I moved my family to idyllic Indonesia – I’m happier but my pension is suffering 

Around half a million people left the UK to live abroad last year, and it’s not just retirees. A survey by the British Council has found that 72 per cent of 18- to 30-year-olds would consider living and working overseas – with cold weather, the high cost of living, extortionate childcare costs, a lack of work-life balance and even poor romantic prospects among their motivations for leaving. The i Paper’s Expat Files follows Brits who have taken the leap and settled elsewhere, detailing the ups and downs of their journeys.

Roxie Broun, 42, moved to Kuta, Lombok – an island in eastern Indonesia – with her husband, Doug, 36, and their two children, aged eight and 10, in March 2025. Roxie tells Hannah Bentley about giving up her career, navigating the uncertainty of renting abroad, and embracing a slower pace of life in the sunshine.

We almost moved to Cornwall. After the pandemic, we realised there was more to life than Seaford, the small town near Brighton where we’d been living, so we put our house on the market and even paid a deposit on a new-build there. But finding a buyer took longer than expected. By the time we found one, our mortgage offer on the Cornwall house had expired, and the new rates were so high that moving there no longer made financial sense. But we still had a buyer for our house, so we thought: why not go abroad and travel for a while before deciding what to do next?

From May 2024, we spent 10 months travelling around Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia before arriving in Kuta. People often confuse Kuta, Lombok, with nearby Kuta, Bali, but they’re completely different. Kuta, Lombok, has a lot of what Bali offers – a great café culture, a strong wellness scene and that cool surfer vibe I’m drawn to (even though I can’t surf) – but it’s much less busy.

Kuta doesn’t have the same infrastructure as Bali, which makes it cheaper and gives it a more rural feel. Here, you can still drive for an hour and find a beach completely to yourself, which is something you just can’t really do in Bali anymore. We wanted to escape the crowds while still having the convenience of living somewhere with good food and amenities.

We live in a two-bedroom villa for just over £1,000 a month, this includes bills like Wi-Fi and electricity, plus a pool cleaner and housekeepers who come once a week and even do all the bedding. In the UK, we lived in a shared ownership house, spending about £1,800 a month – without bills. We also paid service charge and for a cleaner at £20 per hour. So you get much more for your money here.

However, rents are rising quickly because demand for long-term rentals is growing. Although lots of villas are being built, many are only available as short-term lets because landlords can charge more that way. There also doesn’t seem to be many laws protecting tenants here. Before this villa, we lived in a three-bedroom place across the road, but in January, after returning from a holiday, we were told we had to move out within 24 hours. We loved that villa, and the kids were upset because they had their own rooms, and now they have to share.

There’s always a concern that something like the eviction could happen again. But it’s not something I dwell on. More than anything, it’s taught us, and the kids, to be resilient and adaptable.

In Kuta, and while we were travelling, we’ve been able to live comfortably on my husband’s salary of around £58,500. I previously had a career as a product manager that I really loved where I was earning £35,000 a year.

My husband has a very niche, in-demand marketing role helping people sell products on Amazon, so he’s found it much easier to get online work. He currently works for an Australian company and has a digital nomad visa which the children and I are dependents on. It was really simple to apply for and involved far less bureaucracy than other countries, especially in Europe. After the move to Cornwall fell through, we thought about going to Spain, but it turned out to be really expensive and confusing. Here, everything feels much more reasonable.

It’s strange not having a job, especially because I used to work completely flat out. In the UK, I was constantly juggling work, cleaning, cooking and doing the school run – it felt like I had a million tabs open in my head daily. I literally could not hold all the information and started forgetting things, even my friend’s wedding once. There was definitely a bit of an identity crisis at first. It took a while to adjust to slowing down.

I’ll do the washing and food shopping, go for a walk on the beach, or meet a friend for coffee. Sometimes I’ll go out for lunch with Doug or get a massage. I’ve also started doing local workshops – I tried notebook-making, where the paper is made from locally grown bamboo. It feels like a completely different world from the rushed life I had before, and my mental load has reduced massively.

The downside of not having a job means I’m not paying into a pension. I still have my old workplace pension, a private pension, and – in theory – the state pension, but living in Indonesia means we miss out on the annual triple lock cost of living increases. My husband is convinced we’ll be rich one day so we don’t need to worry, but it doesn’t exactly provide much security…

Living in the sun definitely improves my mood. I’m also exercising a lot more here. One of the best things is how affordable wellness classes are: yoga and Pilates cost around £5 a session, at least a quarter of what you pay in the UK. Gyms are cheaper too, with memberships around £20 a month.

We rent a seven-seater Toyota Rush for about £240 a month, and petrol is much cheaper than in the UK – filling the tank costs around £22, compared to £78 in the UK. We’ve also started renting a scooter for about £55 a month because of the current fuel shortages linked to the Iranian conflict. Indonesia has its own fuel supply and the government subsidises fuel, so prices haven’t really increased – it’s more that petrol for cars has been harder to get. The other day, I had to queue at a petrol station and only got a quarter of a tank. Whereas fuel for scooters is much easier to find – and filling up a bike only costs about £2.

While we were travelling, I home-schooled the kids – something I was first introduced to while house-hunting in Cornwall, where there’s a big home-schooling community. They now attend a local intercultural school that blends mainstream academia with a more alternative teaching style focused on environment, sustainability and discovery-led learning.

Sometimes I wonder if giving up my old life was the right thing to do. Feeling homesick, missing my friends and family normally triggers these worries. Adjusting to a new country is hard – navigating language barriers, figuring out how things work here and building a new social circle. The reality of no longer having a career, financial independence or a clear plan for the future can feel like an emotional roller coaster. One day I question everything; the next, I’m looking around at my beautiful surroundings, the sun shining, a fresh coconut in my hand, feeling deeply grateful that we’re in a position to live like this.

You can learn more about Roxie’s life in Kuta on her Instagram