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One of my nieces went to medical school in Arizona - so I'm familiar with the medical situation in Tucson based on conversations with her. IMO - you live in a major metro area with good medical facilities (I'm not sure that Green Valley is officially part of the metro area - but 20 miles away isn't far at all). And my only point is seniors should think twice about moving to an area where the medical facilities are inferior or close to non-existent. Because most seniors will need medical facilities (some sooner - some later). FWIW - my youngest brother is a doctor and he lives in Phoenix (he's still working) - another major metro area with lots of good medical facilities (he doesn't think much of Mayo in Arizona - but I'm not familiar with it at all).
When it comes to being close to a trauma center - especially a level 1 trauma center - they are few and far between. Fewer than 10 level 1 places in the whole state of Florida. But most/all(?) have helicopter systems to airlift patients to hospitals (often from motor vehicle accident scenes). Robyn
We are in complete agreement there.
That is one reason why I decided not to move abroad in retirement and eliminated certain US cities from contention.
I do NOT want an ambulance ride of several hours to get to a decent hospital.
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The major knock on Mayo in Arizona is that they do not participate in most health care plans and none of the plans on the exchanges.
That was on my list when choosing a retirement location. I'm 30 minutes by ambulance from a level 1 trauma center and 60-ish miles from all the world class specialists in Boston.
Tennessee has Level 1 trauma centers in the major cities. Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and a couple in far eastern Tennessee. That's great coverage compared to many parts of the country. I'm too much of a skiing & salt water/ocean person to ever consider Tennessee but it's a pretty good option if you're trying to stretch your fixed income and retirement savings.
There are big chunks of the country where access to top tier health care is an issue. If you're in the Mountain Time Zone, you'd better be pretty close to Denver, Salt Lake City, or Albuquerque (or El Paso). In the Pac-NW, it's the same with Seattle & Portland. I don't plan to have some disease that requires a top specialist and a top facility but 30 minutes from a Level 1 Trauma Center might mean the difference between being a vegetable/dead and full recovery for some things.
I don't think the level 1 trauma center stuff is anywhere near as important as other health care stuff that is related to getting older, We have much better odds of getting cancer than being in a major auto accident or fire or being the victim of a gunshot wound. I was glad that my late FIL got good cancer care here - and my father is getting the same now now. My late mother didn't get such swell care in south Florida (probably more a failure on her/my father's part as opposed to the available medical care there).
With helicopter service - most of us are probably much closer to a level 1 one trauma center than we might think. Especially when we might need such a medical service (for most of us - it would probably be an auto accident). Robyn
The temperature that heat pumps become relatively ineffective is about 36-40 degrees. Below that temp the lockout switch should lock out the compressor (outdoor unit) and it should run solely on the back up heat system (electric or gas). I suspect one reason that you were so cold is that the system was not designed for temperatures that cold and was just not able to keep up with the heat loss in the house. I would think that most homes in Florida are not designed for cold temps and may have single pane windows or other design features that cause excessive heat loss in weather that cold. We do have temps here in the Tennessee river valley down to the low teens and a rare single digit night every once in a while, but night time temps in the 30's are common for about 2 months a year. We had a propane furnace in CA, and our system here is dual-fuel, as I mentioned before. We have an underground tank, but we don't have a high water table and the UG tank is great. So much better than the huge unattractive tank we had in CA. Our area has no access to natural gas, so it's heat pumps or propane, or a combination as we have. Even a radiant system will need to operate on either electric or gas to heat the circulating water. I would look into the operating cost of such a system before investing in it.
Yup - that's about when our "heat strips" kick in. High 30's or lower. We don't get many temps like that over the course of a winter. But - in a cold winter - we get some. And - judging from our electric bills - it doesn't seem like an efficient/cost effective way of heating - especially for longer periods of time at lower temperatures.
