Where do You Want to Retire... and Why?

That's exactly where my wife and I are heading. Her folks live in Big Bear and winter for four months on the Colorado River and it has worked great for them. Now that they are in their 80's a change was needed. We just closed down the River arrangement and all the goodies are being sold.

I could easily see us doing the same, but a little further away for tax advantages.

 

I respect your thinking. No judgement here...it’s all good! I think everyone is just throwing out their plans, ideas etc

 

Beware the perils of the nomad... #1, shitty internet!!!!!!!!!!

 

True, but you can piss off the whole town and move on like nothing ever happened.

 

Ahh, timely that I came upon this thread...

Like many here, I zeroed in on Prescott as a place to call home after punching out of the rat race. Now I'm not so sure. As is often the case, it's the little and/or unpredictable things that may get ya.

Regarding Prescott:
- The air is extremely dry. You know how when we got those crazy Santa Ana winds last year it was so dry that your skin cracked and your nose filled up with boogers and your sinuses drove you nuts? TMI? Well, that's pretty much every day there (I think).
- Travel: It's a two hour drive from Prescott to PHX Sky Harbor airport. Here in Tustin, it's a 10 minute drive from SNA and 45 minutes to LAX which will get me anywhere in the world, both easily accessible via Uber/Lyft. Getting to PHX from Prescott is a much more time consuming logistical challenge.
- Medical care: I'm on another forum where there was a thread about how it took nine months to get an appointment at a a dermatologist (the OP for that thread lived somewhere in NH in a town comparable in size and remoteness to Prescott). To me, that's pretty mind blowing. Here in OC I can get an appointment at the skin doc within a week if I needed to. Robust access and choice to quality medical care will become increasingly important as we age.
- Have you seen the speed limits there? Maybe I'm a leadfoot used to the fast-paced lifestyle here but being limited to 35mph on a wide boulevard like Jamboree - complete with radar speed cameras - would drive me nutz!
- Serious lack of restaurant diversity. I love cooking at home but every so often I want sushi or a big bowl of Pho. Not sure a smaller town will offer culinary delights to the same degree.

Given all of the above, I was thinking somewhere in the greater PHX area might make more sense (airport and medical care access in particular), but then again, it's 115+ in Phoenix as I type this. MTB riding this time of year is greatly hindered compared to here in SoCal.

In the end, I may just stick it out. Time will tell. The main thing that would drive me from CA is the political situation. For now, it's not great enough to force me out.

 

Would Flagstaff meet the big-town requirements? Too much cold/snow though??? I've been there once, and loved it, but that was during the summer.

 

I think Flagstaff would be marginally better than Prescott in terms of medical care and restaurants but the climate is considerably more harsh. I also think Prescott has better MTB trails that are close to town - just IMHO, of course.

 

Back to the drawing board...

 

The only reason CA has a water issue is failure to plan, on purpose. Failure to build adequate water storage...we get plenty of water in the state as a whole but most of it drains right into the ocean. And if they're right about more rain and less snow then capture it, use it, then drain it. Problem solved.

This state will never do that, of course.

 

Hoping the boy settles in Prescott. That means I have to move there. Not necessarily retirement but a new life, new job and new challenges. Body is deteriorating doing pools.

 

for the less popular answer... staying put, would not go anywhere else. If I hit the mega, I'd just travel more.

 

I have no idea. I'm 6 years away, and my daughter is 8. Soooooo, I'll see how she develops in the meantime. Who knows, we may cash out and move when she hits middle school. We also have a lot riding on political conditions - home values, economic stability, state pensions... all of that is a crapshoot. Same with devastating earthquakes or fires, North Korean nukes and God knows what else. Who knows what the next 6-10 years will bring? Let's ride!

 

Yeah, I'm sure you do already but watch out for people like Carl DeMaio down in San Diego going after that pension. He and our Mayor, Jerry Sanders the ex-police chief, were responsible for getting a proposition on the ballot down here that froze our pay and changed the pension system. It was obviously screwy from the start but he pushed on and of course it was just *unanimously* overturned by the state supreme court. He's vowed to try again in 2020 and DeMaio wants to make it a state-wide deal. Just as long as you pull the plug before it kicks in, assuming it's legal and passes, you should be safe.

 

Pretty well settled you can't change what's already been earned, but nothing to prevent changing future benefits. I'm retiring within the next 6 - 7 years, so it won't drastically affect me no matter what, but all the more reason to get out of this screwy state.

 

They don't operate under that theory in San Diego. They just do what they want and say "sue us".

