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Four Reasons to Consider Moving, Five Strategies for Retirement Living, and a Game to Make Planning Fun

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know

— chorus from “should I stay or should I go,” by The Clash

With retirement on the short horizon of 3–4 years, it’s time for us to think about where we want to live. Should we leave the house we’ve spent close to thirty years making a comfortable home we love, pull up our roots, and move somewhere new? Maybe.

In this article, I will look at reasons for staying and moving, then cover some strategies we will consider when making our plans, and end by telling you how we’ll make this a fun and learning experience for ourselves.

Four Reasons to Consider Moving

We’ve been in our current house for a long time now. We’ve put a lot of effort into making it comfortable, a place to call home. And we are enjoying living in this home.

So why should we consider selling and starting over again? Here are some common reasons for moving:

1. Mobility
2. Climate
3. Cost
4. Practicality

Let’s consider each of these in turn:

First, mobility. As we get older, some of us become less mobile due to the natural aging of our physical bodies. Now, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but to many people, myself included. Arthritis in my knees, for example, makes going up and down stairs painful. I am anticipating that this will not improve as I get older.

Sure, I could make things easier by getting new knees (which I might do, whether I move or not). I could also modify the house to make it more accessible: a stairlift or elevator to help negotiate the stairs; ramps to make it easier to enter the house from the street, garage, and back yard, etc. Or, I could consider moving to a house configured so that everything is on one level.

Another aspect of mobility has to do with getting places. Currently, most places require that we hop into the car and drive. We could change that by moving to a house in a downtown area or close to/within walking distance of shops, attractions, and events.

Next, let’s look at climate. Where we currently live, winters can get quite cold and uncomfortable, and summers can get quite unbearably humid and hot. We’d like to change that up a bit to enjoy more moderate temperatures all year. We could still take a trip to enjoy the snow somewhere, though I am not likely to want to travel to “enjoy” some hot and sweltering place.

As we consider places to live, we will also keep Climate Change in mind, knowing that the warmer places are going to tend to get warmer/hotter, and even the cooler places may get warmer, during our lifetime.

Then, let’s consider the cost. We still live in a large house, but with our family grown and the children away and on their own, it is a larger house than we really need. It costs money to continue to maintain this big space, from utilities to maintenance, to insurance, to taxes, to services like lawn care, insect control, and house cleaning. By moving to a smaller space, or “rightsizing,” we should be able to save considerably on living expenses.

With the proceeds from the current house, we might also be able to buy two smaller houses in different locations, and rent one out while living in the other. This would not only provide savings of downsizing but also give us a passive rental income or better, with an Airbnb business we could move between the two locations and have an income stream as well.

Finally, there are practical aspects. Many of the items we’ve discussed above are practical. Additionally, think of all the treasures accumulated during a lifetime of living! Moving is an opportunity to sort through and eliminate the things we no longer need. Your children (or other heirs) will thank you for doing it! Better to do it now, or over a longer period, than to wait until there is a need to move into assisted living, or worse, leave it for someone else to sort through after you’re gone.

Five Strategies for Retirement Living

Here are five strategies for living in retirement:

1. Staying Put
2. Downsizing Nearby
3. Homesteading
4. Snowbirding
5. Stepping Stones

Staying Put is our first strategy. There are a lot of good reasons not to move: the house is paid for, the children are settled and established nearby, the house is full of memories, we can modify it if we need to account for mobility issues, and it just “feels right.”

For some people, this may be a good strategy, especially for folks who have a strong network of friends and/or relatives in the area, who are comfortable with the climate and have ample activities and events in the area to keep occupied during retirement.

There are some additional things that could be done with a Staying Put strategy, since the house is likely oversized for our needs, to save costs or bring in additional income. First, we could rent some of the spare space to one or more boarders, without having to modify the house. Or, we could create a second living area (for example, add a separate entrance to the basement and be able to lock off the internal door) for additional privacy. And, we could still offer the house through Airbnb or other rental plans if we plan to take extended trips or travel.

My next strategy is Downsizing Nearby. If we have all the things we want in the area, then this strategy might make sense. The plan here is to find a suitable house in the same area. We would still need to eliminate belongings, etc. to move into the smaller house. The main advantage is that we wouldn’t have to leave friends or relatives or other activities, and we would still be in a relative comfort zone of knowing where things are in the area.

One thing we might consider with this strategy would be a move to an “active” senior living or integrated retirement living area. Typically these are gated communities with a clubhouse and activity center, which are connected to or have arrangements with assisted living facilities or skilled nursing facilities. The idea here is that one could own and live in a detached house or townhome in early retirement, but move fairly easily into other facilities if needed because of health situations.

Next, let’s look at Homesteading, or relocating to someplace farther away, with the intention of planting oneself at the new location and staying there, possibly forever. This strategy might be useful for those who don’t like their current locale, or who want to get away from the ever nagging “friends,” or who just want to have a change and breath of fresh air.

This might also be a good strategy for finding an easier climate for living. There actually are places (Hawaii comes to mind) with an even and livable climate year-round. This might also be a good choice for people who have always wanted to live somewhere special and now have the opportunity to do so.

Homesteading would still allow looking at things like Senior Living / Active Living, and, of course, Downsizing.

I think everyone is likely familiar with the term Snowbird. If like us, you are from the East Coast of the United States, the term Snowbird causes us to think of New Yorkers moving to Florida. But the Snowbirding strategy is really about having two places to live, (and one of them doesn’t have to be Florida) to avoid extremes in the weather. I suppose there are probably “reverse Snowbirds” who enjoy and seek the extremes.

This strategy is useful to even out the harsh winters and summers and can be executed by either selling a current home and buying in two “better” locations or hanging on to the current home and buying a second home in a “better” location. This strategy can also be combined with Staying Put and Downsizing. One advantage is that, unless you buy a second home furnished, you may have enough belongings to furnish two smaller houses.

Our final strategy, Stepping Stones, is good for adventurers who have extensive Bucket Lists, or who want to do a lot of travel in retirement. The idea here is to purchase another property in the area of their next big item in the bucket, or close to their next major adventure, to be used as a base of operations. For example, if I want to visit lots of places in the Pacific, I might buy a property in Hawaii I could use as a base, or stepping stone, to my adventures. I wouldn’t necessarily sell my original house because I might return. Or I might sell my house, move to the new location, then look for a stepping stone for the next adventure.

With Stepping Stones, multiple properties could also be leveraged as income properties, especially if they were to be in desirable locations.

The House Game

We’ve talked about four reasons for moving, and five strategies for retirement living. As we are still on our journey towards retirement, we have yet to settle on our specific reasons or choose our strategies, but we want to start taking steps in that direction. So we’ve decided to make a game out of looking for a house.

Each week, my wife and I will (separately) look for a house for sale in an area we are interested in, and on the weekends we plan to discuss the houses and why we like them, and the locations we’ve chosen. By doing this, we should eventually discover what we really want, and also develop a better understanding of the market and what’s available.

Why would we consider moving? I think ALL of the four reasons above apply to our situation. What strategy will we use? That, we haven’t yet determined. I think it will definitely include Snowbirding, though.

Editor’s Note: Bart is a popular writer on Medium.com. You can find many of his stories at bartemanuel.medium.com/, including new episodes of this ongoing series. I’d like to thank him for joining us and sharing his work in the LifeAfterWork.Zone.