When we moved here from south Florida and started to think about building a house - we took a contractor level course on building an energy efficient house (a whole day - 8 hours - was free for us since we didn't need the credits) - given by a local power company. What we found out was things that made sense in south Florida didn't make sense in north Florida. And I'm sure that what makes sense in north Florida might not make sense in North Carolina or Tennessee. And what might sense there wouldn't make sense in Massachusetts. Etc. Etc. It is very much one size doesn't fit all. Robyn
Exactly Robyn. Heat strips are definitely NOT a cost effective way to heat a home and using a heat pump the way it was designed (keeping temps within a fairly narrow band, and ramping the setting up slowly so as not to trigger the heat strips) and in the proper climate determines if it's cost effective. We have a super efficient propane furnace as our back up, instead of electricity. In TN electricity is cheap and we could have gone with heat strip back up, but we already had the propane furnace in place when we purchased, so we stayed with it. If we wanted we could heat entirely with propane, but the operating cost would be a little higher and more prone to fluctuations in price.
Looks like our electric rates - at 11.4 cents/kWh (which is a combination of a base rate and a fuel surcharge) - are a bit higher than the national average - and those in Tennessee are a bit lower. There is certainly a huge difference between the highest and lowest rates in the US:
Our bills aren't particularly low. Which is probably simply a function of the cubic footage of the house - and our preferred winter/summer temperature settings. And they vary a lot from month to month (difference between lowest and highest is usually about 50%). Robyn
Regarding the Hall tax, I understand that the State of Tennessee is going to gradually phase it out over the next 5 years (by 2022). See "Gov. Bill Haslam signs Hall income tax cut, repeal into law" in Gov. Bill Haslam signs Hall income tax cut, repeal into law
That's great news for those of us contemplating moving to Tennessee for retirement soon.
Regarding the Hall tax, I understand that the State of Tennessee is going to gradually phase it out over the next 5 years (by 2022). See "Gov. Bill Haslam signs Hall income tax cut, repeal into law" in Gov. Bill Haslam signs Hall income tax cut, repeal into law
That's great news for those of us contemplating moving to Tennessee for retirement soon.
This "Hall Tax" does nothing to hurt seniors. This entire thread beat that point to death. Very few people have direct stock investments outside of retirement savings accounts (IRA, 401ks, 403bs).
This "Hall Tax" does nothing to hurt seniors. This entire thread beat that point to death. Very few people have direct stock investments outside of retirement savings accounts (IRA, 401ks, 403bs).
I wouldn't go that far. True, most people are simply not impacted by the Hall Tax. Even if you are impacted by it, TN's taxes are so low in other areas that it's still retirement friendly.
TN state sales tax on groceries is 5.5% , not 7%. In addition, there is a single item exemption that the sales tax cannot be charged for more than $1600 dollars of value on a single item. So if you purchase a $3000 item, it is taxed as if it cost $1600. And many other states have sales tax, so it's necessary to calculate the difference in sales tax to really see that it's not that big a deal. In my previous home (Placerville, CA), our state and local sales tax came to 9.25%, so that's an additional cost to me of fifty cents per hundred dollars that I spend. To me that's hardly worth quibbling over. We save over $3000 in property taxes and over $500 in vehicle taxes every year in TN. These taxes are differing within the state, however, and it is worthwhile to find out what the taxes are in the specific county you intend to move to.
We save an additional $2000 per year in state income taxes because TN does not tax our pensions, and will not tax our SS when we start to collect it. We would have to pay taxes on the dividends and interest too in other states without the exemptions mentioned above.
The cap of $1600 in the single item cost is a major improvement over CA. I bought a $38k car on my last visit to TN and was so surprised at how LOW the sales tax was. I am used to CA taxing the entire price!
That was a major cost savings and likely will make up for all the other sales taxes I pay for the next 2 years!
How is this different than any other state that taxes dividends and interest income?
Are the taxes you are referring to here federal taxes? I'm guessing that this article talks about an additional 6% tax in TN, over and above what you already pay federally. I may be wrong though.
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