 50s.
“An increasing number are pausing their careers or considering a variety of different alternative routes, which include a sabbatical, or leaving high-flying senior leadership roles. Increased burnout rates are playing a key role in that, as people are questioning the role that work plays in their lives.”
Professional services such as law and accountancy firms, along with tertiary organisations, have long offered sabbaticals for senior staff and partners, recognising that a break can refresh them. Some take that time to travel, but this is not an option for everyone.
“Organisations are becoming far more open to allowing leave of absence for certain talent and we should be encouraging this as the war for talent is going to be a thing,” says McAlpine.
She points out that workplaces are being shaken up: post-pandemic, many organisations don’t care if someone is in an office, and some don’t even offer a physical space.
For those wanting to have the experience that Leigh and Phil Cooke are having in Europe or Sharon Ackerley is enjoying in Vietnam, New Zealanders don’t need a visa to enter Europe and can stay up to 90 days but entry to Vietnam requires a tourist visa allowing a stay of up to 90 days.
In a pre-election pledge, National promised to bring in a digital nomad visa that would allow visitors coming here a longer stay, initially, for up to 250 people a year. About 58 countries now offer this type of visa. They’re an option for someone who is freelance or working for a firm outside the country they’re living in, and who doesn’t want to leave in a hurry. They’re also regarded as an opportunity to lure talent that could lead to permanent residency in the new domicile.
Richard Howard, managing director of immigration consultancy Pathways to New Zealand expects the government to announce New Zealand’s version of the digital nomad visa in the not-too-distant future. “It’s now almost the norm for people to be working all over the place,” he says. “When we’re dealing with multinationals and their HR officers, I have to ask, where are you? And it’s someone in Singapore, someone in South America and someone in Houston. For these larger conglomerates, it’s just normal business practice for them.’’