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Ladies and Gentlemen,
The list are informational and entertainment. They are not commands to appear before the Queen or a summons to the IRA.
Chill.
I enjoy these list, I like reading how they come up with their ratings to see if they are the things important to me.
the article says they based it on affordability, health care and quality of life and they are correct that as a "state" Florida is extremely retirement friendly.
It is not telling anyone to pack up and move now. Now for me, weather IS important so no way in hell am I moving to Colorado or North Dakota
Oh here we go again with the Florida-hate. I'm going to defend my new home state, the one that I had no interest in until family circumstances led me here to the Gulf coast, moving full-time four years ago. But I'm not going to go ad nauseum about hurricanes and palmetto bugs (which I've never seen here, BTW). Suffice it to say, it's now my happy place. It's not perfect but name me one state that is. Until then, sunshine, palm trees, turquoise water, white-sand beaches, and gorgeous nature preserves put a smile on my face .
I love my area of FL too. I don’t refer to it as my bit of paradise, which is why I’m happy. I see things as they are and am content with life here.
For some people, FL is like finding out there isn’t a Santa Claus and telling all the other kids They can’t get over their disappointment and need everyone else to hurt too.
Frankly, I don't care how many people or organizations or articles try to sell me on Florida - I won't be going. I hate the heat and humidity...hate the flat landscape (and I'm in ILLINOIS!)...hate the tollways...hate the lack of culture in any place I could afford to live...even restaurants are blah. ...their marketing doesn't move me.
Frankly, I don't care how many people or organizations or articles try to sell me on Florida - I won't be going. I hate the heat and humidity...hate the flat landscape (and I'm in ILLINOIS!)...hate the tollways...hate the lack of culture in any place I could afford to live...even restaurants are blah. ...their marketing doesn't move me.
Awesome. Personally I'm move afraid of someone who would move based on a list. that's why I can't figure out why folks get all "hep" up over them. Does someone read them and then not do their due diligence?
No one place can possibly be the best place for everyone. To say that is just ridiculous.
^^^ Yes, this.
I'm semi-retired in Philly and have no desire to leave. If I were to pull up my Philly roots, I'd do some independent research and would look for a site/app that asks what I value in a location, weights the responses accordingly, and makes some suggestions based on that weighted score.
Maybe the best a list like OP posted can offer is getting someone to say "huh? Wyoming? I never even considered it" - and then do some followup research.
At least the list was on one page and not one of those "click here for the next in the list" deals. I once got clickbaited to a site that was the top 50 of something I was interested in. And yes, I'd have had to view 50 different pages to see the entire list and get to #1. Interest (and clicking) evaporates quickly when I see things like that. It's the Web. It's built for moving on to the next fascinating thing :-)
Florida has hurricanes, incredibly expensive house insurance, lots of humidity, alligators, snakes, congested roads, awful tasting tap water and sinkholes.
What's not to like?
These lists are ridiculous. How many seniors want to retire to Wyoming? I know seniors that won't drive if it's raining, much less in snow. I've lived here in Florida on and off since 1960 since I was a little girl. Yes, Florida was better "back then" but compared to some other states I lived in Florida isn't so bad. I saw more hurricanes in NC than here; my house insurance is around $120 a month, I've only seen alligators at parks and where I live there are no sinkholes. The only snakes I've seen are harmless where in NC we had a rattler right outside our door in a residential neighborhood.
Yes we have congested roads (thank you tourists & snowbirds) and awful tasting tap water and the summers are long and humid. But then "up north" is miserable, dreary, cold, snowy and icy for 4-6 months out of the year and if you think our traffic is horrible, try driving on Long Island. As for restaurants stay away from the chains. We have several locally owned restaurants that would rival those in New York City.
Florida isn't for everyone but then neither is Alaska, New York or California. That's what makes our country great. We can live anywhere we want.
Last edited by chiluvr1228; 01-17-2018 at 06:23 AM..
They seem to publish a List of Greats every few months, or whenever an Editor says "we need more Click Bait"
The last time some website put out a List, I saved my response in a Word file, to avoid having to re-type it on just such an occasion. Here it is again.......
"Our preference was for mild winters, so we tossed out any State with even a vague possibility of Snow.
We worked our way down the list and those left standing were --
4 Texas
5 Louisiana
6 Tennessee (maybe)
8 Nevada
9 South Carolina
We eliminated a few for NON-cOASTAL reasons, until we got to South Carolina. When you consider the Charms of Charleston (restaurants, theater, galleries, history).......the answer for us became obvious.
Many of these generic Cost of Living articles place the cost of Housing first, and usually assign it a significant portion of the COL. Most often, the entire State is lumped into one simple Housing Cost.
But if your Home is paid off, your Housing category only needs to cover the Power, Water, Insurance and RE Taxes (and you'd be paying Power & Water even if renting). That's why earlier in this thread, I said "Everyone has their own COL Calculation".
Take the Mortgage Payment out of your monthly nut........see what that does for your Cash Flow.
Nebulous Terms such as Health Care Rank or Quality of Life are almost impossible to quantify over an entire State. The Medical University of South Carolina is right here and many of the graduated Doctors choose to stay in the Lowcountry (which should tell you something).
Quality of Life #38, in Charleston ?? OK
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The list are informational and entertainment. They are not commands to appear before the Queen or a summons to the IRA.
Chill.
I enjoy these list, I like reading how they come up with their ratings to see if they are the things important to me.
the article says they based it on affordability, health care and quality of life and they are correct that as a "state" Florida is extremely retirement friendly.
It is not telling anyone to pack up and move now. Now for me, weather IS important so no way in hell am I moving to Colorado or North Dakota
We know they are not commands but they do get into people’s heads and when the question comes up as to where to relocate if that becomes a topic those are often the first places that often come to mind often without our quite knowing why. Then perfectly better suited places are not even considered because we have let someone else do our thinking for us. Of course I’m using “our” and “us” in a general sense.
You can see this happening all over CD where young people flock to the cities hyped as “cool” and “the place for young people to live” for what are all the supposedly right reasons given for all young people to live there. Then when they get there they discover those places are not right for them at all.
So it is, I believe, that many of these highly touted retirement destination lists for older people are followed as as the best advice for them. I think there are far too many who do not read the list qualifications: income, weather tolerance, etc if there are any there to be read. Also, those found on the Internet always seem to be connected with advertisements.
So, okay. Those are my objections to those lists. I know they’re not going to go away so I just wish that more people would take them as you do, with a large grain of salt.
I knew which state it would be before opening this thread.
Isn't Florida called "Heaven's waiting room?" I wouldn't move there myself, but I can see why someone from the Northeast would like it.
Going from hot, flat and boring (Houston) to hot, flat and boring just isn't for me. I'm also not that much of a beach person. Retirement for me will be somewhere in the mountains where it snows.
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