Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I suggest, if you are considering moving in retirement that you also look every place other retirees go. Delaware, N.VA., TX., AZ, NV, FL, etc. There are many good reasons retirees select these places. Also look at 55+ communities. Again, many good reasons that retirees select them.
Put together a list of things you like and critical things for you....... do you need to live near family? Do you have specific interests that will drive the location? Do you love/hate gardening? Etc.
When we were going through this exercise, here was our thinking:
* Family —Grandkid, at age 11, was not interested in spending weekends with us....Adult kids also very busy. We decided any place with a 2-3 hour airplane ride would work. So we began focusing on good airports near the new place.
*Interests — Hiking and running — we needed a place with low humidity and interesting nearby places to hike
*Location — good local entertainment and easy to reach day/weekend driving trips. Libraries, medical, airports.
*Community —- local resources to meet other seniors with similar interests
*weather — we only like snow when we visit ski destinations! We can tolerate hot weather.
*Budget — we wanted to spend no more than $500K on a house. We wanted a single story, unattached house with an attached 2-car garage. We don’t like to garden so we wanted a community that provided yard care or we wanted desert landscaping.
*Safety — a big concern...we checked out crime rates. Our community has an active Crime Watch and also has a private security patrol staffed 24/7 by volunteers. We are active volunteers.
Last edited by WorldKlas; 08-02-2019 at 09:14 AM..
Wealthy urban retirees as a source of rural gentrification is in itself a pretty interesting subject matter. A lot of smaller towns in the larger vicinity of the D.C. area have seen that over the last decade or two. It's a weird scenario when the 60+ year old empty nesters are the ones importing the hyper-liberal views and the younger folks are the more conservative types.
That's going to be the case anywhere you have rich urbanites retiring to areas where there is a more conservative small town/rural populace.
But in retirement, we could get twice the home at nearly half the price if we moved to a "working class" community outside the Washington Metro Area. For example, Roanoke VA is a nice enough town but has fewer nice restaurants, poorer schools, less landscaping, rougher looking neighborhoods, less shopping, poorer libraries, more poverty, and social problems. There are some nice neighborhoods but the community does not offer as much as our current hometown of Bethesda MD.
I'm not sure I'd want to move from a 6-figure median household income/$150K town in a major metro to a $41K median household income place that remote from the affluent place things like top medical, a real airport, and the cultural activities. For example, from Bethesda, you could head up I-270 and I-70 to get beyond sane commuting distance to the DC job market and still be within driving distance off hours. You only have to drive to Shady Grove to access the Metro; or drive to Martinsburg or Fredrick to access the (rather limited midweek rush hour) MARC commuter rail.
I suggest, if you are considering moving in retirement that you also look every place other retirees go. Delaware, N.VA., TX., AZ, NV, FL, etc. There are many good reasons retirees select these places. Also look at 55+ communities. Again, many good reasons that retirees select them.
Put together a list of things you like and critical things for you....... do you need to live near family? Do you have specific interests that will drive the location? Do you love/hate gardening? Etc.
When we were going through this exercise, here was our thinking:
* Family —Grandkid, at age 11, was not interested in spending weekends with us....Adult kids also very busy. We decided any place with a 2-3 hour airplane ride would work. So we began focusing on good airports near the new place.
*Interests — Hiking and running — we needed a place with low humidity and interesting nearby places to hike
*Location — good local entertainment and easy to reach day/weekend driving trips. Libraries, medical, airports.
*Community —- local resources to meet other seniors with similar interests
*weather — we only like snow when we visit ski destinations! We can tolerate hot weather.
*Budget — we wanted to spend no more than $500K on a house. We wanted a single story, unattached house with an attached 2-car garage. We don’t like to garden so we wanted a community that provided yard care or we wanted desert landscaping.
*Safety — a big concern...we checked out crime rates. Our community has an active Crime Watch and also has a private security patrol staffed 24/7 by volunteers. We are active volunteers.
