How do people decide where to retire?

Minnesota will always be my permanent address. About ten years ago we bought a two bedroom lake home about 45 minutes from our house in town. We live there all summer and spend most weekends in the spring & fall there. Our plan is to live a good share of the year there when we retire. It's just a great little northern lake surrounded by tall pines - great neighbors, no shortage of outdoorsy things to do. We aren't far from retirement and our kids aren't that old. The older one will live the military lifestyle at least five more years. The younger just started college. We'll probably hang onto the house in town a few more years, live there in the winter months. We'll probably just take some vacations in the winter months at first.

It's a lot to think about.

This is an issue. We are in our 60's and D/H has been retired since his 50's. I can retire right now but I do not want to retire until I am at least 70, I like my job and like to work. He does not understand why I don't retire so we can move from South Florida to a place like Montana, Wyoming or Washington State, but get a house in the boonies. We have no family so that is not a factor.

One consideration is I am from South Florida and have never driven in the snow. Plus, I despise cold weather and all the different clothes, coats, snow blowers and other things needed to manage in that environment. I am not a fan of this idea. We have a fantastic house on over an acre in a really nice area. Plus we have access to vast assortment of restaurants, stores and medical services.

There should be a compromise, such as getting a second place in a northern location where he could spend time or moving somewhere with less extreme weather. He says he wants to live somewhere he can go hunting out his back door as that is how he grew up in rural Pennsylvania. I despise hunting and he knows it. I do not care if he does it, just not where I can see.

So the answer to your question from my perspective is it is a process. We are still working on this and if I ever retire I am optimistic that we will eventually reach a compromise.

Jeremy really wants to buy a house in Roatan. It's off the coast of Honduras. Truth is we will not leave our kids. And I'm worried about our health as we age. But it's a fun dream for us.

We plan to buy a lakehouse closer to where we live now. We will probably never leave where we are. Hopefully the kids don't go too far.

I agree but, I also think you need to live someplace for months or even a year to really see if it is right for you.  We visited Colorado many times (summer and winter) and loved it.  When an opportunity came up for my husband we jumped at the chance to move.  After about a year we decided we would not be retiring there.

"it's very different to travel some place versus live there or live some place year round"  This x100

I'm in the same boat. Where to retire. I plan on working another 3.5 years. DH is a bit younger than I am so has at least 7, but his office shut their physical doors and he works from home now, so we can go anywhere.

I had thought I'd go back to the general area I grew up in. But I keep hearing it's difficult to find a doctor in the area. I have a chronic leukemia, and have a doctor I love here. Also, if we moved there, it would be a lot further to get to my semi-annual cancer appointments. There is one province DH won't move to and one I won't. Neither of us have lived in, or even visited the eastern part of the country, so we aren't really considering that.

So it seems we're stuck in our current province. We'll probably leave the city we're in, but we just don't know where to go. I've lived in this small city for more than 30 years, and I just really don't like it here anymore.

DS lives in the same city we do, and DD is two provinces over. Neither will likely move.

Where to retire is a big concern for me.

We love living in San Diego and would like to live here with more free time to enjoy it and our friends here. However, if we have grandkids somewhere else, we would either fly often to visit or we would move but hold on to our house here. One of our kids really wants to come back and raise kids here and that would be my dream come true.

   We are closing in on retirement (next 5 years) and still have a mortgage with no current intention of paying it off.  A very low interest rate and healthy investments plays into that decision.  

At this point we are likely to stay where we are, but are researching other places.  We have been remodeling our 50's ranch with aging-in-place in mind, as well as making the home more comfortable for us.  On the plus side are excellent medical services, urban lifestyle with top entertainment and museums, great food scene, as well as two international airports within 30 min.  The negatives are the weather for half the year, increasing cost of living/taxes and crime.   It would be very difficult for me to give up what we have currently.  

One thing we will not be doing is buying a second home.  We owned a second home for 13 years and I can confidently say never again.  The extra costs of maintenance and upkeep can be daunting.  Buy that second home and suddenly you have two a/c units, water heaters, kitchen appliances, etc that can - and will - need attention.  Then there are the property taxes to consider.  We finally realized that the money we were spending on a second home would fund some great vacations.  Vacations that would not require me to be attending to house issues while trying to relax.  I also realized I don't enjoy going to the same place over and over.  I want to see new and different things!  It's a great option for some people, just not for us.  

All I know at this point is that we will return to Australia when DH retires, if we don't return for his work before that. Most likely, we will settle somewhere near Melbourne, as that is where our older DS lives with his family including our only (so far) grandchild. Whether we decide on close to the city or further out, or even a country town just outside Melbourne is still up for discussion.

I think for us we are starting to look for an ideal property near us but on the river that is one story. I think we are going to buy it now, rent it out for 10 years, then kick out the renters and remodel it the home we want it to be. We will sell our current house. We will likely spend 1-3 months each winter traveling. Renting homes or staying in hotels or vrbos in different places around the world. Depends on what my son does too but that is the current plan.

I think about this often. Dh is already essentially retired. I had planned to retire at 59 (less than 2 years away) but having started a new job 2 years ago, it will be another 3 years until I am fully vested in the pension. It doesn’t make sense to retire before then. Healthcare is a huge concern to me and I really like having the health insurance provided at a steep discount by my employer.

We had talked about retiring to NV when my daughter was living there but she’s in NYC now and I don’t see her going anywhere other than NYC or LA if she continues in her current career (which is her goal). At this point, we think we will stay put. It would be nice to downsize at some point but that can’t happen until I downsize all our stuff in the house in the first place! 4 acres and 3200 sq feet plus a basement of the same size is a lot for 2 people.

We will stay where we are when DH retires.  We want to travel and spend some time in different areas of the country, and even overseas , but will always come back to our home here.

We think about where we want to be in retirement and discuss this a lot. Both DH and I are planning to retire in 10-12 years.

For us, it's important to have a "home base" and probably something sizable enough to host holidays for our kids and families. We are also in the midwest, although in a house too big for just the 2 of us, although it will be paid off by retirement. This will allow us to either stay or sell and possibly be snowbirds, so we would have a summer property in the midwest and winter somewhere south. We have traveled to most of places we are interested in (although not as much as we would like yet) and we think we would like to be in South Carolina in the winter. That's kind of a leap, but we at least agree on it as of now.

For us, I think we are going to just wait and decide until our kids settle a bit. Surprisingly, we thought they would likely be scattered, although so far only 1 of 3 that are out of the house have gone out of state and that 1 is now considering getting back to our state eventually. We expect our midwest summer home would be more the "draw" for the kids to gather and then the winter property in the south they are welcome to visit, although it will probably be a smaller place.

FWIW, I absolutely won't consider a depreciating asset to live in for retirement (motorhome, etc.) - I want real property that generally will appreciate in value. As good chunk of the wealth we have is due to smart real estate investing.