<p>We are also happy to have our home fully paid for. It’s about a mile from my folks and 5-30 minute drive from any of my sibs. We enjoy our neighbors and neighborhood. Sadly, there isn’t good mass transit, though the bus is a fairly short walk (3.5 short blocks from our home). We love the temperate weather and put up with the pros & cons of our island state. We believe our kids will likely want to visit often if they end up not settling here.</p>
<p>We hope to buy or have a long term rental of any place they end up settling so we can visit for months or at least weeks at a time. Will have to see what both decide to do. Glad we are still healthy enough to travel and we can fund visits for us or them as needed. (Actually, S funds his own travel & everything else but we pay the family cell phone plan.)</p>
<p>Uprooting would be tough. I know friends who have moved away but their parents are aging in HI and I know how hard it is for them to be so far apart. They do try to come to have visits as often as they can, for as long as they can, so we see them often at Christmas and some summers too.</p>
<p>Would STRONGLY urge a long (several months or better yet, a year) rental to be SURE the new location works as well for you as you believe it will so there won’t be huge regrets. Moving away and back can be pretty exhausting and would be a lot of extra work, especially if the new place isn’t as good a fit as hoped.</p>
Hurray for you, @boysx3! You are living my dream. I hate where we are and have been mentally checked out for the past two years, since our last d finished undergrad. I can only get my husband to discuss retirement at all about twice a year, but I’ve been getting ducks in a row for longer than that. He knows that I’m leaving at a certain point, whether he comes along or not (kidding but not entirely).</p>
<p>We will certainly move farther south. Our kids all live in VA and MD, but I don’t expect them to stay where they are forever - that’s not life today. Like thumper, we’ll move near an airport where the public transportation is workable and there’s access to decent medical care. I have my eye on some senior housing options in Charlottesville but would love to be closer to DC if the money works out.</p>
<p>DC and VA are fascinating places. I wouldn’t mind considering relocating part time there if S decides he will make VA/DC his home. We do visit for at least a week at a time, but S has only lived in DC for less than 3 years, so we have no idea what his future will bring. We are happy he and D love to visit us in DC and welcome us when we visit them.</p>
<p>Our neighbors relocated to NC, to help her folks but know that politically it will be tough–they are liberal and the community is VERY conservative. They expect to stay while her folks need her and then maybe relocate to TX, where housing costs and cost of living is lower. One of their kids lives there. They will visit HI when they are able, but our crazy cost of living was too high for them to consider retiring here.</p>
<p>@HImom - how about a house swap! I live in MD, right outside DC. You live where most people dream of living, I wouldn’t consider moving if I were you either.</p>
<p>:) Too hard to give up lifelong friendshipis and family to relocate. We feel so fortunate that we still are healthy enough to be able to travel to visit what we want to. If S really is going to stay in VA, we may try to help him buy a place that has an extra bedroom and bathroom for us, or even a separte cottage. He is still very young and hasn’t met anyone special tha twe know of, so don’t think he really has plans on settling down at the moment. He does have strong ties to HI and all the ocusins CLAIM they plan to returnn to HI to live. Time will tell.</p>
<p>H would never allow us to sell this home. That was one of the things he said when we bought our place.</p>
<p>I feel the same as NJSue. We will stay in the same house - we never upsized so house is very manageable. We plan on doing a lot of traveling all over the world and hopefully renting for a couple of months in the winter wherever the mood strikes. I will eventually inherit (along with my sister) my parent’s place in Florida, but either we will sell it or if she wants it she can buy me out. I only hope there will be no fight over what to do. </p>
<p>If I have my druthers - western NC, maybe near Asheville. I grew up near there but moved to the Midwest long ago. I miss the mountains and the early spring. I am going back…</p>
<p>Another NJ’er who will stay in the state despite the tax issues. Love the state, and it looks for sure that my D, mostl likely to provide us with grandkids soon, will stay in jersey, and good chance S will be in the metro NY area. However, we will not stay in our present home for long. We are right now between two homes, the one in North Jersey is in a very urban area that’s sort of seedy, and the house is small and falling apart. Our “second” home is in way south Jersey, near the beach but not on, and that’s where we’ll retire to. The taxes are a fraction of that first home’s—far below the state average. it will be at most a two and a half hour drive to D’s family, and it’s a lovely place to bring kids to visit. So we get to do the move to the vacation-y area and still be not too far from kids and grandkids. Win/win. We’d move permanently to our “second” home in a second if we could find jobs there, but meanwhile we drive down every weekend and most of the summer.</p>
<p>We’re still a long way from retirement, but we’ve discussed it. Unless our kids settle here, we’ll likely move to a place that’s warmer and cheaper. Ideally, the city where my parents live or the city where we lived for the first years we were married.</p>
<p>I like living in the DC area, but I don’t feel the need to stay here forever.</p>
<p>I’m with you Scout! My son moved to Hickory two years ago and we absolutely love it there. We live in South Florida and the cost of living is very high here. My son just bought a house that would be a perfect retirement home for us, we are hoping that when we are ready to move, he will be ready to move on. And yes, he is in on the plan, lol!</p>
