Retirement Places in KZN South Africa

20/09/2025

Don’t Ever Think Of Retiring

Don't ever think of retiring. If you are not growing, then you are fading away. We see this happening to a few of our friends in a retirement village in Margate, South Africa. This is where we live, and from where we write our personal blog.

Our great grandparents worked until they dropped in the late 19th century. Then along came progress, and so our grandparents had pensions. Although they did not survive long enough to fully enjoy them, as old age and infirmity took their toll.

In those days, you see, retirement meant retreating from society, and lingering a short while until ill-health took you down. But that's all changed now 'baby boomers' live longer. That's why we say don't ever think of retiring, because we have a lot of living left to do.

Retiring No Longer Means Retreating

Retiring, in the military sense of the word, means withdrawing from action. And so it must have seemed natural for our parents to ‘retire’ when they ‘went on pension’ at age sixty-five or so. By then, most of those folk were running out of options, and ready for the rocking chair on the porch routine.

The world has made more than a few rotations since then. We are living a decade or so longer than our parents, giving inflation adequate time to chip away at our pensions and savings. But we are sharp, we are baby boomers, and we can take back control of our lives.

We wrote this post after we moved to the Kwazulu-Natal South Coast of South Africa, and our peaceful Margate Retirement Village near the ocean. We have freed ourselves from the apron strings of retirement. We have discovered there is more we can achieve.

However, we can’t presume to help you figure out your personal road ahead. The only suggestion we can make, is don’t ever think of retiring in the conventional sense. Rather see it as an opportunity to take back control over your life.

By all means supplement your reserves by working for yourself, but not for someone else. You will find people treasure your wisdom and experience.

So take the plunge and find the right role. Stand up and walk tall into rich new world of fresh opportunity, and stride out. Don't dither. Just do it!

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30/08/2025

Life Right And Retirement Lifestyle

A life right, in the context of retirement, means a lifetime opportunity for an individual or couple to live in a particular cottage or apartment. So it’s like being a tenant in a sense, but with all the rent paid up front. The longer we live, the more it becomes a bargain. Isn’t that a life right and retirement lifestyle to long for?

But That’s Not Where the Bargain Ends.

But that’s not where the bargain ends. The best retirement villages refund their life right payments, if residents relocate. Alternatively, the money passes to their heirs when they pass on. The repayment comes from the subsequent resale of the life right cottage or apartment, so there is a time delay.

In summary, then …:

# There is no outright purchase. There is no transfer duty or property tax either.

# A life right is personal to the owner(s). The purchase price is refundable.

# The retirement village is responsible for maintenance and upgrades.

# The life right owners pay levies. These pay for the operating costs.

Retirement Life Style More Than a Life Right

You get something else thrown into the bargain with a quality life right. Sectional title, where you own a specific part of a building or complex, may sound like a great idea when you are down-sizing, but there is a catch we believe you ought to know.

The ‘ought’ is you become increasingly isolated as you age in sectional title, and younger people move in around you. A life right and retirement lifestyle is far more of a community than you may realise. You find yourself in the company of like-minded, welcoming people who are aging too.

Before you lock yourself into sectional title with the personal obligations this brings, think about the freedom that a life right and a retirement lifestyle bring to retirement. You get all the benefits, plus the ultimate lock and go. What an opportunity, what a freedom without those obligations.

More About Us

We are a couple in our mid-seventies who have happily retired, although we are far from idle. Visit our blog for more advice on transitioning to the senior phase at https://seniorshophere.com/.

09/08/2025

Downsizing to Happy Retiring

When we started out in life as a young couple, we had few possessions beyond our little love nest. As our careers blossomed our home expanded, until it maxed out in middle age. When retirement approached, we asked ourselves do we really need all this clutter? That was the moment we begin downsizing to happy retiring.

Downsizing for Easy Going Retirement

We are through the gate now, and happily settled in Margate Retirement Village. It boasts a range of delightful cottages on the coast south of Durban. Friends ask us how we managed the transition, instead of rattling around in our large home for ever.

Well, first of all we agreed that downsizing to happy retiring was a matter of ditching possessions we did not need any more. Although we did let a few nice-to-haves through for sentimental reasons.

# We measured everything in each room in the house, that occupied floor space. This was because we wanted to reduce the space we needed in future.
# Then we classified those items as either ‘we can’t live without this’, ‘this is nice to have', or ‘this can help pay for the move’.
# Next we penciled in each item we wanted to keep, on the floor plan of the cottage we were moving to.
We were able to keep a few our optional nice-to-haves. Our smaller cottage feels more spacious than our old home ever did.

