Saw mention of RVs. Started to listen to a podcast today of single retire who opted to sell her house and become a full time RVer. Not my cup of tea. But it was interesting to hear about how with her solar panels she have all she needs (with a full tank of water and and empty holding tank) to go off and stay comfortably on BLM land for free. Fun statement - “I don’t like Hot. And I don’t like Cold”. So she shifts area of the country based on season.
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I have a friend who had considered getting an RV. She said they discovered that most RV parks needed reservations many many months in Advance. She and her DH had wanted to be able to be more flexible and spontaneous, and that likely wouldn’t work.
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The RVer interviewed runs this group (an LLC small business she purchased from prior owner)
One of the benefits is that they arrange group camping area for trips, like to Alaska or Mexico. Before joining the group, everybody she talked to thought she was crazy. In this group, her friends think the folks back home in their houses are crazy.
Just fun to listen sometimes to the “retire there” podcast, which typically interviews a couple that relocated to a particular town or city for retirement.
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The break down in Methodology -
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/methodology
The health care access has nothing about geographic access of health care, as one can see. Beyond ‘simplistic’ - it is data, but relevancy is based on drilling down the data.
The quality has one of the 4 factors being hospital quality rating; the other three are preventable hospital admissions, Medicare Advantage enrollees with 4 star or better care rating, and nursing home quality rating. Doesn’t say if these 4 categories are given equal proportion on factoring in when it comes to quality.
Can have a lot of variability with not enrolling in Medicare Advantage, but people instead choose to go with traditional Medicare/Supplement. Some on this thread are probably with Medicare Advantage because they can get good coverage on a plan that fits for them. I can understand why ‘quality’ may go along with a less than good coverage with a Medicare Advantage plan (thus low star rating) - but not generally relevant for people on this thread. To me this factor really skews data.
There are things that pull down a state overall score on this US News ranking, that has nothing to do with quality of care for seniors/where to retire to obtain and maintain good health care. I can pull these things apart right away off the general list in critiquing my state of residence.
I doubt that few on this thread neglect obtaining dental visits or wellness visits, or are in the 19 - 64 age group without health insurance. A few may be deterred from care due to costs in extreme situations - not the general care situations.
Certainly small states (concentrated populations in smaller geographic area) with generally high taxes/high cost of living, can and do rate better on many of these factors - they may also have better public health access for low/no income populations as well.
For access for no health care coverage, our local hospital supports (in a small way) a free health care clinic (retired physicians give their time), and retired dentists provide free dental care to children in certain schools with high percentage of low income (dental clinic is physically in the school). Some free access to health care in a clinic helps reduce people coming to ER, and also helps reduce preventable hospital admissions. Children in low income households under 19 in our state have health care access with state qualified insurance care.
Each person on this thread are going to determine where they want to live in retirement on a number of factors.
I like the discussion on considering various things, like having a summer cabin or lake house, various RV considerations. Uncle and Aunt had a large RV that they did participate with a group that would have RV kind of trips - everyone kind of camped together, did various things together – they did it for a year or two and enjoyed it.
I agree. I’m guessing you know this, so I’m saying this for the benefit of other people who want to live to enjoy their retirement. If you are having a stroke, the most fortunate place you can be is in a city large enough to have a stroke center nearby, not the nearest emergency room in a rural area, unless you’re just extraordinarily lucky. They need to diagnose you with appropriate sort of stroke (ischemic), I’m guessing via a cat scan, that you would not have available at many places. Then they have to administer the TPA within about 3 1/2 hours of the stroke in order to reverse its effects. Very few people get to a stroke center, have it diagnosed and get the TPA in time.
So now I know the protocol, sadly, never knew a thing about it till it happened to my husband on a trip to Europe. Now we know to call 911 and tell them to take you to a stroke center, instead of walking in, they take you more seriously this way. You hope you don’t have a hemorrhagic stroke, and that they can give you the TPA. You don’t want to go to just any emergency room if you can avoid it, you want to go where they treat strokes before it’s too late.
