Great retirement community, has a in town theater that has many popular musicians playing there monthly, active senior center, everyone drives around in golf carts instead of cars, a village system which kind of limits what kind of stores can be within what range of each other. It has two big lakes with rec areas all around one of them, and at least two smaller ponds with similar rec areas. Over 100 miles of walking/golf carting paths through the woods around the city.
In July 2005, CNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Peachtree City eighth on its list of the 100 Best Places to Live in the United States. In July 2009, Peachtree City was once again ranked eighth on the list.
I used to live there and loved it. I moved away, but would move back in a heartbeat.
Portland OR has a lot to recommend it, and being about 70 miles inland doesn’t get the endless grey skies that Seattle and the coastal areas get. If Portland is too big or pricy, she might find one of the other Valley towns amenable…Corvallis or Springfield/Eugene (both college towns) come to mind.
And since we’re speaking of the Northwest, Boise might be worth considering. Reasonable property prices, lots and lots of great outdoors, good 4-season climate, occasional temperature extremes but they never last too long. Whole state is conservative to a fault, but Boise is one of the few places that does have a liberal contingent and would seem to meet all the other criteria.
SS
Orlando meets all the criteria except that it’s over 90 degrees for a couple of months in summer, and downtown, though walkable, isn’t hugely pedestrian-friendly.
40 minutes from Cocoa Beach, or an hour and a half from the Gulf Coast; plenty of sunshine; one very large university and a couple of smaller ones; a generally liberal social culture (though with a generally conservative culture in the surrounding areas); and lots of cheap housing, especially right now.
Our 1200 sq. ft. 3 bed/2 bath house with two car garage and quarter-acre lot, 500 yards from an A rated elementary school, cost $178,000 in 2008.
Since one of her dislikes about Chattanooga was the religious aspect, I strongly urge her to very wary of the south in general. I can’t stand the way religion has everyone by the throat here in our little section of north Florida. We are planning to retire in western NC and many people, among them those who live there, have been vocal about how I will not find much of a difference in the religion factor. There are enough things about it to outweigh that one downside for me. Just wanted to add my two cents about that.
If my only remaining family members didn’t live in St. Pete, I would probably have gone back to Fort Myers but only because I have a few friends there.
It’s funny that the very first suggestion was Asheville, NC. That’s a place we were all talking about at Christmas (checking real estate listings on Craigslist and such). It will probably be the first of our scouting trips this year to places she’s interested in.
The various GA suggestions would probably feel a bit too much like where she is now. Two of her great loves in life are gardening and music, and the first has been steadily worn away in recent years by the relentless heat and drought of the long TN summer. (She’s tired of getting up at 6 a.m. during the summer to water and weed the garden before it gets too hot to spend much time outside.) I think most places in GA would have the same problem, though it’s interesting that Savannah is cooler because it’s on the coast. I’ll have to look into that.
The Smartmoney Retirement pages that lindsaybluth linked to have some interesting ideas (though I laughed that one of their suggestions is Chattanooga, but many people love it). They suggest Bloomington, IN, which is definitely worth exploring. I believe their music school is first rate, and it’s a part of the country that my MIL is familiar with. (After leaving Chattanooga the first time, she lived for many decades around Cincinnati. I think she might return if it were not for her desire for a fresh start and the presence of her ex-husband and his family in nearby northern KY. That latter factor may rule out Lexington and western KY, too.)
Charlottesville, VA, and the Research Triangle area of NC are other places we’d heard good things about. We’ll definitely check them out.
She’s interested in exploring the Pacific NW, but figured it would be too gray for her liking. It’s interesting that Portland is sunnier than the coastal area; everyone I’ve ever known who’s lived there has raved about it.
Hm, I’ve never asked her that question. She likes that things that sometimes accompany college towns (cultural and intellectual opportunities, liberal politics, yoga studios, Buddhist groups, food co-ops, etc.) I don’t think large groups of young people are a plus or a minus to her, as long as they’re *interesting *young people.
That’s quite true and a very good idea. My wife and I have been suggesting a version of that: We’ve been advocating that once she sells her house, she should put her things in storage and rent furnished apartments in her various candidate areas for at least 3 months at a time, so she can get a feel for a place. The ones she likes best, she can stay in longer before trying to buy a home.
She’s been coming to that conclusion herself. Most of the top U.S. orchestras are in places that are too expensive, crowded, or cold for her. She’s thinking now that being someplace where she could make fairly easy day or weekend trips for her cultural fixes, but live more cheaply and quietly the rest of the time, is the way to go.
That’s a point that will definitely resonate with her. As she puts it, she wants to move to a place where the first question out of people’s mouths when they meet you isn’t “what church do you go to”? As a sometime agnostic/atheist/Buddhist (I think it’s changed over the years), she’s never been comfortable in such an aggressively evangelical Christian area.
Western Kentucky is nowhere near Northern Kentucky — it’s like five-hour trip. I wouldn’t worry about running into ex-family if I were her. Lex is about 90 minutes away — and a completely different aesthetic from NKY/Cincy, too.
Hope she finds a great new home! I love Asheville, too.
Have you looked into the The People’s Republic of Austin? The temperature range is a little on the high side two months of the year, but pretty much everything else fits. The housing is within her budget, and most of the other points are covered in the wikipedia article, excepting the gardening requirement. For info on how Austin supports gardeners(it does, in spades), you can look at the City of Austin Green Garden Initiative.
Living in the south as she does, this might not be on her radar, but retired folks around here get the best of all possible worlds by spending summers in Calgary and wintering in Arizona (you may be familiar with the term “snowbirding”). I believe a lot of people in northern states do that, too. She might enjoy living in a temperate, cheaper area most of the year, and spending the unpleasant winters someplace warm.
With her love of music, she might be interested in Brevard, NC. It’s a fairly small town about 20 miles away from Asheville and is home to the Brevard Music Center. Their summer festival attracts a lot of world-class musicians. I’m not sure what the real estate prices are like there, but I imagine it would be a bit cheaper than right in Asheville.
Though I’m not sure how it rates on the housing affordability (I haven’t lived there in 10 years), think about Austin, Texas - it’s unlike anything else in Texas, and in general is probably one of the more liberal places in the south (Hippy Hollow = clothing optional park). Beautiful, accessible downtown with lovely lake and parks, gorgeous hill country, and not too far from Dallas for additional culture options.
I would definitely move back given the chance, and would consider retiring there myself, if I can afford it.
Having lived in Austin and also would move back in a half-second … it most definitely fails the “<90F for most of the year” test. Housing prices vary but since UT Austin is a huuuuuge university - almost 40K undergrads, over 10K grad students- there is some major competition for affordable housing within the walkable areas.
(That said, gardening is robust, vibrant, beautiful, since Austin gets such light “freezes” in the winter. You just don’t plant (too many!) things that require getting up at 6 am :eek: and work with native/adapted plants instead. Mtgman’s link is a good source.)