Downsizing to happy retiring does not have to be a step down in life. We gave our surplus furniture to charity. We sold a few antiques that more than more than paid for our move.

More About Us

We are a couple in our mid-seventies who have happily retired, although we are far from idle. Visit our blog for more advice on transitioning to the next phase in life at https://seniorshophere.com/.

19/07/2025

Downsizing Your Garage Clutter

Downsizing your garage clutter can be like tearing pages from a childhood book. Each shelf brings back its own memories, and you can't push them away. Your eye rests on a tool, and those thoughts come flooding back.

Could you remember the day you purchased each tool, and how you used it. It may have given you great service, but now you need to downsize for retirement. Where on earth are you going to start, and what are you going to do with the clutter you can't keep?

Take an Overview of Your Garage Clutter

We are inclined to suggest you take a brief overview of each item in your 'Dad's archive'. You can't downsize until you appreciate the scope of your task. So linger a while over what you have.

Set the things aside that mean most to you, even though you may never use them again. Smaller items in your collection may trigger your most important memories. And as for downsizing the rest of your garage clutter ...

# If you are downsizing to sectional title living, then you should still be responsible for interior maintenance. Will you do it yourself, or will you use contractions, perhaps a bit of both?
# But if you are downsizing to a life-right style of living, such as Margate Retirement Village where we live, then the maintenance team could take care of everything.
# Offer the rest of the clutter to the kids first, and then to your friends. Local charity shops may be interested in some of the stuff. If not, then ask a second hand shop to bid to make an offer.

We Saved the Best Advice Until Last

But remember this, which is what we hope you take away. You will have spare time on your hands after you retire, time to do the things you always wanted to.

So set tools aside for your hobbies and for those restless hands. You should have enough room at the back of your retirement garage, for a small work bench and your tools on the walls.

Retirement is an opportunity to break out the mould, so don’t hang on to too many apron strings. It is time to downsize your garage clutter, and move on to the next phase of your life.

Click this link to visit our archive of retirement advice. We based this on our experience of living happily in a life-right retirement village. We are on the shores of the warm sunny Indian Ocean of South Africa, where we have made many friends. https://seniorshophere.com/

27/06/2025

Out in Nature in Retirement Now

There is something about the call of the wild, in every one of us. Ah, how we remember walking through open fields as kids. The other month we visited a local game reserve, where there are no predators. We were out in nature in retirement there, close by antelope, zebras, gnus and giraffes and it felt so good.

A visitor stopped by our website the other day. I am seventy-one, she explained, but the call of nature is still strong. How can I visit the great outdoors and still be safe, she pondered? We would advise her to choose a location that matches her personal situation, and preferences.

Staying Safe While Out in Nature in Retirement

We can’t recommend stepping beyond our personal boundaries. We prefer to confirm that medical assistance is available, less than an hour away when we plan our holidays. Consider the possibility of traveling with a friend, or taking a coach tour with a group of your peers. Being out in nature in retirement with pals is fun!

Choosing where to live after we retire is important too. The long golden beaches of Margate south of Durban, and the warm waters of the Indian Ocean were the initial attraction for us. We had no idea what we would discover an hour inland at a nature reserve. But the cherry on the top was the friendly retirement community in which we now live.

We visited our sister village, Widenham last week. Widenham Retirement Village is brand new, with the final few details on program. It’s a short drive away from glorious, unspoiled Widenham Beach, fifty kilometers south of Durban.

Widenham Retirement Village is laid out like a necklace of pearls along a series of low hills. The valleys between the houses remain in their natural state. There’s ample evidence that being out in nature in retirement is good for our bodies minds and souls. We saw the proof on the faces of the people we met.

See more tips on being happy in retirement by clicking right here https://seniorshophere.com/

14/06/2025

Are You Retiring or Unretiring?

Retiring means throwing in the towel in the military sense originally. We suppressed some aspects of our natural selves in order to adapt to school. Our values and interests - and perhaps our true selves to an extent - became secondary to furthering our careers. If you are preparing to downsize, then perhaps you should ponder over this. Are you retiring or unretiring from the past forty years?

What Do You Really Want Out of Retirement?

