Eastern Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, or Western NC
As mentioned before Nova Scotia in minute if the immigration laws were not so strict. Wonder what would happen if we moved there and just didn’t tell anyone.
Anyway, many years ago I discarded the state of Florida for many of the reasons stated in this article titled 11 Reasons You Don't Want to Retire in Florida that just showed up in my email and would like to hear the opinion from our Floridians residents such as @gatorcpa or any others about these statements...
All are true to a certain extent. The two or three items related to weather should have been combined. Name one area in North America that doesn’t have weather extremes? California is going to fall into the ocean one day (beachfront in Las Vegas anyone?). Heat waves, blizzards, fires, mudslides, tornadoes, or locusts are all issues in different parts of the US.
Yes, we have a lot of “critters”. And what, they don’t have Fido-munching coyotes in the SW US?
$23 more for a drivers license over 6 years? That’s going to drive a retirement decision? Really?
Most wealthy people who retire to Florida keep a second home somewhere close to family up north or in North Carolina where they can retreat when temperatures/humidity gets crazy in the summer. Just make sure you keep ties predominately in Florida and don’t spend too much time elsewhere, and you may still be able to take advantage of our zero state income tax rate.
A very overblown article if you ask me. About 21 million agree with me (3rd in US after CA and TX).
But we are reaching our population limit quickly. In 30 years, a lot of people will be moving inland as the water levels gradually absorb Miami Beach and a few other coastal cities.
You pays your money and takes your choice.
gatorcpa
We have been exploring this too. Reality is we decided to stay in San Diego for now. There are a couple of reasons. One is uprooting and having to make new friends, the other is property tax. In CA, since we have lived in our home 20 years and home prices have drastically increased so we have a really low tax, when compared to what a neighbor would pay if they recently bought a home.
We have explored many places, but not able to pull the trigger. We are looking into Miami, and plan to visit in June. But overall we have decided probably 5 months in San Diego, and 7 months elsewhere. Just not sure where elsewhere is yet.
...Most wealthy people who retire to Florida keep a second home somewhere close to family up north or in North Carolina where they can retreat when temperatures/humidity gets crazy in the summer. Just make sure you keep ties predominately in Florida and don’t spend too much time elsewhere, and you may still be able to take advantage of our zero state income tax rate....
@gatorcpa thanks for your comments...now, how does the article's statement --But don’t confuse no state income tax with no state taxes at all. The combined state and local sales tax averages 7.05% in Florida, according to the Tax Foundation"-- compares to reality? Assume only income from retirement sources & SS, can a retiree take advantage of zero income tax in FL?
The combined state and local sales tax averages 7.05% in Florida, according to the Tax Foundation"--
That “7.05%” figure assumes you are spending 100% of your income every year on sales taxable items. For example, most food purchased in supermarkets is exempt from sales tax, as are most services.
BTW, I know of no state that has a sales tax which exempts automobiles.
Great topic! We have been considering what to do when we are Financially Independent (FI), so I have been reading a lot about the FIRE movement (Financially Independent Retire Early). We have the money side figured out, but we aren't quite FI yet. We forgot all about the RE part and what the hell do you do now question is vexing us, especially where to live. I have no advice to offer because we haven't figured it out yet. We think we might spend the next 2 years that I have to work traveling about the US and see what's what. We may end up a 2 house couple. We love west Michigan or New England in the summer. But no thanks to the winter. Haven't found a good snowbird location yet.
The thought of moving overseas is also very appealing to us. We need to figure out VISAs, health care and being grandparents from across the pond.
as portuguese i'm possibly biased but Portugal is a comfortable and peaceful place to live: good weather, good to very good healthcare services (and cheap), low cost of living, low to very low crime rates (with almost non existent violent crime) good food, good infrastructures, attractive tax system for expatriates...
We have our problems, of course, but in general i think that we have a good life here in Portugal
Anyway, many years ago I discarded the state of Florida for many of the reasons stated in this article titled 11 Reasons You Don't Want to Retire in Florida that just showed up in my email
I'm not claiming Florida is paradise, but that article is a bizarre combination of the obvious (it's hot) and untrue (it costs $177 per week to maintain a 14x28 pool, before heating).
We need to figure out health care and being grandparents from across the pond.
