Places to retire.

[Hickory]

So me and the wife have 3-5 yrs till we relocate, the wife will retire from the state of New York and I will stop being a diesel technician and take it easy and work on classic cars. We love Vermont but they tax her pension. So Tennessee has come into our thoughts. Mountains, no snow, no tax on. Pension. So I'm curious about the car scene in eastern Tennessee and in Vermont. And are there a need of classic repair stations in either.

[Hickory]

I was in pigeon forge Tennessee this weekend and the amount of cars was great. Here in cny there are a lot of shows every weekend and very large cruise inns.

[Mark D]

Wife and I just moved from Massachusetts to Eastern North Carolina (New Bern area). At least five or more regular cars and coffee and evening cruise events every month throughout the year. Took me a few years to figure out after buying the house in 2014, that I’m surrounded by car guys and most of them are from the northeast! I just built a 32’ x 64’ pole barn shop for my cars down there. We have property in Maine and a cottage in Mass for the summers. Options are always good, so there’ll be a classic dragging behind me for the next 20 years.

[andyd]

Mark.........will you adopt me?.........lol........love the shop, perfect man cave & then some....lol........make sure you put it to good use.......andyd

[Mark D]

6 minutes ago, andyd said:

Mark.........will you adopt me?.........lol........love the shop, perfect man cave & then some....lol........make sure you put it to good use.......andyd

your welcome to visit anytime!

[Curt Lee]

No snow in Tennessee? Since when? Other than Spring, of course.

[Hickory]

From Bristol to pigeon forge year average 4.6". Where I'm from we can get that an hour for weeks at a time ?. Even Bennington Vermont gets an average of 50" a year and that seems very minimal to me.

[Go Fleiter]

both are perfect plans to retire!

I can´t move since 1982, because of a stationary model railroad.

So, I must make do with 3 Garage places 3 mintutes in bicicle from my house

plus this summer awning in my yard as shop and for the cats.

 

If interested in my friends Egon and mine model-RR, here is the index of my postings:

https://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?10,6607746,6607803#msg-6607803

Here is  a choice: I love 50ie´s cars!

 

Greetings from Düsseldorf!

Go

Edited September 19, 2023 by Go Fleiter

[Los_Control]

I'm probably not the one to offer financial advise or to say the best place for you to live. I can share what I did though. And remember I was medically retired when I was 48 years old, I was not financially prepared to retire.

I had to battle the state for retirement for 5 years .... with no income and last 2 years ended up staying with the wife parents in Washington. We lost everything.

So when my case finally went to court & I won it ..... I had a settlement coming and we had to decide where we would live.

We had lived in New Mexico for the last 15 years and enjoyed the warmer weather.

 

We looked at cost of living in surrounding states from WA, seriously it was all too high for us to live there. .... Idaho looked promising but we really prefer the warmer weather.

We put together a short list of possible states we could afford to live in from my research of cost of living.

Then I used this site here, https://www.trulia.com/ to search the real estate market in these states we were window shopping real estate from our home computer.

New Mexico was leading for awhile then I started searching Texas & really did find some better real estate prices .... we could afford a better house for less money & cheap or reasonable cost of living .... We bought a house for cash in a small town, we pay our yearly property taxes and monthly utilities ... no mortgage.

We don't have much money but we get by just fine during this crazy inflation .... that will probably get worse before it gets better ....

 

On the other hand my brother in Washington retired a couple years ago, his employer talked him into working two extra years for a bonus + higher retirement pay.

He sold his house for $240k had to pay off a medium mortgage .... he had a few acres he wanted to build his dream home on & lived in a 5th wheel while it was built.

It has a big mortgage on it, he then paid  40k for a new John Deere tractor with a backhoe attachment .... He is retired living the dream.

Then covid hit, then it was inflation .... his investments and 401k plan is losing money .... he no longer has the same assets this year as he had a few years ago but he still has the same bills he started with and they are increasing. ..... He no longer even wants to talk to people he is so pissed off, I have no idea how things are going he has become a hermit.

 

I'm just suggesting to be smart, choose where you want to live, pick the best house you can afford but pay cash .... Just try to avoid debt.

It is a nice feeling to have more income coming in then going out, you want to buy a different car .... save & pay cash .... new shop .... pay cash.

These are crazy times we live in and it is not over yet.