We have a wonderful opportunity to ponder over these matters at our warm, friendly Margate Retirement Village. It's a ten-minute drive from the golden beaches of the welcoming Indian Ocean, south of Durban. The folk here are open and friendly. They welcomed us with open arms, as we explored the huge range of recreational activities in this retirement village, and beyond.

We are cruising through our third year here, and learning to observe this idyllic community in more detail, as we ponder over what retirement really means. Or perhaps ought to be, to our inquiring minds.

We have discovered two broad forms of retirement in the four villages that make up the Hibiscus Retirement Villages Group. Some folk are happy to slide into retirement in what we call ‘swing chair' mode. Their Village takes care of their needs, within a safe secure environment.

Where Does Unretiring Fit Into This Picture?

Many of us living in our lovely Margate Retirement Village, believe the question 'are you retiring or unretiring' answers itself. That’s because we don’t want to enter the slow lane, when we have one perhaps two useful decades ahead of us.

And so we prefer to ‘unretire’, as we put it, from the 'rocking chair' routine that initially attracted us, and find more fulfilling ways to spend our time. So here’s the challenge we put out to you in this article.

What are your natural talents? How could you rediscover these, and use them to enrich your own and other people’s lives?

Click on this link to share more ideas about retiring in style https://seniorshophere.com/
Are You Retiring or Unretiring?

Retiring means throwing in the towel in the military sense originally. We suppressed some aspects of our natural selves in order to adapt to school. Our values and interests - and perhaps our true selves to an extent - became secondary to furthering our careers. If you are preparing to downsize, then perhaps you should ponder over this. Are you retiring or unretiring from the past forty years?

What Do You Really Want Out of Retirement?

We have a wonderful opportunity to ponder over these matters at our warm, friendly Margate Retirement Village. It's a ten-minute drive from the golden beaches of the welcoming Indian Ocean, south of Durban. The folk here are open and friendly. They welcomed us with open arms, as we explored the huge range of recreational activities in this retirement village, and beyond.

We are cruising through our third year here, and learning to observe this idyllic community in more detail, as we ponder over what retirement really means. Or perhaps ought to be, to our inquiring minds.

We have discovered two broad forms of retirement in the four villages that make up the Hibiscus Retirement Villages Group. Some folk are happy to slide into retirement in what we call ‘swing chair' mode. Their Village takes care of their needs, within a safe secure environment.

Where Does Unretiring Fit Into This Picture?

Many of us living in our lovely Margate Retirement Village, believe the question 'are you retiring or unretiring' answers itself. That’s because we don’t want to enter the slow lane, when we have one perhaps two useful decades ahead of us.

And so we prefer to ‘unretire’, as we put it, from the 'rocking chair' routine that initially attracted us, and find more fulfilling ways to spend our time. So here’s the challenge we put out to you in this article.

What are your natural talents? How could you rediscover these, and use them to enrich your own and other people’s lives?

Click on this link to share more ideas about retiring in style https://seniorshophere.com/

30/05/2025

The Shadows of Retirement

The shadows of our retirement will follow us wherever we go, because they are a natural part of aging. Neither our bodies, nor our minds, nor our spirits are exempt. Although the individual impact varies, depending on factors often beyond our control.

When we decide to move to our retirement destination, we should choose a peaceful spot with support services nearby.

This thought mattered to us deeply when we took the step ourselves, because we wanted to be near our partner if they needed frail care. And the many friends we have made since we moved to Margate Retirement Village near the peaceful warm ocean, because friendships are precious.

We Are Blessed With a Full Range of Support

We have a full range of support services where we live now, although we have not needed them yet. If we have a medical emergency, there is a nursing sister on call around the clock, and if we have to go to hospital, there is a private facility ten minutes away.

If we return from hospital and we require medical support, then our retirement village with over 600 residents has a sickbay. The Matron can also arrange for a nurse from frail care to change our dressings, and check our vital signs daily.

We never spared a thought for those shadows of retirement in our sixties, when we retired. But now we are in our seventies with friends in their eighties and nineties, we can longer ignore the reality.

We do not believe that aging is something that we pretend will never happen. We have learned from others around us, that age can be joyful celebration of a rich life. We should never be afraid of aging, we just ought to prepare for what is probably an inevitable event.