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For popular tourist destinations at peak times then that’s true. But for most of the year in most of the country it’s not the case.
For 3-5 days at a time that will work. But after that you generally need to find somewhere to dump and fill up again with water. And solar panels don’t give enough power to run A/C, so you need to plan your locations/seasons accordingly.
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Colorado_mom - I love the Retire There podcast! The hosts are so natural and ask the questions others want to know. Fascinating to hear about all the locations people have moved and the many variables in play.
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She said she did lots of checking at both popular and random places and found the need to make reservations in advance 
. Doesn’t matter to me - not my thing.
As for retirement needs, we need, in addition to financial stability, socialization, activities, theater, presentations, art, decent shopping, good walkability scores etc. College towns are attractive for this reason. As I type, the Sunday today show is talking about towns with food deserts. Couldn’t live in a place where there are no supermarkets. Or poor healthcare. Rural living is not for me.
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One additional priority for us: a reasonable amount of like-minded people (both politically and of our religion).
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Going back to our earlier discussion about the surprising number of parents moving towards kids/grandkids, attaches is an article about the differences between parenting in the US and other wealthy countries.
I have seen the different level of support and what it enables in a couple of cases. I had relatives who did postdocs in the US and moved back to Canada when they had kids and the level of support (maternal and paternal leave, daycare, health care etc.) make it a lot easier to raise a kid. They were able to serve as professors with a lot less juggling and a lot more attention to publishing than had they stayed in the US
I had a terrific, driven, ambitious though complicated employee who was probably the least maternal person I’d met. She became pregnant from a not quite relationship with a guy who was not an obvious long-term partner. Against his initial wishes (and my expectations), she decided to keep the child and is a devoted mother. However, working at a global consulting firm was hard for her to do as she had no local support and in those pre-Pandemic days, she was working for two European clients one of whom wanted her two days a month in person and the other wanted her presence as well. She was having real trouble dealing with child care when she traveled, pumping, lots of stuff. Her productivity was declining and her pay would be declining. I suggested she consider working for one ot the two clients, both of whom loved her. The senior exec at one of them told me that if she worked there, he would put her office next to his as she just gets stuff done. She thought, correctly, that his company was sexist. But the other company was not and was able to offer her a job that would not involve much travel. Daycare/preschool/healthcare/education all taken care of. She worked there for several years and never took all the leave to which she was entitled (years, I think, somehow) and now is the CEO of another related company. It would have been extremely difficult for her at the same level in the US.
I think some of our peers see the strain their kids have, especially if they have other issues, and move to live near the grandkids. One of good friends is planning to sell their beautifully designed house to move to a much less exciting house in a Southern city to help with grandkids.
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Having had to take care of one of my parents long distance for 7 years (same time zone at least, but a multi hour airline flight away), we are sensitive to the fact that we live across country from our kids and grandkids, and while we have a good community here, we have no family. We don’t want to put that burden on our kids if we have health issues , but that said, being across country makes it even harder if it were to occur.
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My parents moved to Florida in their 60’s. As their health declined, it was horrible to have them so far away. We asked them to move back, but they didn’t want to. It made it really hard on all of us, parents and kids. But we recognized that they wanted to be where they were, and they realized that we weren’t going to be able to be there to help as much as we would have liked.
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That’s why we are building an ADU (Granny house) and house for Dd and family on the same property….
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Thats so cool. Older s has a large back yard but its a steep decline and terraced and does not have easy access to it from the side (lots and lots of precarious stairs) and no parking other than on the street in front of the house, so I dont think they want to build an ADU. 
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Retirement/where to live:
- DH and I had discussed living in some beautiful mountian-side home/cabin
BUT then I visited friends in Santa Monica, CA, 6 blocks from the beach for a quick vacation.
A freakin’ light bulb went off in my head:
- I want something like this!
– active livestyle: people walk everywhere
— we (über) to dinner along the boardwalk (because we were running late), but then we slowly strolled home after dinner and enjoyed the beautiful June weather and view, and helped with digestion
(we also stopped by the ice cream shopped and spent a bundle on ice cream to bring home).
