Move to Ecuador, and enjoy its lovely climate, inexpensive living and the fact that us Americans can sign up for their inexpensive state insurance. Bus rides cost about 20 cents. BTW, they use the U.S. dollar as their currency. Let me know, and maybe we could fine side-by-side condo/townhouses together.
@MinnesotaDadof3 , I’m in. As Carl parents, surely we’d get along.
Ecuador (Cuenca) has been on our list for a long time. If we don’t figure out our healthcare problem…
I like Ann Arbor too – lived there as a child and I am a U of M alum.
I found a beautiful 1 bed 2 baths 1,183 sqft condo for $520,000. Property taxes, $10,644. Walkscore of 95.
However, the estimated value of my childhood home, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 1,348 sqft, is much less, $380k.
Walkscore of 32.
Guess you pay a premium for a high walkscore…
Ann Arbor is a great place. Sadly, winters are too cold for me and I don’t think either kid would visit or settle anywhere near. My kids seem to like DC and CA better, plus HI. All are HCOL. 
If you really want to be in the center of all things happening, you are then likely looking at a condo and higher costs, not a house with very low property taxes. You can minimize your costs by moving to a state that does not have an income tax or does not tax retirement distributions/pensions.
It means you can retire well there with a nest egg of only $200k.
Hmm, Austria with a nest egg of $200K?
I wonder if Germany would work just as well.
Are we really to the point that we are looking for Blue or Red friends?
Re property taxes – our property taxes here in the Boston suburbs are far higher than what my friend pays who lives in a condo in Cambridge – $6.99 per $1000 of assessed value in Cambridge versus $17.80 per $1k of value where I live.
Don’t get to hung up on red or blue state, states can flip in just a couple of election cycles.
We’re currently in Austin, and find property taxes here too high to consider staying when H retires. Even with our homestead exemption, our taxes ran $9,000+ for a 3 bedroom 2 bath home. Neither neighborhood or home are anything special.
Tennessee has some favorable tax rates for retirees and the weather appeals to us, but blue state it is not. Unless I find a blue dot in the state, we probably wouldn’t consider it.
I guess we can be rateful that our property taxes are so much lower than many other places, even though property values are so very high. High property taxes are likely another reason folks rent out rooms or have side/extra jobs.
Great Lakes Mom - I live in Washington State and neither Sequim nor Ellensburg are very close to major airports. You would need to fly in/out of Yakima and then most likely head to SeaTac or Portland from there for most every trip you take. For Sequim you would need to drive to SeaTac airport which would involve a ferry or a very long drive. I would just check that our carefully if you have kids around the country you are going to want to visit/have visit often.
In addition, neither town is very close to a major city. If you just want a small town and don’t want to be close to a large city center, you’ll likely enjoy both locations. You can get to Seattle fairly easily with driving and a ferry from Sequim but Ellensburg is several hours from Seattle and from Spokane.
@sly123 A state can flip, but even in many blue states, the rural areas are red. They are the cheapest places to live in those states, but I’m with those who would be very reluctant to move to one of those areas.
@MSNDIS brings up a good point, living within about 75 minutes of a major airport makes it not too untenable. We are currently 2+ hours away and often choose to take the puddle jumper there, lucky for us the local small airport has a huge business to that big place and the fares are quite reasonable. We used to just take the nearly 3 hour shuttle bus and that stunk.
Having lived ‘in the boonies’ for the last 30 years, I vote within 60-90 minutes of a major hub if you plan to travel.
No assurance that low tax states will remain so. Particularly if it has high amounts of unfunded pension liabilities.
Of course not. Political leaning is not a qualifier for our friendship but our immediate community happens to congregate left of where our state leans in general. My point was that regardless how our state is colored on a map, most people seem to be able to find a place where they can be comfortable.
MSNDIS, so right. Your warning makes me laugh, as one D went to school in Tacoma, and I was SO relieved and rather insistent that she be near a major airport if going to school in the west. 45 minutes or so from SeaTac was perfect. But a college kid making it home for breaks is far different from one retired person with some time to kill. Or my empty nest life right now.
I live 3 hours by bus from O’Hare. To save a few hundred dollars, I often use that bus, though prefer the local airport. The reality is that I get direct flights out of O’Hare and the time doesn’t matter so much if switching planes on a trip regardless. And…if looking for a lower cost place to live, the smaller cities farther from a major airport tend to have that economic advantage. Though frequent and not too expensive public transport to that airport is crucial.
Medical care is a bigger deal with those longer trips, especially if supporting family members are easily intimidated by driving in “the big city”.
@ManhattanBoro you asked about the “village” concept. I am reading Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, and just got to the section where he discusses " beacon hill village"
Here is a link to villages across country
http://www.vtvnetwork.org/content.aspx?page_id=1905&club_id=691012