Making The Right Move - Or None At All
Planning to move when you retire? A few considerations.

Could Cleveland be the next Boca? Detroit the next Scottsdale?

Retirement community giant Del Webb thinks so. In a press release recapping a boomer retirement survey it conducted, a company spokesman called out those cities for expansion. He explained:

"...many want us to deliver the Del Webb lifestyle where they currently live. Staying close to family and friends and maintaining ties to their community are important things to them."

Nearly half of survey respondents with plans to move said staying within three hours of family would be an important consideration in choosing where to relocate.

Commercial jargon aside, the Del Webb people got it right. It's something we talk about a lot at My Next Phase: how maintaining social networks and close family relationships need special attention in retirement planning. While hardly anyone would disagree, many fail to go beyond abstract ideas to get it done.

After the right kind of introspection and analysis, you may well find moving to a long-desired, somewhat faraway destination - part-time, or full time - indeed the right move. That kind of affirmation has helped some of our clients pull the trigger. One of the biggest questions is friends, and how suited your personality is to making new ones.

We worked with a couple that loved vacationing in Taos -- so much, she couldn't wait to live there once retirement came. He shared her enthusiasm, and they started planning the move. But something didn't feel right to him.

Our process helped reveal his fear of inability to make new friends -- something his naturally more outgoing partner did with ease, and a function of their personalities. They decided to take an intermediate step: two more years of vacations, to allow him to build a new social network. He went about it wisely, leveraging his interests to open doors. Two years later, they made the move, his new chess- and church-based comrades ready and waiting.

Another My Next Phase client, a Michigan technical writer, went the other way -- literally and figuratively. She had long planned migrating to an active Florida retirement community, mostly to escape harsh winters, and because, "that is what people do when they stop working."

She, too, had doubts. After getting to know herself better, and exploring her options, she decided to test drive before buying (something we're big fans of), choosing a short-term rental. Within three weeks, she knew the retirement community's socially centered style wasn't for her. Her highly contemplative personality style resisted (even resented) pressure to gather. This insight also helped her see why she so enjoyed a career that enabled her to work independently. She realized how familiar surroundings, and how engaging with who she wants, when she chooses, are essential to her fulfillment.

The Del Webb press release cited grandkids as a major consideration in boomer retirees' choices to retire at home, if not close to it. "There's a secret weapon in our business and it's called grandkids," the spokesman said. That is good, and may factor biggest in the Clevelands and the Detroits becoming hot properties. The sad problem is, too many find this out after the fact.

One way couples have found to balance wanderlust and perfect weather dreams with the pull of friends and family is by planning regularly-timed vacations in retirement. Knowing you'll be away during regular periods, whether to someplace familiar, or someplace new every time, helps fill those needs to be elsewhere, and helps give structure to your life in retirement. It also affords those who find your company invaluable the means to plan properly for themselves.

Palm Springs, Pensacola, Philadelphia. Bal Harbor or Brooklyn. Your best retirement place is there for you to discover, with the right kind of self-knowledge and planning.

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