This State Is the Best to Spend Your Golden Years In (husband, Florida)
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I retired to Florida about 15 months ago. We settled here for one reason: my wife’s health. Since moving here her health has improved greatly. Matter of fact, she’s not seen a doctor sense we moved here, which is in stark contrast to her half dozen trips to the doctor up north.
That being said, there are many things to like or dislike about living here, which I’m sure could be said about anyplace else. Yes, it’s pretty hot here in the summer. I like the heat and have learned to do things like yard work earlier or later in the day when it’s not so hot.
There are a lot of people here, no doubt about it. When the snowbirds and tourists come there are far too many people here. Everything takes longer then, much longer. Expect to wait two hours to be seated in a restaurant. Expect to wait at our very long traffic lights through two or three light changes. Expect nearly everyone to turn in front of you because no one has any patience here. The political system here is strictly the good old boy network, and some of the decisions being made are unbelievable. Laws are passed but not followed, they just delay implementing them until local laws can be enacted to forbid the approved law from being put into place.
Like I said, there’s good and bad about Florida. Just like everyplace else.
There is no one "best state" for retirement. Most of these lists cite West Virginia, and you sure as hell would not want to get cancer in West Virginia. It isn't just about taxes, though that's part of it. It's about things like quality medical care. It's about demographics. It's about what kind of cultural life you want. If you want a lot of theatre and concerts of various kinds and drum circles and yoga and classical music and museums and so on and so on, you won't be happy in rural Tennessee no matter how low the taxes are. It's all about what the individual needs to live a happy life.
The mosquitoes are even larger and more agressive in Alaska. When camping, you always bring along a claw hammer to bend their beaks down when they poke through the tent.
You do have to be careful, though, because after a several hundred attached mosquitos, they'll just fly away with the tent.
LOL, yeah, I’ve been to Alaska, too, the mosquitoes were pretty intense, but there they liked my spouse more than me, which I was OK with!
I've read the comments with interest. No one mentioned Oregon as a possible retirement place.
We moved to Ashland, Oregon twelve years ago and are happy with our choice. We have all four seasons but none of them are harsh, although things got pretty hot this summer. We've had fires so can't claim to be natural-disaster free but the state dealt with them pretty well.
We don't have flying cockroaches, an abundance of snakes or alligators. We have the occasional black bear during the summer in the parks, though. There haven't been any attacks since we moved here that I know of.
The main reason for staying here is family. My daughter and her husband and son followed us up here from California. They had another little guy and have established comfortable lives for themselves here. It's wonderful to have them just around the corner.
One daughter lives in Seattle with her husband and the other lives in Oakridge, soon-to-be-Bend with her S.O.
All three girls are close to us. It would be hard to move so far away they'd need plane tickets or long drives to see us.
Florida has some great things going for it but I haven't been there in years. Nice beaches, places to walk, things to do. The hurricanes worry me more than anything else, though, so it wouldn't be my first choice. I also despise heat and humidity, which rules out a lot of places.
So we'll remain here in our little niche town of Ashland. It's a tourist town because of the Ashland Shakespeare Festival but the tourists are pretty mellow and we don't really mind them. They spend money!
When I move south, I am going to get one of those bug zappers that look like a tennis racket, they will turn a bug into dust and light up a room at the same time.....may not turn a roach to dust.....but it will stun one long enough to get him to the toilet
Those things kill everything though. The good insects along with the scary, creepy ones. This is the same as pesticides. We need the beneficials for pollinating, keeping the bad ones from taking over, and many other good reasons. People just aren't happy until everything is dead.
Snowbirds do more damage yearly than alligators---
Believe me--have second home in Sarasota area and snowbirds are the bane of most people's existence even if they also help drive the economy...
Yeah, but the snowbirds won't literally eat you, your kids, or your pets alive either. You can keep them all. Them, and the invasive pythons, and boas plus native venomous snakes, no thanks ! Between them, and the heat I wouldn't even consider living there. The last two reasons are why I'm making plans to leave NC myself, and head back west, I hope.
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 .
Oh no (at least for my part anyway) and I hope that I did not give that impression in my reply. I don't hate Florida at all nor do I hate any state in the U.S. I merely have preferences on where I would live and even with that I could wake up there, spend time living there and decide it's just not for me, for whatever reason (s).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Minervah
No one place can possibly be the best place for everyone. To say that is just ridiculous.
Yep, pretty much this! And truth be told, no one place can guarantee anyone complete Nirvana, no place here on earth.
And the comments about alligators are even more ridiculous than the comments about the weather and the landscape. It's not as if they're roaming the streets down here.
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! Between them, and the heat I wouldn't even consider living there. The last two reasons are why I'm making plans to leave NC myself, and head back west, I hope.
