Planning for Retirement

[Ruralguy]

You might be able to live *near* the beach in VA or NC (well, anywhere in the East that has a coast, but I figured I'd start with warm and not the most conservative there is).

And I agree, 1980's Boston (and perhaps a bit into the 90's) was quite racist. I think I've told the story before of a "friend" who said "I get to use "the n-word" because I'm liberal."   Huh? Crazy.

[Puget]

Is cost of living in Olympia substantially lower than the Sea-Tac metro area?

Full disclosure- I grew up there and my parents still live there, so I may be biased, but also very familiar.

Yes, way less expensive -- Seattle has gotten insanely expensive, whereas in the Olympia/Lacey/Tumwater area a quick Zillow check will show many homes still for under $500k. The cost of restaurants and other things is also certainly lower than in high CoL cities.

It doesn't meet your 200k+ population metric (more like 100k) but it is in pretty easy striking range of Seattle, and even closer to Tacoma, for occasional day trips and specialty medical care if needed (there is plenty of medical care locally, including a hospital, but for really speciality stuff Seattle has UW hospital and Fred Hutchinson).

[secundem_artem]

Maybe a flagship university town in the midwest?  A place like Iowa City has a huge tertiary care teaching hospital and the town certainly punches above its weight with respect to cultural and other opportunities.  There are probably a dozen other places around the country with similar vibes.

[ciao_yall]

Re: Spain - you can buy into the national health plan for a few hundred dollars a month. Covers everything and prescriptions are $5-10 per month.

Cousin raves about the great care at her local clinic and hospital.

[spork]

The hot, humid weather has got me questioning possible retirement locations. Odds are areas that are hot now will get even hotter over the next 20-30 years.

Anyway, question on a different topic: I have some TIAA 403(b) accounts from previous employers. Not sure yet if I can merge them into my current employer's plan, but I should know the answer to that soon. Are there any disadvantages to rolling these old accounts into an IRA under TIAA? I don't expect to make any pre-retirement withdrawals from them.

[jimbogumbo]

Colorado has been great for us, and the area in Boulder County is quite welcoming. Downside is high housing cost.'

Portugal and Spain are doing away with the Golden Visa (I think?). If so, the window is closing.

[clean]

Are there any disadvantages to rolling these old accounts into an IRA under TIAA? I don't expect to make any pre-retirement withdrawals from them.

You may need to check with the state that they were started.  They may have some restrictions on the conversion.  In addition, there may be benefits to keeping them there.  For instance, they MAY have some ability for you to claim health benefits from that old employer, but that may require that you have money in a retirement account tied to the state. 

For instance, a friend has kept accounts associated with NC because if you have 5 years (or so) employment with them, you can claim health insurance benefits in retirement.  (I could be wrong as HE could be wrong, and I may (or we may) not understand the situation entirely).  The point is to make sure that you make a well informed decision before doing what can not be undone!  (Even if he doesnt use the health care, it provides him another option to get a comparison price) 

[spork]

Are there any disadvantages to rolling these old accounts into an IRA under TIAA? I don't expect to make any pre-retirement withdrawals from them.

You may need to check with the state that they were started.  They may have some restrictions on the conversion.  In addition, there may be benefits to keeping them there.  For instance, they MAY have some ability for you to claim health benefits from that old employer, but that may require that you have money in a retirement account tied to the state. 

For instance, a friend has kept accounts associated with NC because if you have 5 years (or so) employment with them, you can claim health insurance benefits in retirement.  (I could be wrong as HE could be wrong, and I may (or we may) not understand the situation entirely).  The point is to make sure that you make a well informed decision before doing what can not be undone!  (Even if he doesnt use the health care, it provides him another option to get a comparison price) 

Coincidentally two of my TIAA plans are with former employers in NC. Both are small private universities and I did not work at either for five years, so I doubt I can claim any health insurance benefits as a retiree. But I will pose this question to the TIAA rep I meet with next week.

[ciao_yall]

Colorado has been great for us, and the area in Boulder County is quite welcoming. Downside is high housing cost.'