 

[TodFitch]

1 hour ago, Los_Control said:

I'm probably not the one to offer financial advise or to say the best place for you to live.

Me neither.

1 hour ago, Los_Control said:

. . .We bought a house for cash in a small town, we pay our yearly property taxes and monthly utilities ... no mortgage. . .

That is the key. I can’t imagine being retired and still having a mortgage to pay. All other debt too. Interest can make a pretty big hole in anyone’s retirement plans.

[Los_Control]

I think being retired & no schedule or job to report to everyday is not a bad thing .... If you have to worry about bills .... Not very relaxing.

 

OTOH, if you building up a little nest egg .... your bills are paid, you have extra $$ to do the things you want ..... That is a very secure comfortable feeling that is hard to describe.

 

I also found that living in a large or populated area, housing prices & property taxes goes higher ..... you pay for the convenience of living in a city.

The further you move away from the city, the cheaper the real estate becomes ... fact of life .... no real job opportunities there .... but being retired it does not matter.

Something to think about.

 

I live 20 miles from the nearest town with a walmart, tractor supply, Napa .... North  East  or West 20 miles I get a bigger small town.

If I drive 60 miles N, W, E, S, I get a city. ..... While I would like to live closer to a city, cost of living goes up. The further away from the city the real estate market is cheaper.

So I'm right in the middle 60 miles from any city. If I moved 20 miles to the next town in any direction ..... The cost of living goes up.

 

Choose what is comfortable for you. I chose the cheapest way possible because I retired at 48 not prepared. Some like to live in the middle of everything with fine dining, entertainment .... A lot of advantages to living in a city. ..... While others are more comfortable living 10-30 miles out of town.

 

I'm just suggesting when you use Trulia to window shop real estate, check your comfort zone away from the nearest city to see prices .... some like to drive 20 miles to cars & coffee.

 

[TodFitch]

2 hours ago, Los_Control said:

. . . I live 20 miles from the nearest town with a walmart, tractor supply, Napa .... North  East  or West 20 miles I get a bigger small town.

If I drive 60 miles N, W, E, S, I get a city. . .

That worked for my parents until age related health problems started. Then it was an hour drive to the nearest medical and none of the home health care services were willing to go that far out into the sticks. My siblings and I ended up with a lot of short notice trips to help them out. That involved flying into the nearest city, renting a car then driving for over an hour. Those trips made me realize the downside of a very rural retirement.

 

So we picked a location where we can walk to pretty much everything: Grocery store, drug store, hardware store, auto supply store, post office, library, etc. If/when we are no longer able to drive there is a chance we can still be independent. And equally important, good medical is pretty close by. More expensive so many probably couldn't do it. But as long as you can pull it off with out a mortgage it can still work.

[Curt Lee]

This is a problem rapidly approaching my wife and I. We have this place in Florida but I can't stand the heat (neither can she, but she's stubborn as a Missouri mule) and can't stay here indefinitely. I have to be able to work outside whenever possible and the heat and humidity here is simply oppressive; can't do more than a couple of hours before I'm wrung out. Couple the heat with neverending bouts of thunderstorms all summer long, peppered with the occasional hurricane or two, possibility of the power going out for weeks at a time. insurance rates rocketing skyward while insurers drop customers by the hundreds daily... I'd never buy property here. Definitely would not RENT here.

I need a climate with four distinguishable seasons. I don't care to travel; I traveled in the Navy. This is why, even with the blue state politics there, I'm looking for a place in Virginia, Shenandoah Valley preferably; up in the hills definitely. Presently, we're encroached in on by golf courses, "resort" communities, a couple of National Parks (I don't mind those a bit, they don't have people filling them up), and WalMarts. 

[Los_Control]

13 hours ago, TodFitch said:

So we picked a location where we can walk to pretty much everything: Grocery store, drug store, hardware store, auto supply store, post office, library, etc.

I think the way I wrote I'm not really clear. I do live in a small town population 4300.  It is just not big enough to have a walmart. But we have everything here in town thats needed. I live 10 blocks from downtown, so driving 10 blocks I will pass the library, city hall, DOL, courthouse, police sheriff & jail, post office. Grocery store, 4 gas stations a liquor store, hardware, DMV .... Everything I need is here in town. The hospital & my DR is 2 minuets away, Interstate 20 on ramp is 2 minuets away.

