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Hi, I'd like to have a few questions on moving to TN for Early Retirement if you don't mind.
Background
I and my wife (family of two, we prefer not disclose our age) currently don't plan to have kid(s).
We will live on $40K investment incomes (mix of Federal taxable and 401k/IRA accounts). My wife's job expects to bring in another 20K income. I will get pension (not much, around $600/mo, once I've reached the age of 57), and social security at age 62, which will be far far away, so let's forget these (pension and SS for now).
I'm a software developer for now, but don't plan to work (at least no more than part-time/remote/freelancing) once have moved to TN. Currently we live in California, and we don't like it here due its high taxes, and many other issues.
We'd like to take advantage of no earned/investment/retirement income taxes, as well as low property tax (in case we decide to buy one) in TN. Also, I particularly like nature, trees, lakes, river, waterfalls, anything greenery!
My only concern is the high sales taxes, but I found that food/grocery taxes reduced to 4%, which is not too bad.
Summary points:
+ We are healthy, and we live very frugally. We don't have debts. Most of our spending include food/grocery, car's insurance (currently we have two cars, both Toyota Camry, but will sell one), cell phone, highspeed internet.
+ We will live on around, conservatively, $50K after Federal income taxes.
+ We'd want to buy a house (3BD or less), for less than 250K, mostly by cash, if that's a sound plan. We never have owned a house.
+ We are okay with the humid/bugs in TN.
Questions
1. Will $50K is enough for me and my wife to cover everything: property taxes, food, insurance, phone, internet bill? Is there anything else regarding the costs?
2. Health insurance. This is a big variable. Currently we're covered by a good plan at my workplace, but I will not get to keep it because of my early retirement plan. So any advice is helpful to us.
3. Which areas in TN would you recommend us?
3.a. a city with fast growing/needed software engineering jobs (just in case, for .NET developers, or Python).
3.b. an area/county/city with affordable house price and good view.
3.c. an area/county/city with Asian food/markets, especially Vietnamese.
3.d. with all the above conditions (job, housing, food/market), which areas would you recommend?
4. Other states that I'm considering include: Wyoming (Pros: both low property and sales taxes. Cons: very cold?, less Asian/Vietnamese food), Florida (Pros: better weather, beaches. Cons: higher cost of living, property and sales taxes), and Texas (Cons: high property tax, slighter higher sales tax). All of these states also don't tax income/investment/retirement incomes. Have you lived there? what do you recommend?
5. I'd love to plant/grow herbs/vegetables in our own yard/garden supposedly buying a home. Have you don't it? is there any issue with the law or weather condition in TN?
Thank you very much for your time!
One advantage to the Knoxville area is Sevier County is low property taxes. The last time I checked they were based on 1/4 the value of the property. Tax % was low also.
Lots of houses under $300,000.00. Four houses in Seymour under your price and just south of Knoxville and an easy drive. I had family living in that area and one in the city of Sevierville.
I see you are concerned about sales tax in TN. Do you know what the sales tax is in CA? Where we lived in CA it was 9.25%. In TN, where we live now, it's 9.75%. Not much difference. Yes, food is taxed here at 5%, but in CA all ready-made food in the grocery store, or restaurants and fast food places is taxed.
Unless you live in a very strict HOA neighborhood, growing vegetables in your backyard is pretty much okay everywhere. Yes the weather is fine for growing veggies in summer, but not in the winter unless you have a greenhouse. It's far too cold in winter to grow much here. We do get hard freezes, and even an occasional snow storm in the winter, but it will melt by the next day typically.
Does it? I am trying to think of any big players in the coding industry in Memphis. But it is a larger city, so that stands to reason.
Memphis is a tricky place to settle and overall has a high rejection rate from transplants who are not well-versed in the Delta's and the city's history, race relations, and particular geographies. Unless the OP wants to live in Collierville or Piperton, it just seems easier to bypass the region altogether. But, indeed it is an affordable location in Tennessee, and well worth an initial look. I liked my time living in Memphis, but wouldn't head back there again.
I'm not a big fan of the city of Memphis, but I've lived here my entire life and have no idea where you came up with this. I know people from South Africa, Canada, and Liberal cities in the U.S. who haven't had any issues living here. Yes, there are race issues here, but that seems to be the norm in every large Democrat-controlled city in the U.S. right now. I think being atheist in the Bible belt will annoy you more as everyone tells you "God Bless" and asks what church you go to every time you meet someone.
That being said, the reason NOT to move to Memphis is the out-of-control crime committed by juveniles. It's becoming the Wild West here. A gas station near me has weekly carjackings with a security guard assigned to the gas station. The guard just sits there while it happens and is more of a talking point on what the company is doing to protect customers than actual protection. When police spot the suspect vehicle, they won't pursue because of department pursuit policies. When juveniles are finally caught, Juvenile Court does nothing to them. Welcome to Memphis.
My husband and I retired to SW TN from NYC. While I wouldn't recommend being this many counties away from Memphis, certainly Fayette and even Hardeman would have the environment you desire (woods, streams, rivers) and the cost of living is significantly lower than in Memphis. You could easily find a house for under $200K and living on $50K is more than doable - comfortably. I'm pretty sure finding high speed internet that is not satellite based should be available in most places in those 2 counties. We were looking for country/rural - as in no neighbors and we found it further east - not quite halfway between Nashville and Memphis.
Find a realtor and look at the homes that are available and the setting and go from there.
+ We'd want to buy a house (3BD or less), for less than 250K, mostly by cash, if that's a sound plan. We never have owned a house.
Hint-don't use your cash to buy the house. Finance it-rates are still low, invest the money. You can borrow at 3% and get ~8% returns or better pretty safely.
Hint-don't use your cash to buy the house. Finance it-rates are still low, invest the money. You can borrow at 3% and get ~8% returns or better pretty safely.
