My wife and I made many plans for retirement but the one thing we never thought about was moving. To me that is one of the great regrets in life.
We actually got serious about retirement about 20 years before it actually occurred and we took steps to make sure it was a smooth transition and we would be able to live a comfortable life.
In the years before retirement we made many road trips around our great nation, but for some reason it did not occur to me we should be looking for a new home.
I would suggest anyone planning on retirement to include the possibility of moving to a new area.
I have nothing left to hold me, and it occurred to me that I don’t have to be here anymore.
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Frugal retirement living news letter
But they live on a boat and I would not be able to manage a boat by myself anymore.
So now I am looking at other options.
I retired June 2017 and my wife will work another 2-3 years. We’ve traveled a lot over the years and, during our travels, we always looked at places thinking about whether it might be a nice place to retire.
We keep finding our current home (in California, believe it or not) looks pretty good, so we never bought a retirement place.
We HAVE found that we both really like the Idaho panhandle - great conservative country (the last bastion, it seems), beautiful land, friendly people. It’s the “Inland Northwest” and the winters are not terrible and the weather is quite mild in summer. It does get smoke some summers from western wildfires and forest fires - last September was the worst in decades. But those are rare events. We’ve spent a few four or five day trips there and gotten to know the area well.
We debate all the time whether we should move or stay or maybe buy a second home somewhere. Our concern with a second home if the expenses and that would then preclude travel to other areas.
As you suggest, thinking ahead 10 - 20 years is a wise thing to do. At a minimum, it may make you realize your current home is the best place for you and might prevent the “If only I’d done this...” neuroses. The other thing to do is rent a place where you think you might like to live for some extended time. Maybe rent a month or two in the summer and another month or two in the winter. You’ll get a much better feel if the place is right for you in retirement.