Where to retire???

There are choices…

You can retire to Phoenix, Arizona where:
1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away because you found shade.
2. You’ve experienced condensation on your butt from the hot water in the toilet bowl.
3. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.
4. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.
5. You know that “dry heat” is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door.
6. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

You can retire to California where:
1. You make over $250,000 and you still can’t afford to buy a house.
2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
3. You know how to eat an artichoke.
4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighbourhood block party.
5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and Drought.

You can retire to New York City where:
1. You say “the city” and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan.
2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can’t find Wisconsin on a map.
3. You think Central Park is “nature.”
4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual.
5. You’ve worn out a car horn.
6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

You can retire to Maine where:
1. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco.
2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas.
3. You have more than one recipe for moose.
4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.
5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction.

You can retire to the Deep South where:
1. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store.
2. “Y’all” is singular and “all y’all” is plural.
3. “He needed killin'” is a valid defence.
4. Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Mary Sue, Betty Jean, Mary Beth, etc.
5. Everything is either “in yonder,” “over yonder” or “out yonder.” It’s important to know the difference, too.

You can retire to Colorado where:
1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car
2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and so he stops at the day care centre.
3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.
4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.

You can retire to the Midwest where:
1. You’ve never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.
2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.
3. You have had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” on the same day.
4. You end sentences with a preposition: “Where’s my coat at?”
5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, “It was different!”

AND you can retire to Florida where:
1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.
2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind – even houses and cars.
3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.
4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.
5. Cars in front of you often appear to be driven by headless people.

Comments

Where to retire??? — 55 Comments

  1. Florida panhandle. Nice beaches, warm gulf water, affordable housing. Military friendly. Anywhere between Pensacola and Panama City.

  2. ERJ- That’s where I’ll end up… 🙂

    ED- LOL, the midwest isn’t bad, but no family up there.

    Brian- Hurricanes… I’ll pass. Seen the damage, and don’t want to go through that again.

  3. Hmm. How about turning it around a bit: Tell your readers what you want in a retirement home – – location, amenities, proximities – – and let the readers offer suggestions. Rural, suburban or urban? Near the coast or mountains? Proximity to VA facilities?

  4. Phoenix: McDonalds drive-thru for breakfast, Wendy’s for lunch and In&Out’s for dinner because that’s when the pick-up window is in the shade.

  5. re: Maine
    After they shut down NAS Brunswick they stopped stocking Tabasco. It was down to ketchup salt and pepper when I was there. At the restaurants they didn’t even keep it at the table. You had to ask.

  6. Come to Phoenix. More restaurants per capita, great Mexican food, good weather half the year, lower humidity than most places.
    AND, Guffaw can buy you a beer!

    gfa

    • Retiring this year, already bought a house in Phoenix, where you can still get a decent place on 2/3 acre without deed restrictions. I can have antennas again, egad.

      I am so done with nineteen below zero.

      –K7JPD

      • The antenna thing is a big one for me, too, Jeff.

        Looking forward to having a tower again in a few years!

  7. I thought that you’d settled on Texas.

    Though the descriptions of cities (above) are all spot on, I’m with Rev. Paul in that mountains are important. Have you ever been to Durango, Colorado?

  8. I have to at least see the mountains, I can see Shasta & Lassen & the Trinity Alps. I have to at least have water near, I have the river, and lots of mountain lakes. I might just be were I’m supposed to be…

    • I have all that, and, while Seattle sucks, it doesn’t suck as bad as LA or San Fran, and Olympia isn’t as bad as Sact’o… yet.
      (At least our state-level Republicans are actually Republicans.)

  9. Ed- Sad but true, right?

    Rev- LOL, growing up in the South, the highest thing we had was bridges… I like the big sky!

    Jay- That is truly sad, and I’m really not surprised… They just don’t ‘get’ seasonings…

    gfa- Yeah, but the other half of the year… And I might wander that way for a ‘free’ beer. 🙂

    LL- Family… It always comes down to that. And Colorado is too damn cold! 🙂

    dammit- See above… And yes, you are! AND have family close, which helps.

  10. My wife and I grew up in a small town about 50 miles east of glacier National Park, some 30 miles from the Canadian border. They have four seasons there, too. Winter, winter, winter, and August. And the wind never stops. If the wind ever did quit, every one in town would fall down. And, every winter, we would get three or four feet of snow, but it would all go to North Dakota and Minnesota.

    Now we are in the Pacific Northwest, just across the Columbia from Portland, Oregon, aka Havana-on-the-Willamette. At least the winters are tolerable here. Rainy but tolerable.

  11. Scottie- I cannot imagine living up there! I did winter deployments to Adak, Misawa, and Kef… Nope, I’ll pass…

    • I forgot to add to my post that during the winter of 1948-49, the temp there got to 48 below zero at night and warmed up during the day to 20 below. Again, the wind never quit.

      BTW, the winter scenes from the old movie “The Thing” were shot at the Cut Bank airport, 2 or 3 miles west of town on the Blackfeet Reservation. The igloos in those scenes were made of styrofoam. Somehow those igloos found their way onto the Cut Bank High School front lawn. Don’t know to this day how that happened. >Snicker!<

  12. Hey now, I’m from Maine…we have more than 3 spices. If you consider mustard, gravy, and the occasional pine needle spices..LOL. You have the seasons spot on with one exception…tourist. That one starts at about the middle of Construction and ends before Almost Winter.

  13. Since I’m supposedly retired, Colorado is the place. When I retire retire, probably Wyoming – Saratoga or Laramie area. Need to escape the hot Colorado winters.