Portugal and Spain are doing away with the Golden Visa (I think?). If so, the window is closing.

Spain is not. They have been the Florida of Europe for years.

Portugal wanted in on the deal, then messed up so they are pausing and rethinking.

[Puget]

Colorado has been great for us, and the area in Boulder County is quite welcoming. Downside is high housing cost.'

I absolutely loved living in Boulder during grad school and postdoc, and would move back if given the chance, but it has indeed gotten extremely expensive (and I say that as someone living in a very high CoL east coast area now). Faculty used to be able to afford very nice houses there, not so much anymore.

[Volhiker78]

I am 10 years older than Spork and will be fully retired by 2025.  In 2026, we plan to move from our current location (Tampa) to the Greensboro/Winston-Salem area of NC.  The main reason is to be closer to family; my sister-in-law lives in High Point and my 2 brothers live outside of Charlotte.  Not much difference in cost living from where we are now.

I'd prefer a condo in the heart of the city or within walking distance of UNC-G or Wake Forest.  My wife isn't sold on that and would probably prefer suburbia. 

Financially, we are about 50:50 in terms of equity/bonds.  I plan to further delay SS until closer to 70.  My wife will take it at 63. 

I still need to better plan what I want to do after retirement but traveling/auditing courses are for sure.  Still looking for volunteer work that I will find meaningful.

[spork]

I am 10 years older than Spork and will be fully retired by 2025.  In 2026, we plan to move from our current location (Tampa) to the Greensboro/Winston-Salem area of NC.  The main reason is to be closer to family; my sister-in-law lives in High Point and my 2 brothers live outside of Charlotte.  Not much difference in cost living from where we are now.

I'd prefer a condo in the heart of the city or within walking distance of UNC-G or Wake Forest.  My wife isn't sold on that and would probably prefer suburbia.

[...]

I know this general area. Two points of consideration:

• Sprawl. Are supermarkets, drug stores, doctors' offices, etc. within walking distance? Are there convenient bus routes?
• Quality of medical care. I'd say this is one of the best areas of the country. Atrium Wake Forest Baptist has an excellent reputation. I got great care at Duke. UNC-Chapel Hill is not much farther away. Asheville is outside the Triad and has high real estate costs, but it has a posh hospital. The AHEC networks do good primary care.

[spork]

I'll write a separate post on what I learned about the TIAA traditional annuity.

Las Vegas is not a place I ever considered for retirement, but for those who might be attracted to the idea, The New York Times has a story on the city's increasingly severe nighttime heat. The temperature did not drop below 94 F over three successive nights this summer. "Normal" overnight temperatures are now averaging 80 F, ten degrees warmer than the average in 1950. Don't know if the story requires a subscription to access, but here is the link: Las Vegas is getting hotter.

[paultuttle]

I am 10 years older than Spork and will be fully retired by 2025.  In 2026, we plan to move from our current location (Tampa) to the Greensboro/Winston-Salem area of NC.  The main reason is to be closer to family; my sister-in-law lives in High Point and my 2 brothers live outside of Charlotte.  Not much difference in cost living from where we are now.

I'd prefer a condo in the heart of the city or within walking distance of UNC-G or Wake Forest.  My wife isn't sold on that and would probably prefer suburbia.

[...]

I know this general area. Two points of consideration:

• Sprawl. Are supermarkets, drug stores, doctors' offices, etc. within walking distance? Are there convenient bus routes?
• Quality of medical care. I'd say this is one of the best areas of the country. Atrium Wake Forest Baptist has an excellent reputation. I got great care at Duke. UNC-Chapel Hill is not much farther away. Asheville is outside the Triad and has high real estate costs, but it has a posh hospital. The AHEC networks do good primary care.

From July 2003 to March 2013, my now husband and I lived in the Ardmore area of Winston-Salem (within a short walk of Baptist Hospital and the WFU Medical School, now Atrium). Affordable rents and housing prices, even now, distinguish this middle-class area full of white-collar professionals and educators.