 

Still walmart, tractor supply, The bigger stores are important when shopping on a budget. I feed my dogs chicken. Walmart sell nice fresh chicken at $4.72 for 10 pounds.

I buy 40 pounds a month for the dogs. Also dog biscuits, they sell the large 15 pound box .... grocery store in town sells a very small box. I also buy the large tubs of ice cream, They are $3 cheaper at walmart then the local store .... I feed the dogs a scoop of vanilla ice cream for desert 4 or 5 nights a week. Just to feed the dogs it is worth the trip.

 

So while I live in town, have all the conveniences of town, it really is not the living style for everyone. We all wave at each other as we pass on the road, people are very polite at the stores. The school district has a very nice sports arena where many after school activities are held ... I can sit on my back porch Friday night and listen to the ball game being played or the school dance .... it is a very boring life and not for everyone.

 

My house was very decent 3bdrm 1 bath and move in ready condition, The property tax value is set at $32.5k ..... If it was located in a bigger city it would easily reach $55k-$60k .... I pay $400 per year for property tax.

It sat on the market for 2 years with no sale. Price was lowered from $32k to $28k .... Wife wanted it, I liked it, I offered $25k cash to the real estate agent. I got a answer back in less then 20 minuets. They were paying the water, electricity, gas, property taxes for 2 years while the house sat empty ....

These are the advantages of living in a small town .... You can buy a house a lot cheaper .... It would suck if I had a long commute to work each day.

 

I just took a quick look at the local real estate market, saw a few houses for under $30k, saw one house in town for $850K .... Every price in between.

That same $800K house if it was located in CA or Houston parts of Florida .... It would probably sell quickly around 3 million $$$ ..... not in a small town.

 

My $25k house with fresh paint, roof, dual pane windows & storm doors is in a nice quiet neighborhood .... not some crack infested slum in the city.

 

 

[Hickory]

I want rural area. But I also want to have a small garage business of repairing old cars. We are only 50, the wife's pension is a nice sized one that she can collect at 55. So we are looking to get easy minimal jobs and collect the pension. Just start winding down you know. We were just in Tennessee checking it out, and liked the pigeon forge area. But wasn't to impressed with the Bristol Kingsport Johnston area. But on our drive back to New York we stopped in wytheville Virginia and loved it. 

[Dan Hiebert]

You can probably get old car work in Vermont, but there is already a plethora of classic car shops there for the size of the state.  It is a model liberal state, so taxes are high and getting higher with no end in sight, and the cost of heating is going through the roof with no regard for alternatives.  Same as here in Maine.  A lot of my former colleagues retired to Tennessee, we tend to be a cynical and "frugal" lot, so there must be a worthy draw there. 

[Mikec4193]

Hey Hickory

I left my full time govt job in January...still working my part time Home Depot job but I bought a place out in Wetmore Kansas...my nephew rents a room from me so I can pay the heat and lights and the taxes on it...

 

I am just getting stuff moving here...I will snow bird here as my wife's family is all still in upstate NY...

 

So far it appears to be working...my son and his family are 1 1/2 hours away...I am a lot closer than a days plane trip so I think it might work out for me...I bought in a really small  town so it was affordable and if I don't like it I will sell....I am giving myself 2 years to figure it out...

 

Good luck with your search.

I am in Saratoga County...we are not that far apart...

 

MikeC

[keithb7]

Speaking of retirement: I’m some years away yet but it is at the forefront of my mind a lot. 
 

I agree with 4 seasons. I like ‘em. In particular spring and fall are the best for working outside. Summer here is a bit too hot honestly. Winter pretty good. I sometimes complain about snow removal duties. Yet I love the gas powered tools I own, maintain and use to clear the snow.  Good excuse to own 2 snow blowers and an ATV with a blade!

 

I’ve spent the last couple years researching retirement finances and planning. I’m really interested in it now as retirement is getting closer. I’ve learned a ton about investing. We have been squirrelling savings for decades. Just letting the money work for us passively. Lately I have  taken-on a bigger role in managing some of the finances myself.  Maybe I will need YT ad revenue to keep us afloat! Lol. 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by keithb7

[Brent B3B]

I am with you Keith. I have 3yrs left myself. Been checking off some big ticket items (new roof, new appliances, vehicle etc) while still working. 
Man time flies….