Please follow this link if you would like to read more original articles on the intriguing topic of retirement. https://seniorshophere.com/

18/05/2025

A New Project For Your Retirement
We have noticed something interesting in the retirement village where we live, on the warm South African east coast near Durban. Some us are moving forward, while others appear to be going nowhere slowly. Would you like to know the difference? You need a project for your retirement, if you want to retire successfully.
Choosing a Project For Your Retirement
We can’t have any old project for our new life in retirement, of course. If you were a long-distance runner at college, you might be better off hiking along a level footpath four decades later! Smart retiring involves accepting our bodies have had a lifetime of use, and not stretching our resources to the limit.
Caring For Our Wellness and Health
Health in this article refers to well-being in a physical sense. While wellness also addresses the mental and social aspects too. If we are positive, happy and contented, then we are blessed by a state of wellness, regardless of our physical aging.
The project for your retirement should therefore be something you care deeply about, so it gives you a sense of personal value. This not the same thing as people heaping praises on you. Your reward should be a sense of inner joy, that you are still adding value to other people’s lives too.
What you want to do is still climb mountains, but this time new heights of personal achievement. Choose a project that tickles your brain cells, and there’s a good chance you will live longer and happier. This is what retirement should be all about, and what you worked towards all your life.

Find more advice about retiring successfully here

Our fifty-one years together have been a most interesting journey. We were in our twenties when we met. Since then, we have been through a series of phases that remind us of water flowing through cascades. We are now in peaceful retirement. So pull up a virtual chair, and let’s chat about life …

03/05/2025

The Right Role in Retirement

William Shakespeare wrote, 'All the world's a stage and we are merely players'. Nowadays, our role is our persona, or the public face we show to the world. But this is not necessarily the true person who we actually are.

Most of us have had several different roles, for example when we were at work, or at home with family and friends. But what is the right role in retirement for you now?

It is perfectly natural to behave slightly differently, depending on the situation we are in. However, retired people have more freedom to decide how we want to spend our time.

Retirement is an opportunity to come closer to becoming who we really are. Are you ready to begin your journey?

We wrote this post after we moved to Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa, and our peaceful Margate Retirement Village on the Lower South Coast.

The Right Role Is Who We Are

Social scientists believe we act out roles that society defines for us, most of the time. Each of these scenarios comes with a set of rights, duties, expectations, norms, and behavior patterns.

Society expects is to behave according to the norms for employee, manager, mother, teacher or whatever role we are in. If we don’t comply with these expectations, then we may find ourselves facing social sanctions.

We particularly enjoyed settling into our retirement village, because we are finally free to be who we actually are. As long as we are friendly and helpful, our neighbours accept us at face value, perhaps for the first time in our lives.

We are finally free to live out our values. And that, we believe, is the right role for our retirement, living among people like us.

More Information

Follow this link to see more posts exploring the phases of retirement, and sharing valuable advice based on our own experience. https://seniorshophere.com/

29/03/2025

Unexpected Challenges of Retirement

You may like to retrace your steps, if you thought retiring was a walk in the park. We had little idea of what was involved when we set off on our journey. And believe us, the learning curve would be quite steep.

Oh, how often we wished we had been better prepared. The unexpected challenges of retirement came upon us in a rush. There were times when it seemed too much for us to bear, but we pressed on and succeeded.

Unpacking the Unexpected Challenges of Aging

We never thought that we would grow old, when we were at the peak of our careers. There was ample time left over in our minds, to achieve every one of our dreams. But that was before we realized these three very important things:

When we were 20 years old, a year was a 20th of time to us at that time.
When we were in our 50s a year went faster, because it was a 50th of time.
Now we are in our 70’s, the years go past as rapidly as the months once did.

When we came to our Margate Retirement Village apartment two years ago, we faced the first unexpected challenge of retirement. We discovered our lives would not go on forever, and that we should enjoy every precious moment left.

Come Back Soon - Learn More About Retirement

Come back soon, say in two week’s time, when we publish another article on the unexpected challenges of retirement. Our next post will be about deciding when our retirement begins. Although the answer to that depends, of course, on what we mean by ‘retirement”.

Follow this link to more articles on the secrets of happy retirement, while the clock ticks quietly on: https://seniorshophere.com/

16/03/2025

Planning the Final Lap of This Life

Few websites for seniors speak about planning the final lap of this life we are in. Nor did we really discuss it between ourselves either, before we moved to a retirement village and saw aging in action.

It is a matter of fact that we are getting older, and will likely live longer than our parents. We can’t say for sure that this is due to improved nutrition, or medical care. However, this is not to say that our health will remain the same forever, and that's what we need to plan for.

Please follow this link to learn about this important topic. This information is freely available without any commitment from you: https://seniorshophere.com/