Although this may have been a thread in the past, i have not read anything about this recently.
If you are planning to move when you retire, where are you considering retiring and why? Is it the weather, taxes, etc.?
If you are planning to stay put, do you plan to go somewhere else for a month or two during the year? If so, where?
A place that is not landlocked and does not have poisonous snakes. That pretty much narrows it down to Western WA and HI. 
We have a list of possible options including staying put (Maryland), Sedona, AZ, Las Vegas, NC, SC, Santa Fe, Boulder, Co, and others. CO is probably out at this point.
We want a place near excellent healthcare and a substantial airport, where it doesn’t snow or get too cold (unless Colorado), where there’s easy access to lots of outdoor activities, lots of good restaurants, some amount of cultural activities, not too far from shopping, more “blue” than “red,” diverse, we don’t want to be poor compared to our neighbors, but don’t want to be too much better off either, we want some level of intellectual stimulation, and where our kids will likely want to come visit.
Cost will be considered, but quite frankly looking at the tax situation in various places makes me crazy.
We will likely maintain only one home, and may travel more extensively, rather than owning two homes.
Scottsdale, AZ because of weather, golf courses, taxes, home prices, my husband’s preference, and my son’s preference. Even though I have always wanted a home in Florida, I just finished typing a long email message to my DIL with criteria. She is going to help us look. She and my son will live in the home until he is finished with school and we will just visit during the month of February. We will keep a home up north for summers.
If we win Powerball – either the Berkeley hills or Santa Barbara, with a pied a terre in Paris.
We visited Scottsdale last summer and enjoyed it immensely. I would imagine it is expensive to relocate there.
Hopefully the kids land within a state or two of each other, or at least on the same coast, and we’ll go to that area. We’ve lived all over so who knows. I love CA but won’t take the hit on taxes. AZ, LA, FL, NC, VA, or MD would be my choices and probably which of those is closest to the kids will be the answer.
H won’t move but we can see renting long term to be near wherever the kids end up, especially if they have kids.
Here. Maybe a different house…but here. Depending where our kids live (valley vs. city)…we are here. If we won the lottery we might get an apartment in NYC.
I think an important consideration is a place where there is water. Plentiful, clean water. It is already an issue in many places and will become more of an issue down the road.
And rising sea levels. I don’t expect to live that long but I don’t want to stress about it either.
We plan on moving to a smaller home, largely on the basis of cutting down on the maintenance requirements. I don’t want to be shoveling in the winter into my 70’s. We have no idea on location however, which is sort of slowing down the search. Also, whether children will return home after graduating university is unknown and probably unknowable for a while.
We moved ourselves out of MA to AZ in '99, when kiddo was two, with an eye to retirement. We spent 15 years in Scottsdale (waaaaay cheaper than MA), and just recently moved to a solar home in a golf community in the southeast valley. I retired last week, DH is retiring mid June. Though I miss the seasons back east and the water, I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of the desert and the retirement-friendly low cost of living here. There is no denying the wicked summer heat, though. We plan to travel to cooler climes during the worst of it (July-September). We will probably spend next summer in Maine, my favorite place on the planet. Northern CA, Oregon, and other places in the PacWest are on our list for successive summers.
Our only child is in the military so no way of knowing where he’ll end up, and marriage and children are a long way off, so we plan to stay put here in the place he calls home.
If even one kid stays, we are staying. But, I would like to leave for a few months each winter…to different places.
Does anyone want to stay put near friends and the rest of your established support network (doctors, auto insurance agents, trash haulers, hairdressers…?) Honest question: when you relocate, how will you meet people to socialize with?
I would like to stay put near my friends, but I don’t think my friends will be staying put. They are already starting to pack it up and downsize as they have empty or close to empty nests. Our plan is to retire near our one and only child - not sure when or where that will be. It will be harder to find friends wherever that is. Most of my current social circle evolved from parents of my child’s classmates. Hopefully, I will to be able to find friends through neighbors, the local library (my favorite place in the world), yoga/exercise class, and a book group.
@LBowie - that is exactly us!
We live right outside DC (MD side) and, although very expensive, we haven’t been able to think of a retirement location where we can picture living. We both grew up here (which makes us unicorns in this area) so most of our family, long-term friends (of 40+ years), and “newer” friends are all here with no plan on leaving. We are both social people, so the thought of losing our social circle makes me sad.
The only moving part is our boys. Currently, they both claim they would love to settle down here also, but you never know! Time will tell…
We will stay here and travel to some place warm for 8-12 weeks (January- March) in the winter where we will rent. Both Ds have settled here in MN and we want to be around for future grandkids. We also have a lake home an hour away where we plan on spending more time in the summer. We have a strong social group and none of them plan on moving OOS. The winters are tough, the taxes are bad but being around family and friends is more important to us.
Places we are interested in staying in the winter include southern Florida,Palm Desert, CA area and Scottsdale.Az .
I’d stay right here ideally. Love my house, love my neighborhood. When it gets to be too much I could move to an apartment adjacent to commuter rail and go into the city whenever I liked. But having observed my parents I think there’s a lot to be said for moving closer to kids and grandkids. Unfortunately Mountain View is ridiculously expensive and the other kid is going to be in the Navy, so who knows!
Another vote for not moving! (This from me, who started the “who else lives in their hometown?” thread 
)
H and I can’t think of another place that we’d like to be - who knows, maybe we’ll eventually get sick of the Northern CT winters, though. D lives nearby, S is in Boston…I like my house, my neighborhood, my garden.
Although H’s dream is to retire in Wyoming, which, according to his research is where he can live near as few other people as possible :rolleyes: