There’s a fridge magnet from Perth on her fridge. Her son sent it three Christmases ago, before he’d even found a flat. Her guest room still has the bed her granddaughter used to sleep in when they visited on weekends. Nobody sleeps in it now. She checked flight prices last week, just to see, and closed the tab.

Nobody plans a retirement around distance. You plan it around what feels obvious at the time, which usually includes people. Someone nearby for Sunday lunch. Someone to call if the geyser bursts. Someone who’ll notice if you go quiet for a few days. Most retirement numbers are built with that quietly assumed, never written down, never priced in.

Then the family scatters, the way South African families increasingly do, and the plan is still the old plan. The number you saved might still be right for a modest, local life. It’s rarely right for a life that now includes three international flights a year, or the cost of flying out when someone gets sick, or simply the fact that “help” now means a phone call instead of a knock on the door.

The estate plan quietly stops fitting too. It was probably written assuming a local executor, someone who could visit the bank in person, sign at the right office, deal with the municipality. An executor in Perth is dealing with all of that at 2am their time, through a portal, hoping the Master’s office answers an email.

And then there’s the harder recalculation, the one that isn’t really about money. What does leaving something behind mean when the people you’re leaving it to are building an entirely different life on the other side of the world. A legacy used to mean a house they’d grow up in. Now it might mean an international transfer they receive between meetings.

None of this means the plan was wrong. It means the family it was built for doesn’t quite exist anymore, and the plan hasn’t been told.