In Winston-Salem, we could walk to Old Salem, the West End antique and thrift shops and quirky local restaurants, and the Central YMCA, as well as downtown (which boasts the smaller "starter version" of the Empire State Building as well as the Sixth Street arts scene, the latter of which has an arts walk event every month--the evening of the first Friday each month, I believe). Film festivals come to Winston-Salem as well, because it's also the site of the University of North Carolina's School of the Arts (essentially a publicly funded performing arts conservatory that's part of the UNC system). Winston-Salem is known as the City of the Arts, and rightly so--its ballet, operatic, and symphonic performances (by a mix of students and professionals) are much higher in quality than others in the state. And there's a string of parks connected by a walking/jogging/bicycle trail that leads from downtown to the city's main reservoir, Salem Lake, which offers fishing and boating (including not only canoeing but small sailboats as well).

Since February 2015, we've lived in the Westerwood area of central Greensboro right next to UNCG and catty-corner from Grimsley High School, my father's first alma mater. There are plenty of students in the apartments right across the street from UNCG, true, but most of the houses in Westerwood, Lake Daniel (i.e., the neighborhood next to the reservoir across the street), and other nearby areas are old streetcar suburbs that have houses from the early 1900s, the 1930s, the postwar boom (usually with a mother-in-law apartment attached, as ours has), and later not-as-attractive teardowns. Affordable rents and housing prices are as good as the stock, but as the third largest city in the state, Greensboro's got greedier real estate agents, so our prices are increasing faster than other places (e.g., Winston-Salem).

We're between two hospitals, each about 6 blocks away (Wesley Long and Moses Cone); Friendly Center is just across Wendover Boulevard--another five minutes' drive from Wesley Long--an outdoor mall offering everything from medical offices to shops, restaurants, and the largest Harris Teeter in North Carolina; next door is Lake Daniel park, complete with a playground, walking/bicycling trail, tennis and basketball courts, and a meandering stream running through it; and downtown Greensboro--or at least Elm Street, which constitutes the bulk of Greensboro's downtown--is a relatively brief walk away. Music and food festivals are the thing here, with multiple downtown parking lots standing in as venues for different music stages (everything from rap, to jazz, to folk, and everything in between). The new Tanger Center for the Performing Arts and Greensboro Coliseum both have major headlining acts come through every season as well as touring productions from Broadway (no need to drive to Raleigh-Durham or Charlotte for the arts, but both are within 1.5 hours if you just need to get away). And of course there's the Depot, on the far side of downtown but still walkable from here--Amtrak or Greyhound can take you just about anywhere.

North of us are two or three lakes that each have parks ringing them. Every few intersections along the major surface roads there are churches, grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants, and other kinds of shops and businesses. The main mall, just down from the Coliseum and right off the interstate, is four stories tall and hosts performances in its lowest-level amphitheater; across the atrium there's an enormous "game room" that can accommodate about 250-300 people at a time in its bowling alley, pinball arcade area, and so forth. 

Couple all of that with being 3.5 hours from the Wilmington and the beach, 3 hours from Boone (Appalachian State and ski country), and 4 hours from Asheville (a truly cool mountain city with the largest private home in North America--Biltmore House--which is just south of I-40 as you drive through the city), as few as 2 hours from the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway (truly stunning in the fall during Leaf Weekend), as well as 5.5 hours' drive from DC and 5.5 hours' drive in the other direction from Atlanta, and you could say it's very nearly ideal.

PM me if you want more.

[Volhiker78]

Thank you Paultuttle.  Very useful for me.  Both Greensboro and Winston-Salem sound very attractive.  It will still be over a year before we can move but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This week starts my final semester. No teaching, just trying to wrap up some last projects. Just yesterday, I reviewed a couple of colleagues' contract renewal research proposal. The three of us started collaborating nine years ago and it's been a great ride. They have found someone starting out in academia to take my place and he will bring a wealth of new ideas and fresh energy.


I've had it good in academia.  Yes, there is a lot of stupid nonsense and I recognize that lots of other faculty work under terrible conditions but it's been a highlight of my career.