When you live in southern Cal, you can drive to the mountains, see all the snow you want. Then come back to the beach.
I’ve found that, as an easterner (despite all the years I did live in coastal CA,) the new bonds have been easiest with other northeasterners, wherever I lived. Same personality type, I guess. Moving to New England really felt comfortable. But until I’m housebound, I’d like more than comfy.
Need to add that the second home doesn’t need to be one you own. We tend to rent the same place in Maine for a few summer weeks, feel it’s ours WO the concerns. (The pattern has been it sells and we find a new place for another few years. Works for us.)
Agree very much with that concept to a certain extent, and have seen 2nd and 3rd hopes really tie/drag people down. It can be costly, and when you’re not there all the time . . . ??
@lookingforward - southern Cal is my dream (heck even northern Cal), but the taxes would be bad for us.
Yeah, we are on a non-replacement policy with regards to pets at this stage. This year the gerbil and the 13 year old cat died (I was really sad about the cat, not so much about the gerbil). One dog is 13, and one is 5. The 5 year old dog weighs 7 lbs and is super portable. He’ll probably be our only animal from here on out so we can travel in a few years.
It’s hard to make that decision-the other decision was to get a lot of land and let me get horses and chickens and ducks (he’d have ATV’s and whatnot). While I love animals and have always grown up with them, having to take care of so many things that need you 24/7 gets tiring.
I’m going to try a decade or so where the only things that need me is a husband and a chihuahua (and our kids from college, hopefully, but mostly for advice and love, not day to day support). I had to unsubscribe myself from all the animal rescue pages, though. It’s too tempting, and I want to be able to stick to the “travel more” decisions without having to board a lot of animals all the time, which I think is not so fair to the animals.
With regards to friends-we’re all kind of mobile and spread out already, so we plan to continue like we already do-coordinate vacations, touch base when we’re in town, and stay in contact via email and social media.
We have pet sitters that stay at our home, but I wouldn’t want to do that for weeks on end. The longest we’ve been gone is 10 days. The job I have isn’t really conducive to my being gone for longer than that, and I have to keep up while I’m gone anyway, so it hasn’t been a big issue. Since we like where we live so much, we don’t mind not being gone for long stretches.
Unlike most ,we want to retire to the mountains for winters and keep our current home for the other 3 seasons. My H is retired, I’m on the hook for maybe 5 more years. Most important to me is public transportation and a ground floor or elevator. I have no problems with snow and cold and ice, but I do not want to HAVE to drive to get groceries, doctor’s appointments etc. The dog and cat are very old, but I might consider another dog since the mountain town we have in mind is very, very dog friendly.
I am about to become semi-retired, so I have been thinking about this for several years now. I’m in New England, 58, divorced with one kid who lives in CT and a smattering of relatives in NJ, MD, VA and FL. My plan, for now, is to stay put. I am very active musically and I dread the thought of attempting to re-establish musical connections in a new location. I love playing in pit orchestras for community theater and I’m known (for better or worse in my current location. I do plan to downsize from my 4-bedroom home to a condo community where I no longer have to deal with yard maintenance and snow removal. I really like 4 seasons and I refuse to move to a location with higher humidity – my hair would frizz.
Somewhere between 65 and 70, I hope I will have the sense to move into a retirement community – preferably one that is somewhat convenient for my daughter to visit. But she keeps making noises about moving to CA and I’m not sure my finances would be up for that. There is a maternal dementia history in my family, so I’m planning for the worst and hoping for the best. If I’m in a retirement community, I’m hoping someone will notice if I start to go downhill.
My current location (greater Boston area/southern NH) is great for health care, travel, culture. I’m not sure I can audit college courses anywhere near me, but a local college does offer a special senior program. I’m actually interested in taking courses in finance, meteorology and geology, but the local school offers lots of humanities type seminars – not a great fit for my geeky interests.
I am really excited right now. I had approached my employer last year about the possibility of working half time for the rest of my career and was told they would only consider this option as a part of an exit-to-full-retirement strategy. But apparently attitudes have changed and they’re willing to let me work half-time as long as I want (or until the economy improves sufficiently that they’d be granted a replacement req for my position
@Marilyn In case you don’t already know this, San Diego has lots of smaller community libraries that are all part of the same system. You can request books from other parts of the system. Also they have access to a few online collections so that many books are available on a Kindle, iPad, etc.