– I started each day with a nice long 5-6miles walk along the boardwalk
– there were so many restaurants to choose from for any meals you wanted, and shops, etc
BUT there is no way we can afford to buy a home there AND have $ money left to live on; it’d be one or the other 
Soooo expensive: my friend spent almost $2M on a small 2-bedroom home, and then spent another ~$400K to renovate it. That’s more than double of our budget.
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Perhaps you’ll need to start house swapping with your beach friends 
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Funny.
My gf and I joked about this set-up:
- she/hub would purchase a home overlooking ocean (she just likes the view and the sound, doesn’t really want to swim/kayak in it/deal with flooding/erosions),
- and we would get a mountain home
Both homes would have kinda 2 master-bedrooms/wings set-up, so that the other couple could visit for 3+weeks at a time, and we’d swap locations depending on weather.
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The article is absolutely right about some things that do need to change in the US. However how some of it can change…
Paid maternity leave. Fortunately DD had it – for first two had 6 weeks maternity and 6 weeks use of other leave, and then after that had 12 weeks paid maternity leave due to federal increase; with this last child, since SIL was in the Army, he had 12 weeks paid paternity leave. Fortunate to have excellent child care conveniently available (which included hot breakfast and hot lunch; price was affordable for them, and worth it).
Working out child care, and for lower paid jobs, child care takes too much of their take home pay. For school age kids, need to pay for after school, summer program, and have enough leave time for sick days, school days off for various things. European countries not only have more flexible work situations, they also have better child benefits (as described in the article).
DDs’ piano teacher grew up in Singapore, and she was able to give insight to us. DDs had it ‘better’ than she did as far as being able to do elementary/middle school volleyball (her mother would not allow, as she didn’t want the piano fingers damaged); also the one day she could sleep in, mother would not allow it!
Parents do need to figure things out based on their situation, and often grandparents or other relatives help with child care.
As others have said, if they move remote from where their families are - with aging, they also will not have family ‘close’ to help them if and when that time comes.
I was SAHM since DDs were 3 and 5, and only returned to work for ‘sunset career’ - could not really pick up well once out of the job market for even a few years - in part because it would be a ‘climb up’ again with career, and another in that I was available to make family QOL better. We managed financially, in part with time value of money with investments, as well as solid returns on investments.
A few years will determine if we are going to make any changes on having a 2nd smaller place near grandkids, or doing something else. For now, we are ‘doing fine as is’. I want to help with my DD/SIL/gkids’ QOL with helping during the school year once they have activities which will put a strain on the parents being able to manage the time (after school and into early evening). At this point, the parents are busy with chores and a few weekend activities.
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We have no family in the area now, either. Good friends moved from here to NC last summer and we have no real friends in the neighborhood any more. Most of the couples who had kids the same time as us have moved in retirement to places that are less expensive than suburban DC. H doesn’t care, as he’s not social anyway, but it’s nice to have friends to go out for lunch, water each other’s plants, etc.
For better or worse, this area just checks so many boxes of what we want. It’s just so expensive. Philadelphia, where we lived before the kids were born, is a good and somewhat cheaper alternative, but still – no family nearby. Our sons are 3,000 and 5,000 miles away. The one most likely to have kids is staying overseas because the cost of living and infrastructure are more supportive for young families – though US schools are better when kids get older, which raises all sorts of other issues.
But geez, I could live in the same town as my youngest sister and get a house with everything I need for under $300k. Too bad there is no religious community there for us and decent medical care is a two-hour drive away. I see too many docs to find that a viable option.
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There are different kinds of rural. I live in a rural area. But I’m 7 minutes from three different retail areas with supermarkets plus lots of other stuff. Plus we have terrific farms in our town and the choice of two different CSAs. And we live in a lake community so we have a beautiful lake.
And best of all…we live where there really isn’t any traffic when you drive.
This plays into what we will or won’t do in the future about where we live. And yes, that does play into how much we need in retirement.
We can’t live near both of our kids because they live 3000 miles apart.
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