5 key factors to consider when choosing retirement living

This is advertorial content for Aveo Retirement Living.

Finding the perfect home and community for your retirement lifestyle requires a bit of research.

Downsizing and moving into a retirement village is a big deal. Even if you’ve decided that it’s a good idea in theory, the practicalities of decluttering, choosing a community and getting your head around the financial implications can be overwhelming.

“A lot of people find it very difficult and think about it for a very long time,” says Rachel Lane, Principal of Aged Care Gurus, which educates professionals such as financial advisers about retirement living and aged care.

“But the most common thing you’ll hear retirement village residents say is that their only regret is that they didn’t move sooner.”

Here are five things you need to do to help you make your decision.

Find your community

Retirement villages and communities can be very different. Some are big, some are small. Facilities can be modest or five-star. They might overlook a waterfront, or a golf course.

To get a good feel for whether you and a retirement community are going to be a good fit, you need to spend some time there, Lane says.

“Get involved in anything and everything you can with the people who live there,” she says. “It’s going to sound a bit hippy, but you’ve just got to get a sense of the vibe. You’ve got to go along to open days, barbecues, happy hours.

“You get the good oil at happy hour. That’s where you get the real lowdown.”

Aveo, which operates more than 90 communities across Australia, offers different opportunities to try out community living depending on what people want to experience – from attending social events to spending time in their potential new property.

Do your sums

While some financial aspects of downsizing are pretty straightforward, it’s not all so clear-cut.

“It’s pretty obvious what your purchase price is going to be,” Lane says. “The monthly or weekly fee is normally pretty obvious too. But exit fees can be a little bit complicated to work out.”

As well as getting to grips with exit fees, you should also work out what your living expenses are likely to be compared with now, how the move will affect your pension, and whether you’ll be entitled to rent assistance in your retirement village.

And it’s no good guessing. “You really need to crunch the numbers,” Lane says.

Aveo believes in being transparent about costs, says National Sales Innovation Manager Marilyn Graham. “We provide as much information as we can up front, to give people the time to go and seek professional advice,” she says.

Understand your retirement village contract

Your contract has wide-ranging implications on the sums mentioned above. It’s important to understand it, Lane says.

“Fundamentally, your retirement village contract boils down to a balance of three things: it’s your rights, your responsibilities, and your costs,” she says. “You need to look at a contract through all three lenses.”

Retirement living contracts tend to be complicated. Aveo is working to change that. Graham says: “We have done a lot of work to simplify our contracts so that they’re easier to understand.”

Aveo contracts include a money-back guarantee if you change your mind in the first six months, and a guaranteed repayment time frame when you leave the village.

Look for flexible payment options

Traditionally, people moving into retirement communities haven’t exactly been spoilt for choice when it comes to payment options, Lane says.

“Retirement villages, up until recently, have had a fairly stock-standard kind of offering,” she says. “Most of them charge an exit fee. And it’s really been a take-it-or-leave-it kind of proposition.”

But that’s changing, with Aveo offering options that allow you to vary how much you pay up front, and how much on exit.

Aveo offers three types of payment options: you can defer your management fee until when you leave the village (the traditional model), you can choose a discounted management fee option (by paying up front), or a no-management fee option (by paying a refundable premium entry payment and a non-refundable establishment fee on entry).

Think about your future care needs

A lot of people moving into retirement villages don’t want to think about a time when they might not be able to do everything for themselves, Lane says.

“But it’s important to ask the question: what happens if I need care?

“The answer to that question can be anything on the spectrum from ‘we’re a care-free community so if you need care you have to leave’, through to ‘we have care on site 24 hours a day’. It’s really not about one’s right, one’s wrong; it’s about what your expectation is.”

Aveo offers tailored home care services at most of its communities, and can help residents transfer to other communities if needed.

Be sure about your retirement living contract with Aveo. Aveo now offers the choice you want and the assurance you need. Take the first step today and talk to one of their friendly team on 13 28 36 or visit www.aveo.com.au/contracts.