HC is a wild card for me, not an affordability issue but a quality/availability one; we have always enjoyed a healthy life without a single major issue but we know that things can change when you never expect. I remember one post by @Tony C. stating satisfaction with the HC system in Portugal...airplanes are the solution for grandkids-over-the-pond issues 😀
I've been retired for almost 10 years and its been the best ten years of my life. But you have to prepare yourself for it. I have colleagues that retired and don't have any outside interests so they tag along to the supermarket with their wives, and a couple have died. I have interests in watches, sport bikes, hot turbo hatchbacks, wine, cognac, pinball machines, travel, exercise (spinning), high end audio, F1 & MotoGP, and snooker (World Championship in Sheffield now under way)....a full plate. Just have your money lined up and be realistic on your budget, it does NOT go down dramatically as a lot of pundits will tell you.
Where to retire is a personal decision and depends on your interests. Where I live I can roll out of my driveway on my Yamaha MT-10 or Ford Focus ST and be on deserted, challenging roads with many curves and elevation changes in 10 minutes. That's important to me and a factor in where we retired.
We have friends in FL that we visit for a couple of weeks each year and we are always glad to leave. The place is crowded in the winter with northern Snowbirds invading the place, hurricane weather has to be considered, and even things like sinkhole activity has to be taken into account. And it is pretty devoid of natural beauty inland.....flat. But everybody has to make their own decision as to what is important to them.
I've known people who have retired overseas and never could quite figure out the real attraction in that unless money is the main issue. What's the main advantage other than money? Sure, you can travel around Europe but that isn't cheap.
Someone previously mentioned Nova Scotia....great place, spent 2 1/2 years there on company assignment. But the income taxes were horrendous compared to the US and health care was not so great. NS has relatively few doctors and nurses compared to rest of Canada (many have moved south to Boston and similar areas for more money and higher prestige) so expect long wait times. I had a friend who spent nine months waiting to get a simple hernia operation, a procedure that would have been done in a week in the US. Reason? Limited space and doctors. As you get older health care becomes more and more important. Sure, many places have ok care for routine situations, but if you have severe chest pains at 2am on Sunday in some remote village in Costa Rica when you are 75 yo what's that worth?
You have to weigh all these factors. Remember, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. In reality, it isn't.
I think the fun may be in exploring where to retire. I can imagine a scenario where we never find a new place to retire, but travel and have fun looking while maintaining our home base in TX.
...I have interests in watches, sport bikes, hot turbo hatchbacks, wine, cognac, pinball machines, travel, exercise (spinning), high end audio, F1 & MotoGP, and snooker (World Championship in Sheffield now under way)....a full plate...
Awesome! 👍 and precisely that's what I call not fading away! 😜
.. As you get older health care becomes more and more important. Sure, many places have ok care for routine situations, but if you have severe chest pains at 2am on Sunday in some remote village in Costa Rica when you are 75 yo what's that worth?...
and it is this scenario where the wild card I mentioned above presents itself... and makes me pause and reconsider.
I think the fun may be in exploring where to retire. I can imagine a scenario where we never find a new place to retire, but travel and have fun looking while maintaining our home base in TX.
👍 is always good for a Texas home-owner to have options! 😉
HC is a wild card for me, not an affordability issue but a quality/availability one; we have always enjoyed a healthy life without a single major issue but we know that things can change when you never expect. I remember one post by @Tony C. stating satisfaction with the HC system in Portugal...airplanes are the solution for grandkids-over-the-pond issues 😀
Health care is indeed high quality in Portugal, and let me share a recent anecdotal experience to underscore the low costs. I suffered a small puncture would in my lower leg last year, and as the bleeding wouldn't stop with a simple bandage, I went to a local private clinic. By "private", I mean a privately run clinic that is open to the public, and where those without insurance might typically go for non-major issues. There are doctors available, but much of the work is done by nurses.
A doctor was called in to assess my wound, and, because of its depth, three stitches were deemed necessary. The whole procedure, from the initial diagnosis to the the doctor writing a prescription for a prophylactic antibiotic, took around 40 minutes. The cost? Less than €70. That's seventy Euros.
That is a remarkably low cost of high-quality care by almost any developed nation standard, and stunning when compared with the broken American health care model. I am certain that in many American cities the out-of-pocket bill for such treatment would be closer to $1000 than $100.
I live in Central London, so when it is my time to retire it will be either rural England (Dorset or perhaps Herefordshire) or rural France - we have a holiday home in the southern Dordogne - lots of sunshine and the vineyards of Bordeaux are less than an hour away...
