Dave, who has a good sense of humor, wanted to give me an idea of what he was looking for in a retirement home. Here are his requirements, and he’d like to keep it under $800,000:
MY THOUGHTS ON RETIREMENT
I realIy don ‘t want to stay in Arkansas forever, yet the alternatives seem all to have drawbacks.
- Florida is out because of humidity and overcrowding and crazy people.
- I grew up in California but it is full of too many people now.
- Still some very beautiful unspoiled places in California but too expensive.
- I visited Colorado in January. It did not appeal to me much but the scenery is spectacular.
- New Mexico was shabby looking, full of poverty.
- The whole Midwest area and the upper-south is full of crap and clod hoppers.
- There is the Mississippi coast but it is in the shop for repairs right now after Katrina.
- The U.P. of Michigan is full of tourists and tourist leeches in the summer and way too cold in the winter.
- The East Coast? Fugetaboutit.
Here are my simple requirements:
- Cool and breezy in the summer. Full sun but I warn you, I don’t want to break a sweat.
- Warm, sunny winters but cool enough for a sweater daily.
- Spectacular autumns and springs with endless days of vegetative growth, wild animals and butterflies. The morning doves softly cooing in the trees.
- High up in the mountains with awe inspiring views.
- Near the seashore with excellent surf casting, mornings and evenings.
- Soft, talc like sand that doesn’t get into your clothes, shoes or car.
- Oh, and great cathedral-like sunsets.
- Low cost of living but I don’t want to live near any poor people.
- Unspoiled and teeming wildlife.
- No tourists.
- Peace, tranquility, no crime. For God’s sake, no crime.
- Very few neighbors, yet plenty of friendly people with similar outlooks and taste as mine.
- No traffic tie-ups but quick access to world-class shopping, live theater, constant entertainment with low ticket prices and high availability of seats.
- Absolutely no noise but yet a feeling of being in a cosmopolitan area. (Like being dressed in expensive clothing, having a bank account full of money and sitting, feeding the pigeons in Central Park. That kind of feeling.)
Have I left anything out?
How do you like my chances of selling him a house around San Diego? I have the cooing doves in the morning, but I don’t see many butterflies!
If anyone can find Dave his retirement home in San Diego, it’s you. *Chuckle* You do like a challenge, right, Jim?
PS Mahalo for the laugh, I’ve had a lousy day…
Good luck on this set of requirements. Number 8 presents the first problem and it gets worse from there. If you can live without the sun, Oregon coast hits this list pretty good.
Yes, get one of those carbon monoxide kits, a dry cleaning bag, about one foot of velcro. Im sure you will wind up in a beautiful place.
Plant milkweed and you will get butterflies. As for his wish list? It doesn’t exist.
Northern Idaho outside of Coeur D’Alene.
Tisvilde, Denmark, 36 miles north of Copenhagen is pretty close. Hits most of these. Safe, cosmopolitan, lower cost of living, unspoiled countryside and beaches, perfect summer weather, 20-hour daylight, warm never hot. The winter days are short, but not too cold since you are on the coast.
Jim:
Sure glad you disclosed he has a “good sense of humor”! He needs to keep that quality, because the list of “wants” does not exist.
jh, you’re killing me!! 🙂
I’m still laughing!
A RV and a driver?
Buy a house anywhere and have a terrific home theater, lots of wine, and a good imagination.
I can think of the perfect place for well under 800k…..close your eyes!
There…that wasn’t so hard was it?
What about Canada?
Northern California. EG, around Anguin in Napa, the area around Sebastopol or the Russian river area in Sonoma, the Mendocino area, etc…
Beautiful, close enough to cities for logistics, far enough away to not care.
As much as I would like to help him, I think his requirements are somewhat impossible to meet in a single location. For instance, I was thinking somewhere like Sedona: warm summers, cool winter nights. But, tourists galore. Maybe a smaller Hawaiian island, like Kuaui or Lanai. But, then shopping is out. Maybe somewhere in Oregon, but not really that warm. I guess the best idea would be Costa Rica, where one of my law partners retired to, but it has become increasingly touristy, so maybe that’s a no go. Maybe you should sell him two houses: a condo in a warm city for the winter and a remote mountain villa for the summer.
I suppose the faucets should be solid gold and run pure Cristal too, right?
Man, is he dreaming. I tell you what. If you can fulfill his list, let me know as I’ll be next in line.
Chuck
Cape Town South Africa (no crime and no poor people would be difficult but the $400 000 left over after buying his trophy house could be invested and give him a better return than an engineers wage!)
Johannesburg would give problems with crime, poor people and lack of a beach though having assets in excess of $1 000 000 would put you in the top tenth of one percent of the population in terms of money (50 000 of us out of 52 000 000 people have assets of mor than a megabuck)
I sense a wee bit of sarcasm in Dave’s requirements. At least, I hope so (it’s so hard to tell these days).
Sounds like he needs 2 homes, one in the coastal south , and one in Wisconsin. And he will have a couple hunnies left over.
There is no perfect place – trust me, we tried a lot – South of France (too many French), Northern California (too much traffic and too expensive), Nevada (to dry and no farmers market because no farmers!), etc. etc. We finally settled for a “home port” in San Diego, and today I am writing from the suburbs of Zurich, Switzerland, where we have use of a condo twice a year.
My advice – find a “home port” (San Diego is nice), and then make a lot of friends where you can trade homes, etc. Our Swiss friends will spend Christmas at our SD place while we go to Hawaii to spend time in a friends time-share there. When we get too old to travel, then we will just sit home and look at our travel photos and try to remember where they were!!
BTW – the “home trade” won’t work if your home port is Arkansas. Do you think any friends in NYC, Las Vegas, London, etc. would want to spend two weeks in Little Rock? A good airport is a must, which rules out coastal Oregon.