I would agree completely. The one advantage we have up this way is the wide evacuation corridor. Sadly the interstate system struggles when/if that time comes, but if you know how to navigate back roads in can be interesting from what I hear. I worked with the Hurricane Hunters for the last 35 years or so until I retired in 2017(after storm season!) so I’ve never run from a storm, always ran to them! It’s an odd feeling for me now? lol
Since no one has spoken up about Texas I will chime in here. This state has whatever weather and topographic features you want but I would say it is hot all over during the summer for a couple of months. I am in the Dallas/Fort Worth area which is quite large and growing. Fort Worth is our home and we moved here in 1981 and raised our kids here.. Great place to live and housing not out-of-site (yet). Plenty of places to live in relative comfort and not be taxed to death starting west of Fort Worth in Weatherford and moving East through Fort Worth, Arlington (Cowboys ATT stadium and Texas Rangers live there) to Dallas and beyond. North of Dallas gets real expensive, Frisco, Plano, McKinney, etc. and then further North gets very nice like Denton, Sherman, etc. South of Fort Worth/Dallas is reasonable such as Waxahachie, Granbury, Ennis. There are a lot of lakes in Texas where one can live close and enjoy. I grew up in Houston and lived there as an adult until 1981 and I never liked the humidity, mosquitos, and cockroaches that come with the Texas heat combined with the humidity. Austin is a great place but getting more expensive and crowded by the day. Housing costs alone in Austin are twice what they are in Fort Worth. San Antonio has a lot of Texas history and culture (IE: The Alamo) and from what I have read recently it is predominately blue collar and cost of living is less than an Austin, North Dallas etc. All things considered give Texas a hard look, come and visit before you make up your mind.
Don't come to Texas, softball hail storms, 110F degree's, And outrageous property taxes. And you'll be competing for a home with all the Californian's now.
retired but staying in CT. have no desire to move. I like it when all the people up here say their moving south. that means less cars on the road and less idiots to deal with. i'll keep waving good by....for good. lol
Not sure what part of Texas you reside in but we have not seen a hail storm with softball size hail in our section of D/FW in the 38 years we have been here but once, when a 500 year storm came through. We do get pea size to golf ball size maybe once during the year but it is localized based on where the thunderstorms end up. There have been tornado's here and there but not like parts of the mid section of the U.S. We have not had 110 degrees in D/FW area but once or twice in the past 5 years at least. We do get 104 - 108 a few times during the summer. Property taxes vary depending on where you settle. Outside of a major cites the taxes are lower for a county homestead. Legislature is working on lowering real estate taxes this year but we shall see how that turns out.
Mayfest in Fort Worth Wylie in 2016 , then Plano In 2017 then Rowlett In 2015 Tornados . I’ve had at least 4 cars damaged and two roofs replaced .
I like it here in DFW. Plenty of water to go to within an hr or two. Drag strips open pretty much year round. Some storms as noted above. If the roads ice over I call work and tell em I'm not coming, but you will be retired so that is a non issue. I've seen several nasty hail storms. Decent insurance will cover you. It is hot in the summer(and spring and fall) . We have a pool for that. And I doubt you will be looking at a home that doesn't have central heat and ac. Car activities you say? More than you can attend. Pretty much every weekend there is some type of gathering and some during the week. There are websites and once you get "in" they will be emailing stuff non stop. As noted above, we have pro sports, minor league sports up in the north of Dallas, amusement park, water parks, nature places for hikes(ft worth botanical garden and a nature place in north Arlington) . Gardening clubs, running(races every weekend if you are into that), festivals within reasonable drives( Tyler rose, and other stuff in east Texas, a google search will turn up more than you will want to read about.) I looked at Florida about 30yrs ago, and we did Houston from 03-06, too humid for me. If I looked again it would be north and south Carolina. But I doubt we will leave here.
Texas is on the table. Got caught in an ice storm there a few years ago. We get a few 100 degree days here, they don't bother me, the -20 with -50 wind chill, not liking so much. The Mrs, would prefer some seasons vs warm all the time. I'd live in a hut in Hawaii but my wife fears we would never see kids and grand kids. I'm looking at a basket of costs vs what I have currently. Taxes and insurance are the biggest variables between locations which is why I compare between my current values and local. I may end up paying more, the same or less for a house than I realize from the sale of my current home depending on where we land. Snowbirding is also a possibility. The one challenge I'm not sure how to address is only one of the kids has sort of landed and I expect him to stay in Michigan for the time being. The middle two prefer Colorado I think and with the youngest it's too early to tell. I've heard from many that the kids don't come to you, you travel to them.