What a timely thread. DH is hoping to retire within a year, but we have no idea where we want to retire. We just know we won’t be staying in CT.
My criteria:
Walkability (not so important to DH)
Weather (I can’t tolerate sustained heat and humidity: DH is OK with seasons, but not with winters like CT)
Within 45-60 min drive of a good airport
Cost of living, including taxes
Good heathcare
Close to kids (S2 lives in DC and will likely stay; S1 is in CA, but will probably move in 3-5 years)
College town (important to DH, not to me)
We visited Asheville a few years ago. It met some of the criteria, except walkability (dowwntown is but not the neighborhoods), close airport, and probably not as good healthcare as available elsewhere. We did like the atmosphere, activities, and the people we met.
This fall we’re visiting Charlottesville, VA, which DH likes. For me, it doesn’t meet weather or airport criteria, and I’ll have to see how walkable the neighborhoods are.
I get the feeling we’re not going to find anything that suits both of us.
Oh my, there is so much options but so much unknowns. Flexibility is a good thing. Knowing where kids end up is really not in our control. The variables just like when we were younger includes their jobs, spouses, etc.
We plan on staying put in the mountain area home as our base, as we are recently retired. We love the home we built 15 years ago. The snow and ice melt in the same day and as long as I don’t have to drive to work or school I’m good. I’m even looking forward to grocery delivery. Healthcare and a close airport are good. Slower pace is good. We are signing up for 2 auditing courses at the local college this fall and are actively increasing our social circle as this was probably the most neglected area when we were working nonstop for all of our adult life.
Continuing travel is on our agenda. In fact, I am writing this from a teardrop trailer on an island in the northwest.
I know I should downsize, but condos near the ocean would be more expensive than my house.
I already made the Boston to FL move years ago, following my folks. I don’t love my city, but it was nice to have babysitters close by. As the parents aged, I could check on them often. By now I have friends and doctors and volunteer activities. I’m working 4/5 time.
Who knows where my son will settle? I’d probably look to rent there for visits.
Thanks @youcee , I’m aware of the extended San Diego library options and have been checking out ebooks since we moved here! (Also still checking out ebooks from our old library since my card hasn’t expired.) Our old system included close to 100 suburban and other libraries and it was nearly always possible to find whatever book you wanted somewhere in the system. DH likes to read new non-fiction and is having trouble finding any copies of some books of interest. Or if he does find the book he wants, there are only one or two copies in the system and a looooong wait to get it. I did offer to buy him any book he wants but he’s stubborn and would rather complain and wait. 8-|
The San Diego Central Library is a beautiful building; we took a thorough walk through when DS was visiting last winter. Lots of treasures in their rare books room.
Re establishing a social life upon relocation…I had an empty social life in our old town; DH had a few athletic related acquaintances. But we almost never did anything as a couple with anyone else; our friends all live in other states. So social opportunity was a big factor in where to move. We were lucky to find a great Meetup group consisting of baby boomers. It’s very active with multiple varied activities every week and we’ve gotten to know some of the members very well and are starting to get together with them outside of organized events. We also know several of the members of our synagogue although we only see them at those services/events. There are lots of free and inexpensive educational classes for “seniors” in a few places; I’ve taken a couple of classes but haven’t yet wanted to commit to regular attendance.
If we’d had a rich social and/or family life back in Illinois, it’s likely we wouldn’t have moved from the area (although hopefully we would have left our suburban house with the flat roof that DH had to climb a ladder to shovel every time it snowed more than two inches. And that triggered leaks in our bedroom closet after heavy rains and snow melts. We sold our house to a developer as a tear down but I said it was already tearing itself down.)
