Looking to relocate from FL - where in TN? (Knoxville: health insurance, house)

[m5allen]

I have been a lifelong Floridian (Tampa Area) and am absolutely sick of all the heat - we have been setting a lot of record highs lately and I see this as the new normal. Our area in Florida is also getting insanely congested. So I am ready for a change and am looking at relocating to somewhere near or in the Smoky Mountains. I am just starting to do my research on potential areas. Making the move with me would be my wife and my two young boys (6 and 9).

Having young kids, a good school system is very important, so I am trying to find a smaller town (at least smaller than the Tampa Bay area) with a slower pace but that also has good school options for our kids and some infrastructure. We frequently vacation in the North Georgia mountains near Elijay/Blue Ridge, and we love the area, but I just don't think it offers great school options (but I could be wrong).
I am kind of leaning towards Tennessee because of the no state income tax similarity to Florida, but I am open to north Georgia or North Carolina.

My wife works from home and I am also looking for a work from home job or possibly a career change into financial planning. I was an exec at a health insurance company running a corporate development (mergers & acquisitions) team but our company was recently purchased, so I think this is the right time in life to make some changes for the better. I know Nashville has a booming job market, especially in health care, but I think it might be too far from the mountains for us.

Hopefully what I am looking for does exist. Thanks in advance for the recommendations.

[Bamaman1]

If your past job experience has been in healthcare insuance, be aware that there are 200,000 people in Nashville working in healthcare and hospital corporations. They run healthcare of some European countries out of Nashville. And south of Nashville is a great place to live with good schools--Williamson County in particular.

We too hang out in the Northeast GA Mountains. We really like Hiawassee/Young Harris area with Chatuge Lake in the middle of town and the highest mountains in the state.

Northeast Tennessee also has a number of great places to live. If you look in City-Data the last few days, there are a number of places discussed in detail. I like Johnson City/Jonesborough as a high quality of place to live.

Many people have discussed the positives of Cookeville as an up and coming place to live. They have Tennessee Tech university to bring culture to the area.

[lucycat]

I'm in a similar boat, in N FL/Jacksonville area. Born & raised in FL, and sick of the stifling heat, the congestion, the hurricanes. I'm just starting to do some research to see if the place I want to live actually exists: somewhere in/near the Smokies where I can buy a home with beautiful views, with some land/privacy, where we can live out the rest of our days in peace in a great community and without breaking into a sweat just by virtue of waking up and rolling out of bed.

It's just my husband and I, but we'd like an inviting home where family and friends can come stay with us. We both still work in FT remote jobs, so we can work anywhere but reliable high-speed internet is a must. Thinking long-term as we age (we're about 15 years from retirement), reasonable access to health care is important. We're both generally conservative, but we also have diverse and LGBT family members and friends so inclusion & diversity are important as well. Decent availability of restaurants and shopping is icing on the cake.

Are we looking for a unicorn?

[JMT]

While not in the Smokies, you really should check out Cookeville.

Fiber optic / gigabit internet is available not just in town but even out in the boonies. I live 25 miles outside of town in the middle of nowhere (8 miles from the nearest gas station) but I have gigabit internet at my house.

Cookeville is very family friendly: excellent schools, children's museum, children's library, award-winning children's theatre. It's also an open enrollment county, meaning your kids can go to any school in the county as long as there's room, of course, and you provide the transportation. This can come in handy if you live out in the sticks like me but want your kids to go to the all-International Baccalaureate middle school on the east side of town, for example.

While not in the Smokies, it's nonetheless a beautiful area with 100 waterfalls, a dozen state parks, and 1,200 miles of lakeshore within 40 minutes of town. There's whitewater rafting/kayaking just outside of town plus miles of trails and even some natural bridges. And it's only an hour from the Nashville airport which has, by far, the best connections and lowest fares of any other airport in Tennessee.

Being home to the state's flagship technological university (a non-party school) it attracts people from all over the world. It also has things most towns its size (35,000) don't have: NCAA sports, professional symphony, museums, galleries, Shakespeare in the Park, concerts, theater, 200+ restaurants, lots of shopping, several farmers markets (including an all-year all-organic market), and a large regional hospital.

Cookeville was recently featured on an episode of House Hunters. A young couple from Southern California was looking for a better place to raise their growing family, so they headed to Cookeville and bought a beautiful home on acreage, something they could never in a million years afford in SoCal. The husband was able to transfer his job to Cookeville, and the wife got a teaching job here. They fell in love with the area so much that they got their extended families back in Cali to also make the move.