 

I have a cousin in Grass Valley. She says it's beautiful and peaceful. Her brother lives in San Luis Obispo. Be forewarned that anything North of there (up over the hwy 101 grade) such as Atascadero, get's super hot in the Summer. Cayucos is nice but it's fogged in a lot, as is most everything North and South of there along the coast. Fog doesn't bother me, personally.

 

SLO isn't exactly known for its SF-style summers.

 

???

 

It's hotter than Hades in SLO in summer. I know. I've been there during the summer. Cal Poly SLO was one of my daughter's preferred schools, so we checked it out one August.

 

It's much hotter down here than up there. Yes, they have heat waves in the Summer but down here, it's just plain hot during the Summer. I'll take their weather up there any day.

 

On average, 8 - 10 degrees cooler in SLO than here but humidity in SLO is 20-25 percentage points higher. I consider that worse.

 

If living in AZ means dealing with the Phoenix area, be careful what you wish for. A homogeneous sprawl of mediocrity and traffic with drivers even worse than Californians. If you shoveled snow for 40 years it might seem nice.

Of course that doesn’t include Queen Creek, @schillingsworth

 

AZ is dead to me south of Flagstaff. I actually like having a winter.

But my wife not so much, so we'll compromise and go with southern UT.

 

It turns out that if you’ve owned a reasonable sized house for a few years, Prop 13 means that California might be your lowest tax option. My parents did the math and realized it would be nuts to leave for financial reasons.

That’s not to say that we’re a great place to do business, but the tax situation varies individually.

But the state pension thing has me worried. I realize that the whole purpose of the state is to serve the wishes of retired prison guards who mostly live in Idaho now, but at some point even the prison guards run out of other people’s money.

 

I’m sure you have some facts to go along with the “nuts to leave Californication for financial reasons”. I’m open to hear some of them since California is by far in the top tax bracket of the US...
https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/fun-facts/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-taxes/L6HPAVqSF

But as @Runs with Scissors has stated about the overwhelming growth in Left mentality, I don’t think I can handle much more Southern California Snow(Flakes).

 

Don’t be snowflakes. Suck it up buttercup and enjoy the cleaner air and water to go along with the trash the illegal immigrants and hobos throw onto the street.

 

I would gladly take the Cayucos fog than the Bakersfield heat. I was just there a few weeks ago and there was no fog, but when we hit Cambria the beach the for was pretty thick.

As for SLO, it is about 10 degrees hotter than Pismo Beach. Once you hit the Avila Beach offramp the temperatures drop off significantly. I have looked in buying a place out in Low Osos for retirement. Good deals can be found on land but there is a moratorium on building. So its useless unless the ban is lifted.

 

https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/reti...by-state-guide-to-taxes-on-retirees/index.php

Kiplinger rates CA in the middle for retirement taxes. Low property tax rates, plus prop 13 means long term owners with moderate incomes may see lower total taxes in California than elsewhere. Our top income tax rates are very high, but not many retirees are affected by them. Consult your financial advisor. I am a non attorney paid spokesman. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. Member fdic, aspic, aspca, norba, esq.

This is a good stat: California’s total tax take is 9.6% of all the state’s economy. In Idaho it’s 7.9%. So absolutely we pay more overall tax, but it’s not like a 2/1 difference. So it depends on your personal mix of income, property, sales, excise, gambling losses, etc... throw in an Idaho heating bill and moving expenses, plus trips to see the kids...
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494/#main-findings

 

While I don't watch much news due to heavily influenced slant of the media, as someone who spent 30+ years in law enforcement, I can't avoid politics. The current administration in this state makes decision after decision that makes this state less safe to live in. If you're a criminal, CA is turning out to be a great place to reside. As far as your retirement link, I've personally never seen a "Worst Places to Retire" list that didn't include CA. When I Googled it, the very 1st link was a Kilpinger link as well and CA in the 6th worst state for seniors retirement https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/retirement/T006-S001-worst-states-for-retirement-2018/index.html I learned long ago in government work that you can spin stats to come up with any result you want.

As far as I'm concerned, each person just needs to decide what factors are most important to him when deciding whether to stay or leave. For me, I hate traffic more than pretty much anything. Secondly, a state legislature that willingly violates Federal law galls me to the core. Even though I don't need them now, the one thing I will undoubtedly miss when I leave SoCal is access to the best medical care available....and Mexican food on every corner.

 

If this is true, confirms my suspicion that you aint gonna save much leaving the state. Unless you make millions.