Retirement homes

[Questor]

I'm starting to look for a retirement home in Florida or the Gulf coast. Got any tips for where I should be looking? I'm in the early stages, so any information is helpful. Thanks.

[rex6666]

I know nothing of retirement homes or communities, other than some iron fisted
rules.
I would think about what i wanted, and what i wanted to do fish, golf
chase the old women or the young women or all the above.

sorry I thought you were looking for a place with some one to look after you,
that is probably what i need, or at least to keep an eye on me.
other part still applys

[Swampman]

Lots of empty homes in Fort Walton Beach, FL but the hunting sucks in FL.

[Cabin4]

Read the by-laws before you buy. Make sure your willing to live under the control and limitations.

[Swampman]

I'd consider Tennessee becauses the taxes are cheap.  I've lived on the Gulf Coast for 35 years and it's the pits IMO.

[rex6666]

better yet buy something that has no by-laws, and do as you please. within
reason.

[Sourdough]

Have lots of friends that moved to the area near Ocala Florida.  The cost of living there is lower than the rest of the state(Property taxes).  My friend in Ft Lauderdale told me how the taxes work down in Southern Florida, from Orlando South, and I decided I don't want to buy there. 

Like someone else was saying I am looking at going back to Tennessee, No state income taxes.  Stay out of the bigger cities and the property taxes are not so bad either.

Three states I am looking at are Florida, Tennessee, and Texas.  In that order. 

[Redtail1949]

living on the gulf will entail considerable risk to your property. huricanes are very frequent and very damaging even if not the size of katrina. hotter than hades humidity about 100 every day and mosquitoes by the millions. while it has its own beauty and peacefull solitude if you live in the right area.

i would suggest living back up from the gulf a ways maybe 1 to 2 hours away. humidity is drasticly different though still hot. however in Texas a lot of big and small lakes for fishing pretty good deer and hog hunting as well as squirrels. lots of stuff to do and enjoy. live on one of the larger lakes Rayburn or Toledo. short ways to lake of the pines and others.

just my thoughts

[Questor]

Thank you! I'm glad I asked. There is a lot of good information here for me. I appreciate your taking the time to respond.

Swampman:
What didn't you like about the gulf coast? (I grew up in Miami, by the way.) I'm thinking panhandle or big bend. I like the Appalachicola area a lot.

Sourdough:
Very interesting. My three are Florida, Texas, and Tennessee in that order. I've spent quite a bit of time in northeast Tennessee, near the Bristol-Kingsport-Johnson City "tri cities" area. Pretty nice area indeed. Take a look at Elizabethton as a town and expand out from there. Winters get a bit of ice on the roads at times, but not too bad.

[Ruskin]

Try Ruskin or Sun city Center, Florida.  SCC is a retirement community south of Tampa/Brandon and north of Bradenton.

Ocala has the Villages.  It is newer than SCC. 

[Swampman]

Swampman:What didn't you like about the gulf coast? (I grew up in Miami, by the way.) I'm thinking panhandle or big bend. I like the Appalachicola area a lot.

It's ugly and the hunting is terrible.  The constant threat of hurricanes doesn't help either.  Appalachicola is better than this end.  It's not overdeveloped....yet.  I have to drive an hour and pay $10.00 to shoot.

[Graybeard]

I dunno what yours and your wife's goals are for life after retirement. My advice is to sit down and figure out together what it is you want your retirement life to be like and what your retirement home area must offer in order to meet those goals. I suspect yours might not be same as hers. For the marriage to endure thru retirement both of your goals must either mesh very closely or the area must meet the goals of you both.

Do you want to garden? If so you must have enough land. Do you want neighbors right on top of you? I don't but almost have them anyway. How close does fishing, hunting and shooting ranges need to be? What climate conditions are you looking for? From the three states chosen it sounds like little to no snow is one of the things you want. Are you prepared to deal with the summer heat and humidity? Personally there is no way I'd intentionally put myself in hurricane alley so coastal areas and anything within 150 miles of the coast would not even be considered.

We had hoped to move after I retired out west somewhere with the where to be decided in my last five years of work. Trouble is I retired five years early which meant not enough funds to make the move and we'd not done the research to decide just where either. I was looking at NM, TX, OK, KS and CO in the area where all of them meet. A 100 mile diameter circle touches all five states, the population is very sparse and winters aren't too bad. Now I'll never know if we'd have liked the area or not but we've at least seen some of it. I like trees and am not sure there are enough of them in that big circle so it might be that none of them would have worked for us. I'll admit tho that here where we are the area not the specific piece of property we live on is mightly nice and not a bad place to spend our retirement years.

[Questor]

Thanks, Swampman!
I appreciate it. Shooting is a priority with me, and driving an hour ain't gonna cut it.  To me, fishing is a lot more important than hunting, but it's nice to be able to go hunting.

Graybeard:
You are very astute. These issues are paramount. The biggest issue for us is going to be temperature. My big selling point is we would have good weather year round for going outdoors, and gardening, with the tradeoff of needing to rely on air conditioning from June through Mid-September, just as we now rely on a furnace from Mid-October thru April. This is going to take years to come to an agreement on, but it's not time to start working on it. For me, 93 and humid is just fine.  In any case, Minnesota aint-a-gonna cut it in retirement. I don't want to worry about killing myself or breaking a hip every time I go out to pick up the mail in winter. It's also a high tax state.

[Graybeard]

One nice thing about Bama is property taxes are about as low as any state in the nation that has them so long as you are not in a big city. State income tax maxes out at 5% and with the deductions and such that's on a rather tiny percent of total income. It's again about as light as any state that actually has a state income tax.

Lots of places to fish and hunt here. Not the kinda shooting ranges you're used to tho.

[squirrellluck]

Might ck out north louisiana but then Im kinda biased as I live here. But we do got great hunting and fishing here abouts.

[Cabin4]

Idaho's banana belt. Mild climate about 300 days a year of sun.