Some of my criteria:
– good medical care
– walkability
– good biking
– easy access to outdoor recreation/nature
– weather that is neither too hot, too cold, nor too rainy for comfortable daily walking and biking. This may require a 2-location seasonal solution
– good public transporation. I don’t expect to drive forever, but I don’t want to give up my mobility when I give up the car keys
– good restaurants, not necessarily high-end but a diverse mix of reasonably priced, high quality ethnic eateries
– cultural amenities like theater, music, art, good libraries and bookstores
– baseball. I’m perfectly happy to follow other sports on television, but for baseball I need to be able to get out to the old ballyard at least a few times each summer
– easy access to a major airport
– affordability
– proximity to the ocean would be a strong plus
– sunshine. I think this is important but much underappreciated. There’s huge regional and local variation in the number of sunny days per year, and gray, gloomy weather tends to produce gray, gloomy people, or at least it has that effect on some people, myself included
– other things equal, low or non-existent state estate and/or inheritance taxes, to allow us to pass on to the kids as much of what’s left as possible. Again, there’s substantial variation in this. I’m somewhat less concerned about other state and local taxes which in my view are mostly just one element in the larger question of affordability. Besides, I don’t mind paying reasonable taxes in exchange for high quality public services, and there’s often a pretty direct trade-off. But the idea that a substantial fraction of our hard-earned savings would be snatched from our kids in one fell swoop at our deaths doesn’t sit well with me.
Suggestions? Our present location, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, actually meets many of these criteria, but the winters are much too long and too cold, we’re about as far from an ocean as you can get on the North American continent, estate taxes are high and kick in at a relatively low threshold, and public transportation here is at best a mixed bag, slowly improving but still far from a complete system. So we’re open to alternatives, but so far haven’t found anyplace that hits the sweet spot on all of the above criteria.
I agree with you about sunshine. One of the few negatives about middle Tennessee is that we can get stretches of really gloomy days- especially in January/February. I didn’t have that in Dallas and I wasn’t quite used to it. It’s sort of like Ohio in that respect. Would Jacksonville, FL meet a lot of your criteria, bclintonk ?
My H and I are thinking our retirement will start in less than 8 years. H plans to still do consulting work, but only take projects that he can complete within time frames that suit us for travel. We plan to stay in San Diego and in our current home as it is small (we never upsized) and close to the beach, walkable to shopping and restaurants and by the time we retire the trolley will be up our way to use for transportation once we give up driving. Right now it looks like both of our D’s will stay in Southern California so no reason for us to leave! We have excellent weather and healthcare, an airport close by and since we have lived in our community for 28 years we have a great circle of friends.
An important thing to consider is whether property taxes are going to be capped or not. Some retirees in certain areas of Seattle who had lived in their houses for decades were slapped with huge property tax increases when the local RE market suddenly bubbled up. Some saw their tax bills double in just a few years. Not a good thing when this is not in the budget.
@bclintonk – Not to be too much of a booster, but it sounds like you need to move to Southern California. Well, affordability might be an issue (especially re housing), but it meets all of your other criteria nicely.
I’m not going to retire for 17 years but DH will probably retire before then because the commuting grind can only last so long. But our thinking about retirement has undergone a revolution. We used to dream about moving to NC and getting a place on a lake. My parents did the peripatetic 6 months north, 6 months south thing, and it was good for about a decade. Then they got too old and sick to enjoy it, and they had a hard time unwinding their complicated life. So now, we plan on “aging in place.” I like the area we live in. It has a great 4-season climate,. the ocean next door, the mountains to the west, and there is a lot to do. We are 45 minutes from an international airport and can get out very easily. I will never get bored here. We will sell our house and buy a one-level condo in a nice character-filled Shore town that is easily commutable to NYC by train or ferry. We will go to the beach every day (in the summer) and play golf at a local club. If we want to go to Florida in the winter, we will rent someone else’s place for a month. New Jersey has bad estate taxes (it’s an expensive place to die) but I don’t think our estate is going to be so enormous that it will make a difference. I’ll try to give my D and various charities the money while I’m still alive.
We are actually thinking of buying a townhouse right smack in DC-- in a key location where we could have easy access to Metro so we would ditch the car and not deal with traffic. We want to be able to walk to cafes/market/etc and be where family & friends would want to come visit us often.
The real estate agent who took us around said the market for AirBnB is phenomenonal. So we thought that taking in guests occasionally could be entertaining.
The only thing that worries me about DC is the potential for terrorism…
in my current location. I do plan to downsize from my 4-bedroom home to a condo community where I no longer have to deal with yard maintenance and snow removal. I really like 4 seasons and I refuse to move to a location with higher humidity – my hair would frizz.