A little background: I live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. My wife has a successful bookkeeping business. I teach part-time at a local community college, and work part time for my wife. I turned 52 last month, wife will be 53 next month. We did not make good decisions when we were young, and so we have some catch-up to do as far as saving for retirement. We’ve recently acquired a financial advisor, and have come up with a plan.
I’ll be getting my student loans forgiven sometime next year, under the 10-year public service loan forgiveness plan. Once that is done, I am going to phase out the teaching and ramp up working for my wife. Doing so has far greater potential for both of us to make more money, and sock more away.
We’ve always planned on leaving this area when we retire. We’ve mainly had some vague plan of moving to the coast. But, once I’m done with the college, there’s no reason to stay here, no reason to wait. 95% of our bookkeeping business is all done online, so we can move anywhere we want. We might lose a few clients, but they will be easily replaced. Now I have a bug up my butt about moving somewhere where the cost of living is much lower. That would mean more money saved.
So, here’s what this thread is really about. The number one consideration for me, in deciding where to live, is climate. I hate the summer heat. I fled to Portland from California 20 years ago, for that very reason. It used to be that the summers here were short, with a few days here and there where the temperature got above 90. Climate change has, er, changed all that. Now we get heat waves, and it doesn’t really cool down at night.
The coast would be the ideal place as far as that goes. The temperatures rarely get above 80 there. But, my second most important consideration is cost of living, and the coast ain’t it.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to live in a place that has real winters. Like, where it snows, and the snow sticks around. We get a little bit once or twice each winter in Portland, but it melts away within a day or two. My idea of paradise is Juneau. The temperatures rarely get above 70 in the summer, and it snows in the winter. But, again… the cost of living there is sky-high.
So, I’ve been researching places that would work. Then I have to sell my wife on these candidates. HER biggest requirement is that we be near the water. She doesn’t ever want to be “land-locked,” as she puts it. I’ve been looking at cities on the Great Lakes. We want something smaller than places like Chicago or Milwaukee, but big enough that, 20-30 years down the road, we’ll have easy access to good medical care. I’ve narrowed it down to Duluth and Green Bay.
I’ve read about what the climate is like in both, and I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather forecasts for both over the last couple of months. Of the two, I’m way more interested in Duluth. It seems like it has cooler summers than Green Bay, which appears to be similar to Portland. I also keep seeing that these areas are more humid during the summer. I’m not really sure what to think of that. I’ve lived in California and Oregon all my life, where it doesn’t get excessively humid. Sometimes we’ll get rain in the summer here, and it does get muggy then. I recall two times in my life when I’ve experienced high humidity: visiting Honolulu in May, and Dallas in October. I think in both cases the humidity was like 98%, and it was awful. It was like trying to breathe water. Dallas was way worse, because it was also like 100 degrees. How would Duluth and Green Bay compare?
But I’m also a little concerned about the winters. I’m enamored over the idea of having snow, but I’m worried that going to Duluth would be too extreme. I mean, I really like the idea, but I’ve read Duluth is one of the snowiest places in the nation. Am I going to get halfway through my first winter there and be like “WTF was I thinking?!”
We are planning a trip next August to visit both Duluth and Green Bay. I’ll find out for myself what the summers are like then. Visiting during the winter won’t really be feasible, though. But anyway, in the meantime, I’m hoping to get thoughts from people who are familiar with either or both areas, on what they are like – both the climate, and just in general.