This is really excellent advice and tells you most of what you need to consider. I moved inland from and expensive coastal city when I retired, and couldn't be happier. Not sure it would be considered "blue collar" especially, but definitely less expensive than where I came from. Has all the amenities of my former city without all the expense, crowding and hype. Grocery store, hospital, YMCA....all within a few minutes drive. Beautiful state park 20 minutes away. Two major cities an hour's drive away if I feel the need for a big city.
I was able to buy a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood than I could afford in my former location. As they say, your mileage may vary, but I would say go for it and utilize the advice given above.
The only issue with working-class neighborhoods is that some of them have high crime - but some don't. If the working-class town that you are considering does not have higher than average crime, I don't see what the problem would be with moving there, particularly if you like to create your own entertainment and do not depend on the neighborhood to create it for you. For young couples with kids, the issue is that working-class areas often do not have good schools, but that should be irrelevant to retirees.
I'm not sure I'd want to move from a 6-figure median household income/$150K town in a major metro to a $41K median household income place that remote from the affluent place things like top medical, a real airport, and the cultural activities. For example, from Bethesda, you could head up I-270 and I-70 to get beyond sane commuting distance to the DC job market and still be within driving distance off hours. You only have to drive to Shady Grove to access the Metro; or drive to Martinsburg or Fredrick to access the (rather limited midweek rush hour) MARC commuter rail.
Yeah I agree. If it were me but I had the same impulses as the OP, I would be looking at something near Harpers Ferry WVA or down around the Blue Ridge area. Nice country, lower costs but close to DC's above attractions when wanted.
The issue for me would be aesthetics, services and attitudes. I like when people take care of their property and use landscapers, flower people and arborists because it generally looks nicer during my daily runs. I also like to stay close to home and have choices for services that might not be readily available in a working class neighborhood like certain kinds of exercise studios, coffee shops and iPic and art house movie theaters.
Working class politics and values run more conservative than my own and that would bother me also. I don’t want my LGBTQ friends and family to feel uncomfortable when they visit.
My wife and I are always driving around trying to find the perfect town for retirement in a few years.
We decided that it would be nice to have a larger home and at least a quarter acre of land with grass and trees, instead of the cramped townhouse we are living in today because it is the only place we can afford in our white-collar dominated high cost of living community. We live in Bethesda MD.
Because we live in a suburban city that has excellent demographics (Rich people), we get many of the benefits. We get: Well laid out neighborhoods, lots of trees and professional landscaping, great schools, wonderful libraries, parks, low crime and tons of shopping and restaurants.
But in retirement, we could get twice the home at nearly half the price if we moved to a "working class" community outside the Washington Metro Area.
Well I know where you are... I lived/worked in Bethesda much of my life till I went onto other things (37 years in DC metro). I lived in FL for 20 years and ran a business there (engineering services) and FL was great till it got just way too many moving there, started getting traffic, not to mention hurricanes which cost me big one time, etc.
Right now I live near Rochester, NY which is kind of like the town you are talking. I think you have to branch a bit further away from DC to get away from the I-95 corridor. That corridor is tough, built for the tough plus those with the bucks. You want a lot but don't want to pay, but you don't want total rural without restaurants, culture, etc. I suggest avoid PA, WV for not having the culture. Avoid VA for the cost. Avoid all I-95 for the cost in fact (sure somebody will suggest one place on I-95, but anyway it is harder to find).
The issue for me would be aesthetics, services and attitudes. I like when people take care of their property and use landscapers, flower people and arborists because it generally looks nicer during my daily runs. I also like to stay close to home and have choices for services that might not be readily available in a working class neighborhood like certain kinds of exercise studios, coffee shops and iPic and art house movie theaters.
Working class politics and values run more conservative than my own and that would bother me also. I don’t want my LGBTQ friends and family to feel uncomfortable when they visit.
That's one of my big things - a lack of property maintenance.
... We live where there is a major University and educational and cultural opportunities.