John, glad you mentioned that on pension taxes. My wife’s may be effected by that? I may be following you down there. I can’t see car insurance being more than here in Mass? And let’s not forget the damn excise tax on every car you own. The gift you keep on giving to the government every year.
Yep, we lived through the Mayfest hail storm since we were 3 miles from Trinity Park where the storm hit all the folks at the festival and did so much damage to cars, roofs, etc. We stepped out of a Luby's cafeteria abut 6 PM, looked up and the sky was 'green', a very strange color. Drove home quickly and got in the house when the hail started as pea size and we watched it grow to golf ball then baseball size in about 90 seconds. It was the volume of the hail stones that was unreal. You must live in the North Dallas corridor per the map you included where we seem to always watch the severe weather occur although Wylie and Rowlett are a bit east of Plano etc. Coming up 9 years ago this coming March 28 I lived through the tornado that went from west side of town through downtown Fort Worth. I was downtown in a street level art gallery about to give a presentation when the storm went through downtown. Lots of property damage but only one loss of life. Lots of stories to tell about that day at 6:02PM. I still maintain Texas as a state and north Texas as a whole is a great place to live. Sorry about your losses.
Georgia is a low tax state as long as you don’t want to live with the trust fund hipsters in Atlanta. I’m less than an hour from Atlanta (airport, concerts, art museum, zoo, sporting events) but I’m on acreage in farm country. It’s a huge state; we have the mountains (cool even in summer), the northern foothills and peidmont, then the southern, warmer, more rural plains, plus the coast. Hope you like college football, though! Patrick
I do know what you mean but in some cases it's a matter of perspective. I've lived in NJ my whole life, outside of six months of 1983 in Houston, and if you're used to things a certain way you might not think too much about them. For instance, while our car insurance is high, I've never known anything other than high car insurance. On the other hand, our DMV fees are not the least bit excessive compared to some other states (like NY). Personally, I'll never understand the states that get away with charging personal property taxes! Paying tax on your car, furniture, etc. year after year? Totally foreign concept to me. At least we only get taxed once for things like that. I can see why retirees wouldn't move here but I'm retiring in a couple of months and I'll probably never leave NJ. The wife and I just bought a beautiful 2BR 2 bath 1400 sq ft house in a 55+ development, just 10 miles from the beach, where the property taxes are under $2400 (which is 25% of what you'd pay on an "average" house in NJ) and we're just over an hour from friends and family where we grew up in North Jersey and just under an hour from Atco Dragway.
Tax on stuff you already own? How could they possibly get away with that? When I first moved here and started my company the county sent me a letter asking for a list of all the tools and equipment I owned so they could asses a tax on them. I told em to stick that up their ass's. I paid tax on this stuff when I bought it and I'll not pay another dime to them or anyone else.Really did write that on the form they sent. Not heard another word about it to this day.
That argument also applies to the ‘inheritance tax’. Right now it only affects very large estates, but it’s wrong no matter who it impacts. My complaint is 1) everything the deceased owned was taxed as it was earned, yearly if it was property, and again if it made any capital gains. That, along with 2)-what if the deceased left behind a lot of property (paid for and taxed already) and no cash? The heirs have to sell part or all to pay taxes on it. It’s been a quiet issue for a while, but it will come up again as a way to ‘make the rich (and their family when they die) pay their fair share’ so we can afford new socialist ideas. Patrick
We have a lot of people here from the N.E. who tried the S.E. for retirement before moving here! Bob H.
You have to look at so many more variables. The weather in South Florida (Port St Lucie and below is the best. As you get farther north and more central the weather gets horribly hot and muggy. Property down south is much more expensive than northern Florida. I bought 6 acres, 1500 sqft house (fixer upper but with a new roof) with two outbuildings, four stall pole barn, new well, fenced and cross fenced for $82,000. Put $15,000 in the remodel doing it all myself over a year. Taxes are $1100/year. 50 minutes from the Gulf and 75 minutes from the Atlantic so hurricanes are just bad storms here. I am high so no mosquitoes ever, you can sit on my front or back porch anytime day or night. I do have lots of deer, Coyotes and a Florida Panther (she's small about 50 lbs) that the horses chase out of the fields. Downside is the hot, miserable, no breeze summers from April 1st till October 31st. Steve lives about 45 minutes north-west of me. About 10 miles from me I just looked at 5 acres, nice 1800 sqft house with a 2400 sqft enclosed bldg (finished inside and out) for $160,000 but it sold in four days and I missed it. A 2400 sq foot garage and I missed it! Argh!!!!! Mikey
