Is this the future of retirement?
Is this a real-life equivalent of the movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, where a group ‘retire’ to a house in India?
Seven women have bought a house together for their retirement. “[At first] it was just a joke,” the friends say in a YouTube video that shows their renovated home near Guangzhou in south-eastern China. “We [said that we] would get together when we were 60 and live the retired life together.”
That was in 2008, but they are following through with their intention and have pooled enough money to buy and remodel a dilapidated redbrick house an hour outside Guangzhou.
“We’ve known each other for over 20 years,” says the video’s narrator, who notes that their ages span about 10 years. “We were colleagues, and sometimes we are even closer than siblings.
“We’ll probably cook together, barbecue in the fields, sing and collect food in the village.
“We joke that each of us should practise one skill so that we won’t be lonely and fight with each other 10 years later … Some can cook beautiful food, some know traditional Chinese medicine, some play instruments and some grow vegetables.”
The women say their new communal home will keep them together forever.
“Ten or 15 years later, our children might have grown up,” they say, “so we also hope that we can still be together in the next years.”
The Golden Girls.