Hi, Floyd Shilanski here at Plan Your Federal Retirement. Many times as I work with clients and we prepare them to retire my one of my first question is, is where you going to retire to? And the interesting thing in Alaska, 80% of them say, someplace warm. Once had a client that we helped retire that showed up this motorhome getting ready to drive out of the state, and he had a snow shovel mounted to the front of his class C motorhome that my comment says, Bob, what are you
doing? And he looked at me with this big smile and says, Floyd, I'm going to drive south till someone looks at me and go, what the hell is that? Then I'll know I'm further enough south, and that's kind of a joke that really did happen, though, by getting ready to relocate, there's tons of magazine tons of articles that talk about moving to some part of the country, and they look at, is it state income tax, will my Social Security be
taxed? will my retirement plan be taxed? That's part of it, and then there's the, you know, in Alaska, we have so much darkness, unfortunately, during the year in coal, they want to go someplace where it's got four seasons and respectively. So, so each of these places play the game. The game is, what if, what
if I move there, what would it look like? Well, number one, I always tell my clients, before you relocate to a state or a city that you haven't been there for 20 or 30 years, go rent plan for the next year, rent north, south, east and west, and make sure this is the area that you want to be in, make sure you're comfortable there. The social connections, the churches, the hobbies, the things that you want to do are all wrapped up together. All right, that's one major thing, and then I ask,
you, and then they say, well, Floyd, it costs too much. All right, you know, the taxations are horrible, the property taxes are horrible, and my comment next is, let's just plot it out. Let's find out what it's going to cost to rent or buy a home, let's walk through all the numbers and just see
financially, does it work? If it works, go! Here's what I tell my clients, though, and everyone else ought to listen to me is that once you do retire and you leave where you're at, you're probably going to either move to if you like the ocean, you're going to be by the ocean. If you like to ski, you're going to be by the mountains, and if you like to golf, there's gonna be lots of golfing. All right, that's kind of a pre empter
thing. Maybe family involved. A lot of time when I see people retire, it's that resort living for the first three, four or five years, that may have moved around a lot or raised their kids now they're empty nesters, and they want all those things they couldn't have before, so whether it's a little mansion, whether it's a small house, whether it's an RV, these transitions take place, and I always try to get the mindset this transition is three to four years, all right, it's probably
not the forever home. I have a lot of people tell me it is a forever home, but the reality is, once you retire and relocate, you've probably got three, if not four, more moves, and people laugh and say, no way in blazes. I've been doing this for about 40 years, and I can think of off the top of my head, about three of the people we helped retire that stayed in that forever home. Most people start out at the resort type living, then they downsize, then they get closer to family, and
then health forces them in another direction. All these things should be taken into consideration. I was talking to a client just recently. They moved to a great location. They're about 15, 20, miles, you know, from some family members, but because of age, the homes are getting too large, the maintenance and so on, so we're talking about whether it's elevators or stair lifts and so on, trying to prepare them to do that, but the fear is, can they afford to move? We're going to
swap, if we will, one debt for another. So all these things I get emotionally and financially, and you hear me talk a lot about that, is getting ready for both sides of that equation. But we
want to look at where you want to go. Have some clients want to be expats, and currently Portugal seems to be drawing the, I think they call it, the suncoast is drawing a lot of expats, not only US citizens over there, but at one time it was Chiang Mai, Thailand was the least expensive in fact, money magazine, if you remember, that, even rated it the ability to
live just on Social Security of about $3,000 a month. That appealed to a lot of people, but it was a long way from the US, and then we moved to South America for a while, and Costa Rica for a while, a lot of folks want to retire, down in Mexico that's become part of the US sometimes, after coming back recently, the costs down there have just accelerated, so it's a matter of locations. Now, once you've got your budget together, what can we spend? What can we spend on housing, food,
automobiles, and so on, then the search really starts. Once had a client that we moved out of Alaska that wanted to be in the Pacific Northwest as we drove around, the money just didn't work. Their retirement and their social security would not support a mortgage or even rent in the Pacific Northwest, they ended up in Mid America, all right, why? Because we found something that was affordable, we found some acreage, and we could save money as well as live the lifestyle that they wanted.
All this takes pre thought, and if we don't take pre thought on it, we find ourselves reacting instead of acting. So one of the things as you prepare to get ready to retire, is making sure that the budget works, making sure the geographic area works, and making sure you've got someone to help walk you through those things. This is Floyd with plan your federal retirement. If you have questions, log on, book an appointment, if you need help, we're here to help until next time, Happy Planning!