  14. When the wife retires we’re probably headed to Colorado, Fort Collins area.

    Her youngest son and his fiance are there, along with her family, and they’re great people.

    I’ll miss the weather and the Battleship Iowa, and my friends, but that’s it.

    Be good to get out of Kaliforniastan!

  15. The trick with Phoenix is to be a ‘mini-snowbird’. Live in Phoenix in the winter, go to the Flagstaff/Show Low area for the summer. That 4 hours of driving is all you need (well, that and two places to stay).

  16. I grew up in that Midwest. I can’t wait to get back there.

  17. Up in my part of the panhandle of Texas:

    You wave to everyone you pass.
    You can’t take a walk without someone stopping to ask if you need a ride.
    You have to chase your land to farm it.
    Every tree was planted by somebody, and leans to the northeast.
    Summer thunderstorms rain ice water.
    You could probably see tomorrow if you look hard enough.
    And the stars go from horizon to horizon.

  18. JD- You ALSO have those damn black flies! 🙂

    WSF- You aren’t playing with a full deck…LOL I’m a Southern boy, I don’t DO cold…

    drjim- We’ll have to meet in the middle..LOL

    Bill- I would, except COLD winters!!!

    Tweell- So I might could afford two tents out there…LOL

    Birthday girl- Don’t blame you at all!

    Ratus- Probably!

    STx- Yep! 🙂

    drjim- It can be…

    • Yeah, just drop me a private email with your new address so I don’t lose track of you!

    • Why yes, yes we do have black flies. In addition to the mosquitos, gnats, and biting horse flies. We also have Beautiful fall weather for fishing and hunting. Too bad I have not been home to hunt in almost 20 years. Uncle Sams Flying Circus (USAF edition)has seen to that

  19. The accountant in me screams Mid-West just from a cost of living standard. I just finished Changes last night awesome book.

  20. We live in the Oregon high desert. We have 2 seasons. Winter and July. Frost any month of the year. The rest of the time it is like Iowa. 100 Square miles and no stop light and 3 sheriffs deputies.

  21. NFO, check out Payson, Az easy 2 hour drive to Phoenix, an hour to Sedona, its out of the valley and has a small town feel to it. Beautiful countryside.

    It’s on my list.

  22. A workmate burned up his unused annual and sick leave (he came in under the “old” system) visiting relatives and friends around the country. I ran across him in a dive in the Fla. Panhandle. He’d been on the search for months. He was leaning toward the lower end of the Appalachian Mountains. Cool in the summer, easy drive to Atlantic or Gulf coasts for summer recreation, nature, easy to defend hill tops … Hey, those D.O. guys are “special.”

  23. Take a look at the N. side of the Olympic Peninsula, it’s a banana belt, 300 days of sunshine a year, mild temps all year. Health care local and not expensive on average, and the folks are friendly. If you’ve got to go to a city, Seattle is less than two hours away, one of them on a ferry. Fishing, hunting, and camping are nearly walking distance. Ocean fishing and fresh water fishing ten minutes in nearly any direction.

    No State income tax and pretty loose gun regulations including free open carry.

  24. You’re focused on only one place.

    Winter: The Florida Keys. Or, maybe a beach in Costa Rica.
    Spring: Southern or mid-Applachian mountains
    Summer: A lakeside cottage in New Hampshire
    Fall: Back to the mountains

    Last week I was just 5 lottery numbers and a Gulfstream from my goal….

  25. JD- That you do, and that truly sucks… Did that merry go round for 22 years…

    Odysseus- Agreed! And thanks for the nice words!

    Emily- Yeah, but that whole winter thingie… sigh

    Matt- I’ll take a look, thanks!

    Stretch- I want to be west of the Mississippi… 🙂

    Gerry- Thanks!

    Alien- Yeah, it’s that whole $$$ thing…

  26. It does suck, but that’s life. I did 16 wearing the uniform. I’ve been silly (civil) service for 7 years now. A med board killed my military career for me. Kinda like to eat so I picked up a job where it was easier to do so then back home in Maine. Depots are full of old, broke down ex aircraft maintainers. ?

  27. That bit about halloween costumes in Maine is God’s own truth.

    • Yeah, but they know how to manage and drive in the snow. Aroostook County, 202″ of snow – the kids missed only 5 days of school. They’re badasses!

    • Hey now…nothing wrong with Maineiacs…lol. Mrs C. Yup We do know how to manage snow, with heavy equipment and lots of loud swearing. Especially when the equipment gets bogged down!

  28. Alabama doesn’t tax your military pension.

    And it’s very handy being able to pick up a movie to watch after you’re done fishing…

  29. Pingback: Where to retire, follow-up... - Nobody Asked Me...

  30. a couple a’ things ya’ gotta’ remember ’bout the “Deep” and I mean the “Deep South” and that goes as far north as North Carolina an’ Virginie’. “Guns”…Rifles..Shotguns…pistols are brandished Proudly in every Redneck’s Pick up truck during “Hntin’ Season” and the Off season!! Get Used to it!! Callin’ 911 to report someone brandishin’a gun will only get you arrested, thowed’ in jail and Laughed at vocerifously by the local Sheriff!! The term “Grits” is what it is…. there is no “singular” word for grits. Girls Raised In The South is another story I don’t have time for here!! This is just a short note…….but I’m sure ya’ might get the idea!!! Oh yes, always remember……”Damnyankee” is one word!!!
    Got Gunz….OUTLAW!!!!!,
    III%,
    skybill-out

  31. Rick- Yep!

    MSgt- LOL

    Skybill- I was raised in the DEEP South… Louisiana… 🙂 I was one of those kids back in the 60s 🙂 30-30 or 12ga in the gun rack, Python under the seat…