Growing old in Kiwiland

If you are retired and healthy, and living in Kiwiland, you would have several options to plan your ageing living lifestyle... Your Own Home, Retirement Village, Retirement Home, Council Housing/Pensioner Unit or Rest Home (if you are elderly and needing long-term care).
Should you get sick and disable, you could then apply for Residential (General) Care or Home Support Services and even Palliative Care. The Government will subsidise the costs, fully or partially dependent on assessment of your Asset Threshold (currently 2010, it stands at $200,000 and if you are above 65 years old).
In addition to the above, there are other specialised care services like Respite Care, Convalescence Care, Dementia Care, Psychogeriatic Care, Specialised High Dependency Care and Home Support Services.
Financial support would be subject to referral by the District Health Board services.
In addition, the NZ Government provides a series of financial assistance to the senior population, depending on eligibility and needs. These include:

Accomodation supplement (variable dependent on individual situation)
Community services card (for reduced medication)
Disability allowance (up to $55.88 a week)
Funeral grant (currently up to $1800)
Living alone payment
NZ Super card (free public transport)
Specialised needs grant (eg hearing aids, dentures etc)
Councial rate rebates (up to $550 for annual income less than $21910)
National travel assistance scheme

Those who qualify for full subsidy to stay in a Rest Home would additionally receive a weekly sundries allowance of $35 and an annual clothing allowance of $246.00.
Abbey Heights Rest Home at Waitakere for example has acccomodation for 24 senior citizens, currently mainly of Asian ethnicities.

For those who can afford a retirement home lifestyle, there are many choices of leasing or owning a home in the Retirement Village, mainly run by profit-making private enterprises. In the Greater Auckland region (with the current population of about 1.4 million), there are at least 50 such villages with size ranges from a dozen units to over 350 units.

Vision Waitakere Gardens Retirement Village is one example where currently a 3-bedroom unit would cost $450,000 (car park additional $18,000 one off). You enter an Occupational Right Agreement with the Management which essentially allows you to live there as long as you are able or willing. You can decide to sell back the unit anytime but the outstanding amount the Management will pay back to you would be as follow:

Year 1 less 7.5% of entry fee (of $450,000) or $333,000
Year 2 less 15% or $306,000
Year 3 less 22.5% or 279,000
Year 4 less 30% or $252,000
Year 5 and beyond $252,000

The unit is not transferrable to any 3rd pary but if one of the occupants dies before the other, then the one remaining can opt to stay on...
There is a monthly service charge of $97.80 for 1 person or $127.40 for 2 persons (current rate subject to change, in consultation with the residents). This service charge covers rates, external building maintenance, building insurance, landscaping and amenities, rubbish disposal, common areas lighting, emergency call systems, staffing and admin & management fees.
You are allowed to have visitors staying with you, normally not more than 30 days at any one time, extension will be subject to Management's approval.

The elderly in NZ are also taken care by the Government under a scheme called NZ Super, which is an entitlement to all NZ residents from age 65 (and having lived in NZ for 3650 days, half of those days since age 50) until death. The current weekly payment (since 1 April 2010) are as follow (maximum after-tax):

Single (living alone) $318.12
Single (sharing) $293.65
Married (both qualify) $489.42
Married (only one qualifies) $244.77

NZ , with a $10.1b defecit, is currently borrowing about $240 million a week for the next 4 years, to support the Social Welfare Benefits Scheme. The Government is now looking at checking any loophole and abuses of the Scheme.

Some statistics of expenditure for the 2008/2009 period (totalled $3.989m) :

Domestic Purpose (97000 recipients) $1.53m
Unemployment (64,000 recipients) $0.586m
Sickness (58,000 recipients) $0.613m
Invalids (85,000 recipients) $1.26m

In order to sustain this scheme, the country must continue to prosper and to attract more young people to contribute to the economic development. Currently, the emigration of young skilled workers to Australia is at its height of 3000 long-term departures in 12 months. Before the global recession in 2008 the average monthly long-term departures was 4200, and it was down to about 2100 in 2009.