Presumably you refer to the U of Maryland? Please consider that as a dispositive factor, meaning, that there's overwhelming benefit to settling in a university-town.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marino760
Well, where I come from suburban is working class. People leave their homes early in the morning to commute to work in various jobs. They work. I assume you also worked when you were living in the leafy suburban area you found to be a much higher quality of life, making you one of the local working class.
When did people living in suburbs stop being working class?
The meaning of “working class” is its own debate (literally – there’s a long-running thread on another subforum). But presumably in present context, "working class" refers to commoditized manual labor that's done by people lacking extensive formal education.
But the more pertinent issue is one of culture, rather than vocation. To give this an unavoidably (but usefully) snobbish tincture, here's a litmus test: is the radio-station in your car primarily tuned to the local classical music station? If so, that's indicative of being non-working-class... even if the driver is heading to a construction-site, and the vehicle is a F-250 4x4.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
... You only have to drive to Shady Grove to access the Metro; or drive to Martinsburg or Fredrick to access the (rather limited midweek rush hour) MARC commuter rail.
By my reckoning, the DC-Boston corridor ends, and "the Heartland" begins, in Frederick. There, and westward, one finds Appalachia, and thenceforth the Midwest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit
Wealthy urban retirees as a source of rural gentrification is in itself a pretty interesting subject matter. A lot of smaller towns in the larger vicinity of the D.C. area have seen that over the last decade or two. It's a weird scenario when the 60+ year old empty nesters are the ones importing the hyper-liberal views and the younger folks are the more conservative types.
This depends of course on the meaning of “conservative” vs. “liberal”, as well as “working class”. The aforementioned retirees might be secular, perhaps divorced and living as boyfriend/girlfriend instead of remarrying, and might take a “liberal” stance on the social wedge issues that have dominated the American political debate for 40 years. But they are “conservative” in the sense of the US Chamber of Commerce. The stock market matters to them, far more than does the price of a gallon of gas, or a gallon of milk, or the cost of child-care. Low taxes, especially on capital gains, matter far more than housing-prices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harpaint
It depends on what you mean by working class neighborhood. In some it means neighbor's RV parked in front of your house regularly, dogs running loose & pooping in your yard, neighbor working on a car in his driveway for months, cars parked on neighbor's front lawn and/or always in front of your house due to adult children living there with their families, trash blowing into your yard, barking dogs throughout the night, etc. Also only chain restaurants & big box shopping. If that's it, no thanks.
Much of this litany (except for the penultimate sentence) refers to iconoclastic behavior, where the persons in question disregard expectations of the sort of lifestyle that's say expected in a suburban HOA. But what of "class"? If the fellow working on the car in the driveway is swearing in French or German, whenever his wrench slips and his knuckles hit a metal protuberance, that complicates the picture, doesn't it?
It has also been my experience, that a certain kind of "blue collar" person takes inordinate pride in having a tidy house, with a manicured yard, and a spotless driveway with late-model high-end vehicles. I find this sort of thrall of materialism to be... nauseating.
My own definition of “blue collar” or “working class” is a locale where the overwhelming majority of denizens have experience limited to the United States…. birthplace, language(s), culture, travel, world-view. For its antithesis, I refer shopping-centers and storefronts where the signs frequently don’t use Latin script, and instead feature Farsi, Korean, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Ethiopian and of course (my personal favorite) Russian. It doesn’t particularly matter to me, that the proprietors dropped out of 6th grade, or that most of the customers are cab-drivers, janitors, nannies, landscapers or carpenters.. I’m just tired of the unvariegated monotony of ‘Murika… Maybe the guy hawking oranges at the corner-stand was a medical doctor in Lebanon or Croatia or whatever, but he can't practice in the US, because of the labyrinthine requirements of the American medical cartel. But one of his sons is a physicist at CERN, and another is a philosophy professor at the Sorbonne. When they come to visit, several cars get stacked in the front yard, as the family converges... mostly old Toyotas that leak oil.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