Hi, I'd like to have a few questions on moving to TN for Early Retirement if you don't mind.
Background
I and my wife (family of two, we prefer not disclose our age) currently don't plan to have kid(s).
We will live on $40K investment incomes (mix of Federal taxable and 401k/IRA accounts). My wife's job expects to bring in another 20K income. I will get pension (not much, around $600/mo, once I've reached the age of 57), and social security at age 62, which will be far far away, so let's forget these (pension and SS for now).
I'm a software developer for now, but don't plan to work (at least no more than part-time/remote/freelancing) once have moved to TN. Currently we live in California, and we don't like it here due its high taxes, and many other issues.
We'd like to take advantage of no earned/investment/retirement income taxes, as well as low property tax (in case we decide to buy one) in TN. Also, I particularly like nature, trees, lakes, river, waterfalls, anything greenery!
My only concern is the high sales taxes, but I found that food/grocery taxes reduced to 4%, which is not too bad.
Summary points:
+ We are healthy, and we live very frugally. We don't have debts. Most of our spending include food/grocery, car's insurance (currently we have two cars, both Toyota Camry, but will sell one), cell phone, highspeed internet.
+ We will live on around, conservatively, $50K after Federal income taxes.
+ We'd want to buy a house (3BD or less), for less than 250K, mostly by cash, if that's a sound plan. We never have owned a house.
+ We are okay with the humid/bugs in TN.
Questions
1. Will $50K is enough for me and my wife to cover everything: property taxes, food, insurance, phone, internet bill? Is there anything else regarding the costs?
2. Health insurance. This is a big variable. Currently we're covered by a good plan at my workplace, but I will not get to keep it because of my early retirement plan. So any advice is helpful to us.
3. Which areas in TN would you recommend us?
3.a. a city with fast growing/needed software engineering jobs (just in case, for .NET developers, or Python).
3.b. an area/county/city with affordable house price and good view.
3.c. an area/county/city with Asian food/markets, especially Vietnamese.
3.d. with all the above conditions (job, housing, food/market), which areas would you recommend?
4. Other states that I'm considering include: Wyoming (Pros: both low property and sales taxes. Cons: very cold?, less Asian/Vietnamese food), Florida (Pros: better weather, beaches. Cons: higher cost of living, property and sales taxes), and Texas (Cons: high property tax, slighter higher sales tax). All of these states also don't tax income/investment/retirement incomes. Have you lived there? what do you recommend?
5. I'd love to plant/grow herbs/vegetables in our own yard/garden supposedly buying a home. Have you don't it? is there any issue with the law or weather condition in TN?
Thank you very much for your time!
I think you should also look into Cookeville. It's nowhere as large as the other cities recommended but it has a surprising amount of IT jobs. It's home to the state's flagship technological university, and it's also home to a very large IT hub of government contractor SAIC. They're constantly hiring and ramping up their Cookeville facility.
The university helps make the community more diverse than most small towns. There's a really nice and well stocked Asian grocery store in town which has a lot of Vietnamese products in addition to Korean and Filipino products and produce.
Here are some homes in Cookeville that have recently (last 3 months) sold for less than $250k so you can get an idea what it's like.
Hint-don't use your cash to buy the house. Finance it-rates are still low, invest the money. You can borrow at 3% and get ~8% returns or better pretty safely.
Good hint. With the economy starting to recover after covid the stock market should provide good and easy ROI. They can keep the money in retirement accounts 401K/IRA and invest. If the OP is planning on retiring or working part-time they have the time to learn and become good investors to self-manage. This approach could provide good wealth for the future.
Another plug for Chattanooga, but we have some of the fastest, most reliable, and affordable internet in the USA through the local public-owned electric utility. The base level for residential EPB Fiber is 300Mbps, with 1Gbps only a few dollars more per month. Businesses can get up to 10Gbps. And these aren't just advertised rates, I have the base level and regularly speed-test at 300-310 through my mesh WiFi. To get this you do have to live in EPB's service area which limits you to fairly close in around Chattanooga.
You mentioned renting, and Comcast did sign long-term deals with several apartment complexes around town that excludes EPB. But because EPB is so awesome even Comcast has had to improve their service.
Countless miles of nearby hiking/biking trails, watersports, whitewater, etc.
About the only major con is that I'm not sure about Chattanooga's Asian community, or whether we have even one.
Here in Erwin, TN we have bi-directional gigabit fiber to the home (1000 x 1000 Mbps internet service with wireless) for a flat $60 per month, which is provided by the town utility company. It’s included with our electric, water, sewer and trash service and is very reliable.
Our total bill for everything runs $225 to $350 on average monthly (with NG below) depending on what time of the year it is. The only other bill outside of that is natural gas (NG) which runs between $5 to $75 monthly during the winter.
The outdoor options here are simply second to none. The Appalachian Trail passes through town and there are dozens of thru-hikers here on a daily basis. Beautiful lakes, park systems and mountain peaks of over 6000’+ are all within a few minutes to a half an hour or so.
There’s just way too much to list when it comes to the outdoors, and why we love it here ... and also why housing prices have nearly doubled here in the last year.
Erwin is more of a small town with limited options for employment, but with Johnson City being an easy 15 to 20 minute drive straight up the highway (or Asheville, NC 35-45 min the opposite direction) the area here is highly desirable for those wanting to live in a rural / mountain setting and have an easy commute for work.
I work in Tech but work fully remote and my wife is in the Medical / Dental field. She makes the 30 min commute from here to Weaverville, NC (just north of Asheville) for work and loves her daily commute through the beautiful TN / NC mountains.
Hope that helps.
Last edited by VinceTheExplorer; 04-29-2021 at 04:17 PM..
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