It's super friendly and welcoming. I moved over here from Knoxville 7 years ago, best move I've ever made.

Here's a video of some hopelessly hip millennials who visited Cookeville and some of the area's waterfalls and whitewater rivers. If you can get past their hipness, it's a nice video of the area's natural beauty and even some of the fantastic restaurants in town:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRXNUrHpd8I

[m5allen]

Thanks all for the recommendations so far. I have heard good things about Cookeville. I know my health care experience would translate well to Nashville and I was recently entertaining a job in Brentwood (but it didn't work out). Brentwood looked like a really nice place and it appeared to have fantastic schools, but I think Nashville might be too large of a metro area and I would prefer to be a little closer to the mountains.

Ideally, we would like to buy some land and build a house. I live on an acre right now in Tampa (which is pretty unique for our area) and would like to have at least 3 acres when I move. I love my privacy, peace & quiet and I also like growing fruit like figs and berries. So I would love to be kind of on the outskirts of town but close enough to at least some infrastructure (a Costco would be really nice).

I have also spent my whole life fishing in Florida and also enjoy diving/spearfishing, so I recognize that will be a big change and will miss that part of Florida. But I would happily trade tolerable weather and a change of seasons for the beach/saltwater fishing. And heck, if Bill Dance can make a living on bass fishing in TN, I can get down with some freshwater fishing. I used to do a lot of bass fishing when I lived in Orlando.

[crltn19]

Originally Posted by m5allen

Thanks all for the recommendations so far. I have heard good things about Cookeville. I know my health care experience would translate well to Nashville and I was recently entertaining a job in Brentwood (but it didn't work out). Brentwood looked like a really nice place and it appeared to have fantastic schools, but I think Nashville might be too large of a metro area and I would prefer to be a little closer to the mountains.

Ideally, we would like to buy some land and build a house. I live on an acre right now in Tampa (which is pretty unique for our area) and would like to have at least 3 acres when I move. I love my privacy, peace & quiet and I also like growing fruit like figs and berries. So I would love to be kind of on the outskirts of town but close enough to at least some infrastructure (a Costco would be really nice).

I have also spent my whole life fishing in Florida and also enjoy diving/spearfishing, so I recognize that will be a big change and will miss that part of Florida. But I would happily trade tolerable weather and a change of seasons for the beach/saltwater fishing. And heck, if Bill Dance can make a living on bass fishing in TN, I can get down with some freshwater fishing. I used to do a lot of bass fishing when I lived in Orlando.

Have you looked into Maryville?

[AppalachianAngler]

I get that Nashville is on the large side and not by the mountains, but it may be the only realistic job market for you. You have good experience, but those types of jobs (and pay) are realistically only in the Nashville area. There may be a couple of other similar gigs in Knoxville or Chattanooga, but with much lower pay.

Maryville if you can land in Knoxville; Johnson City or Jonesborough would be a perfect fit from a population, school and lifestyle aspect, but the job market is much smaller than even Knoxville or Chattanooga.

I would focus on the job search before committing to a certain area. If you can somehow work remotely then you could make somewhere like Johnson City work. That may be more possible today than ever.

Financial planning is very difficult without strong local/native ties to the community.

[wizrap]

A friend of mine moved from SFLA to Seymour TN which is outside of Knoxville. They also briefly considered NC but COL is higher than TN (at least as per their research—NC has state income taxes).

[GWoodle]

Via I-40 Nashville is about 3 hours from Knoxville & maybe 4 hours into the mountains. You could look into the Mt Juliet to Lebanon part of the metro area. I-840 from Franklin to Lebanon could be your secret escape to the east.

With so many hospitals & health care companies Nashville is hard to beat for the industry.

[Serious Conversation]

The only Costco in east TN is in Farragut, near Knoxville. That is an affluent area.

The only viable option really is metro Nashville for your career level. You might find something in Knoxville, but even then, professional, white collar jobs have historically been tough to come by in east TN. Pay is an issue, even coming from FL, and if something doesn't work out at one employer in the region, there are few fallback options.

I work in the healthcare sector, and if my job vaporized, I'd have to move.

I also wouldn't count on being fully remote forever. Companies will be wanting to recall people back to the office as soon as the COVID danger passes.