How To Find The Best Place To Enjoy Your Retirement In 2023—And Beyond

15.09.2023 - 12:09 / forbes.com

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till in their mid-50s, Gloria and Kevin Murray of Morgan Hill, California, at the Silicon Valley’s southern tip, are planning well ahead to enjoy their future empty nester status, and ultimately, their retirement years. They recently bought a house 500 miles to the north in Bend, Oregon, where they hope to kayak, ski, bike and golf. “We are outdoor adventurers,’’ says Gloria. The youngest of their three daughters has two years to go in high school, so they won’t be moving until at some point after her graduation, perhaps a few years after. Meanwhile, they’re gradually moving their belongings to Bend. Kevin, a tech company marketing exec, plans to work remotely and the couple figures they’ll turn their Morgan Hill home of 20 years into an investment property, renting it out. “We’ll be ready to do stuff just for us,” says Gloria.

Baby Boomers and Gen Xers with financial means have more options than ever for pursuing their passions in retirement. Remote work makes an early, pre-retirement move possible. And recent housing appreciation, frustrating as it is for Millennials and Gen Zers trying to break into home ownership, gives older generations even more options.

In 2019, retired-for-two-years John and Terry Fish, moved from the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, D.C.—he had been a lobbyist, she a Congressional staffer—and bought a home on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, an upscale suburb on the Atlantic Ocean across the harbor from Charleston. But after four years of enjoying the area’s charms, “we were ready for a new adventure,” John says. So, John, now 57, and Teri, 53, sold their large home and, thanks to its price appreciation, were able this year to buy a slightly smaller one in Bend for cash. (The median home in Bend goes for $724,000, 78% above the national median.) The Fishes had visited Bend over the years, and with no kids, didn’t hesitate to pick up and move with their two English cream golden retrievers.

Terry and Al Hershey took a unique, and more leisurely, approach to finding their retirement bliss. Already retired and living in Bonita Springs, Florida, the now 76-year-old couple (they met in college and have been married 54 years), loaded their goldendoodle and Aussiedoodle into their 34-foot RV in 2020 and drove to Traverse City, Michigan, an idyllic town of 16,000 on a bay opening to Lake Michigan, 250 miles northwest of Detroit and 320 miles northeast of Chicago. They fell in love with and purchased a 132-year-old, two-story 5-bedroom Victorian three blocks from Grand Traverse Bay and lived in their RV during several months of extensive renovations, finally occupying their dream home in 2021.

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