I’ve been thinking for a while that when the time comes, the ‘time’ being retirement AND our parents have passed, we will move out of CA. I was born and raised here in the LA area. Lived my whole life here and I’ll be honest: I love LA. I love the beach, I love the weather, I love big city, I love the restaurants, I love the variety of things we can do, and I love living in a big enough place where there are always ministry opportunities with new people. I don’t love the traffic.
But I’m now 61 and I live in a two-story condo. At some point, it will be unrealistic to go up and down stairs. So we’ll have to sell and move at some point, and we’ll probably just move out of the state to someplace where it’s much cheaper to live. I am a huge sissy in the cold so I don’t want to go somewhere where I’m gonna freeze my fanny off in winter, but I don’t want to go someplace where it’s gonna be 120 in the summer either, meaning Vegas and Phoenix or Tuscon are out. Moving up the coast to the bay area would be ideal for the weather, but that would still be CA, and to be honest, the other thing I’m getting of tired of here in CA is the political climate. I think our beautiful state is being run by people who have utterly misunderstood some very basic things about humanity and the way life works, and are committed to governing the state in a way in which THEY feel is progressive, but I feel is a road to ruin.
So where we move will be most likely out of CA. Nevada is not really under consideration and most of Arizona is not really under consideration either, though Flagstaff might be nice. Utah is not under consideration either. I looked into St. George, but the weather was said to be similar to Vegas, so… no. Going further east than Colorado and New Mexico gets into humid territory, so the places I’ve kind of identified as possible destinations are all along the Interstate 25 corridor: Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Pueblo and Colorado Springs. I’ve been to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and they’re nice. I’d like to check out Pueblo and Colorado Springs maybe next year.
We’ll be looking for a 3 bed (we want to have guest room as well as an office), 2 bath (we need a bathroom for each of us) place, likely a condo or townhome, because I think at the point we need to look out for going up and down stairs, it would probably be wise to have some neighbors close by in case of emergencies. But I could also consider a house too. The winters aren’t too bad in those areas- there will be some snow, but nothing radical. The climate is still dry, which I like. I don’t really want to deal with super humid.
I don’t want to live in a rural area. I don’t need to live in a huge city like LA, but I do need to live in an area with 150k or so people. I want coffeeshops, restaurants and shopping. I’m hoping to work until I’m 70 or so. I’m still 9 years off of that goal. Things can change between now and then, but I feel like I could go until then, and at that point, we should be set enough to where we can live out comfortably and have enough to still travel and see things, not just stay home and clip coupons in order to live. Our current place will be paid off in another 2 years and after that we can start socking away what we currently are spending in paying down the remainder of the mortgage.
But Pueblo has around 180k people in its metro area, several calvary chapels, and restaurants and shopping. Plus, Colorado Springs is only 45 minutes up the 25, so we can get to a larger metro area without too much problem. With the traffic here in LA, even the local malls still take 20-25 minutes to get to, and they’re less than ten miles away.
The Colorado Springs metro area has around 750k people, so definitely large enough to have everything we’d want in a city area. It’s also only 70 miles south of downtown Denver, so we’d be close enough to a major city in case we need something there.
Tax rates are a lot lower than here in LA. But that’s probably going to be true in about 90% of the places I’d look at outside of CA.
Still doing some research, but thinking about taking a scouting trip out there around June next year. If we like what we see, we’ll take some subsequent trips during the winter too in order to gauge the place in all kinds of conditions.
I will also note that there has been some consideration of moving, even in the area. It would be nice to reduce the drive times. Maybe after we get the current place paid off in a few years, I could think about moving somewhere between my mom’s place and here at work. But that’s still two years off.