Boomers: Do you want to retire in your present location?

[SheilaT]

33. Unfortunately, who votes often does

Last edited Wed Mar 23, 2016, 02:32 PM - Edit history (1)

determine the culture of an area.

Take Kansas. While a hunk of the northeastern part of the state is fairly liberal and Democratic voting, overall the state is full of crazy conservative Republicans and tea partiers. As a consequence, taxes have been cut to the point of destroying a lot of social services and the schools seem to be deteriorating, even the otherwise excellent ones in Johnson County. If you move to Johnson County you'd want to pay attention to exactly which part of the county you live in if you don't want to be smack in a neighborhood surrounded by fundamentalist nut cases.

I used to live there, so I know.

Anyway, I'm glad that you are looking at other things besides the cost of housing.

As an aside, I'm often driven crazy by people who decide that not having to shovel snow off their cars in the middle of winter makes any place perfect, and so they don't give much thought into where exactly the relocate to in retirement than that. While I certainly appreciate that not having to shovel snow off the car in winter is a wonderful thing, it's not the only thing a person should think about when moving.

I've always thought the advice to rent somewhere for a year before buying or at least deciding to live there permanently is good, it's not always practical. But if you've never been to that part of Kentucky, do your best to visit before you make the final decision.

Before I relocated from Kansas to New Mexico after a divorce, I made two different trips to scope out the landscape before making the final decision. One to the Pacific Northwest, another to a generous swath of the east coast. It very much helped me make my decision to come here.