Moving to the UK as a Retirement Option

Previously I mentioned that we were working to get our daughter registered as a UK citizen.  She is eligible for British citizenship because my wife was born in England, although she lives in the US now and is also a US citizen.

As we thought about it a bit, we realized that we’d be foolish not to register our daughter as a UK citizen.  While she is automatically a “UK citizen by descent”, it makes sense for us to get her officially recognized so that she’ll be able to freely move in and out of the country and work there if she chooses.  It also gives her access to UK healthcare which might come in handy some day if we happen to be there visiting, or if we lose our insurance here in the US and she is in need of care we can’t afford.

We have also been contemplating moving to the UK when we retire.  My wife would love to live back in the UK.  She spent summers there when she was growing up and obviously feels a strong connection to the country.  When we first started talking about this we thought we’d discovered an incredible option for our retirement that would let us live comfortably and have free health care.  (I would have to wait three years to become a UK citizen to qualify for the healthcare but that’s not a big deal).  As we put more thought in to it, it became clear that our plan wasn’t as great as it first appeared.  While we would ultimately have universal health coverage over there, it definitely wouldn’t be free.  It hadn’t initially occurred to us that we’d really end up paying for this healthcare through much higher taxes to our pension, investments and social security income.  Our assumption is that it would probably end up being more expensive than just staying in the US and buying private health insurance.  Once we hit medicare age (assuming it still exists), we’d almost definitely be better off staying in the US.

The one situation that it still might be a good idea to move to the UK is if we end up having very little money because I invested all of our money in a fool proof pyramid scheme or finally fell victim to a “hard luck” story from Nigeria.  In that case, if we were low income and wouldn’t be showing much income, we might be better off moving to the UK.  We would face very little taxes and would have access to the social benefits that the UK offers.

Who knows what will happen in the next 20 years before we retire.  It’s likely that we’ll retire here and spend time in Arizona or somewhere else warm in the winters but just having the additional options makes us feel fortunate.