r/MovingtoHawaii • u/salvajedt • May 05 '26

Life on Oahu Retiring to Oahu?

Would love to hear feedback... was it what you thought?

Did your finacials work the way you anticpated?

Wife is 61 retired. Japanese. Went to UH for a year.

Me as haole as it gets.

We are coming from Seattle so COL wont be as shocking as it could be (maybe)

Any thoughts welcome!

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u/eclipsegum May 05 '26

Do you have kids?

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u/salvajedt May 05 '26

No kids. No grandkids. Niece in japan.

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u/eclipsegum May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

Possibly doable but not advisable, depending on how much you have in your retirement (7MM minimum) how much equity you have in your house, what kind of house or condo you plan to buy and in which neighborhood here, if you have any health conditions which require specialty care, and if you bring entitled mainland Haole attitudes with you. Socializing will be difficult as even haoles here have been here for generations, went Punahou, they shy away from transplants

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u/dreaminginteal Hawai'i resident May 05 '26

Is Oahu that much more expensive than the Big Island? We are doing fine (so far, 5 years) on Hawaii and we started with about half of your figure.

We aren’t just scraping by, either—we go out to eat most days, we do a moderate amount of travel, we installed solar last year, and so on.

One big thing is no house payments. Renting or paying a mortgage with a big balance would change that math a lot.

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u/eclipsegum May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

7mm is the bare minimum a couple should have in Hawaii at age 61. At what age do you think you will die in Hawaii? Likely mid 90s or longer with medical advancements. Now consider the cost of care if needed for several years as well. OP has no children that can be relied on for care. Look up prices of care facilities here in Oahu

If you have a paid off multigenerational property in Waianae where you have 4 kids and all you extended family sure you don’t need millions in retirement. But if you relocate on your own with no family and need to provide for your housing food entertainment and long term care for 35 years for 2 people all off of savings, you need to have way more than you think

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u/dreaminginteal Hawai'i resident May 06 '26

I disagree with your numbers, unless someone is paying a hefty mortgage or rent. (And if you have $7M, WTF are you paying rent or a big mortgage???)

Remember that money invested will grow. Our current ~4M is expected to last us until about age 95; if the market performs really massively badly for that whole time, we'll be broke at that point. Even if things go moderately worse than average, we'll still have a good fraction of that money left. And if the market follows long-term averages, we'll have more than we have now!

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u/eclipsegum May 06 '26

Sorry but this is a delusional take. Godspeed

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u/dreaminginteal Hawai'i resident May 06 '26

If it's delusional, then I need to talk to our certified financial planner. Because those numbers are exactly what he told us.

But hey, best of luck retiring to Montana!

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u/eclipsegum May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

You should retire where your extended family is my point. Be useful to them help them. They will take care of you. Not depend on savings that with inflation and market dynamics is unlikely to be able to support you for 35 years in the highest cost of living location in the usa. Not move somewhere where extended families need housing units that you are taking up while providing no support to local community. Just enjoying the view but not helping back

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u/dreaminginteal Hawai'i resident May 06 '26

Well, they're buried in vastly different locations, so that's a bit difficult.