<p>We had our house in a subburb, moved out of US because of my work. We had to clean out and get rid of a lot of stuff when we moved. When we moved back few years ago we decided not to buy a big house, but instead get an apartment in NYC. I am still working, but just didn’t want to deal with the hassle of commute. We also feel NYC is a good place to grow old. It has great public transportation, so some day when we couldn’t drive any more we wouldn’t need to rely on other people to get around. We could also get a lot of things delivered to us - food, dry cleaning, medicine, etc. NyC is actually a very elderly friendly place.</p>
<p>DH would never move from Texas, but I’d be thrilled to go other places. Not because I don’t like Texas, but just because I’m more of an adventurous person with regard to trying other ways of life. I’d love to retire somewhere pretty like Hawaii or a place with both water and mountains. On the other hand, I could love living in a pedestrian city like New York. I guess the ideal would be somewhere warm for the winter months, and somewhere temperate for the summer. I do really HATE HATE HATE Texas in August.</p>
<p>I am ready to downsize (just me and my elderly dog rattling around in a large house in the suburbs). And I don’t really want to stay in my current city. I moved here 30 years ago because my now ex-H lived here. Like the state and people well enough, but the weather is awful and I am ready for a change. I will likely move near at least one of my kids. I plan to move back into my current city (city neighborhood, but not right downtown) and rent for a few years while my kids “settle”. Then expect to make a move near one of them, esp. if grandkids are in the picture. :D</p>
<p>Both DH and I are retired and planning on staying in our home in Northern Virginia. We paid it off last year, and DD (our only) is getting her Masters in May and will be working in Maryland, about an hr+ from here. We will definitely not leave this area, because we are serious bridge players and this is a great place for serious bridge. Plus it’s optimal for weather, things to do, medical care, and the like. We might downsize to a condo or senior living development in the future, but definitely in the MD/DC/NoVa area. We’ve lived away from my family (north Jersey, upstate NY) and his (Minnesota) for many years and we’re not especially close; we visit a couple/few times a year.</p>
<p>Indeed, we are loving being in DC.
So easy to get around…I haven’t touched my car in over ten days. The Smithsonians are free. So many places to walk…that is what I love the most, how walkable DC is. And, of course, two of my sons live here.
As far as retirement, I can’t imagine that my husband will ever retire completely–he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. When he decides he wants to lighten his load a bit, there will be lots of options for him here in DC. I work seasonally/part time, and I foresee doing that until I don’t want to any more. I can set my own schedule so that is good.
I wouldn’t say we would never move again–but even if our sons were to leave DC, we really like living here–and as some of you have noted, as it’s near good airports, visiting will never be a problem.</p>
<p>My DH and I have been talking a lot about this topic, maybe because my sister is planning to move away/retire soon and our dear friends retired last year. I’m torn. We’ve lived in this house for >30 years, it’s paid for, and it’s comfortable and close to NYC. We’d stay except our estate taxes are awful and, it seems, all our friends/family are moving away. My DH is convinced we should move to some place like Florida, but we haven’t been there for 15 years, when our kids were little and we visited Epcot. We’ve been talking about a summer place, but is this realistic? So, really we’ve doing everything wrong: 1) digging our roots in a place where we know we should leave, 2) dreaming of a summer place where we wouldn’t stay more than a few months a year 3) avoiding the one place that’ll most be likely our destination. Oh, we’re so unrealistic.</p>
<p>No talk of overseas retirement? I am not there yet, but would love to spend part of the year in Latin America or Asia. My dad lived in Thailand, so that world is familiar, to an extent. Limabeans, I find it is easy to be rather nutso regarding this topic. I love my current city and friends, bad weather or not, yet the cost of living makes it a difficult choice. Arizona, my home state, is another place close to my heart, where many folks move for retirement. Yet there are difficult things about that state, and my ties there are decreasing. Somehow I doubt my 91 year old mother will be there when I retire in another 5 years, sadly. </p>
<p>Those in NYC or DC, these cities seem ideal. Forget the car, live an interesting urban life. </p>
<p>I recently moved my parents here to North Carolina to be closer to me and I’m here for the unforseeable future. I anticipate them needing me for many years to come. However, I too have become restless after paying my last undergraduate college tuition payment for youngest child. I would like to move from the suburbs so that DH can walk or bike to work and change my work situation so that I can work in the community and not commuting an hour a day. Currently this is our 2-3 year plan. DH will never retire. I would like to be in a situation where I work when I want to work. </p>
<p>I would like a more urban location (someplace walkable where i don’t need my car to get places), but DH prefers the suburbs. I also want to be near a major airport, good healthcare, and cultural activities. For me, one of the big issues is weather. I have no tolerance for hot, humid weather, so alot of the SE USA is out. DH is tired of cold and snow.</p>
<p>We checked out Asheville, NC last year and liked alot of what we saw there, but we had to fly in and out of Charlotte which is 2 hours away. That does not fulfill my criteria of being near an airport. My kids won’t be living anywhere near there, so airport access is important.</p>
<p>S1 doesn’t even know where he’ll be after he’s done with grad school. S2 is in DC and anticipates staying there, at least he does now. DC is a great city, but the summer weather is awful and it’s expensive.</p>
<p>I can say with certainty that we won’t be staying in CT, but where we’ll end up is anyone’s guess at this point.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t want to live in a gated retirement community where everyone has to be older than 55…Florida has tons of places like that. I want a mix of ages around me.</p>
I live in MD, right outside DC. You live where most people dream of living, I wouldn’t consider moving if I were you either.</p>