If you are approaching retirement you might be thinking about moving to another part of the country, or even another part of the world, that seems like it might suit you better than where you live now. If it's a place you've already spent some time in then you probably already know that you could be happy there. If, on the other hand, you're thinking about moving somewhere else because your “kinfolks said 'move away from here' and 'Californy is the place you oughta be'”, then you might want to do a little research before you load up the truck and “move to Beverly”. In The Country Saga I've written about a real life example of what happens if you don't do some serious research before you decide to make a move. So I guess it's only fair that I point out some web-based tools that might help you do some real research and get an idea of whether you really will be happy if you retire somewhere other than where you live now.
If you want to move out of the USA to some other country a really basic place to start gathering info is the CIA's World Fact Book . It will provide you with information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for hundreds of countries. Those last few things seem pretty important to me. After all, it would be good to know whether you should pack a bullet proof vest when you make your move.
If you are just thinking about moving to another city or another state right here in the good old USA, you can get some basic demographic information from the US census bureau's American Fact Finder web site. More comprehensive data can be found at City-Data. The information on this site includes photos, maps, population demographics, housing prices, rents, local headlines and much more. You can get a similar, but different, set of information about states, counties, cities and subdivisions at US Home Town Locator. There are other sites that provide this sort of information but these three cover it pretty well.
Most states have official state web sites that provide a great deal of information intended to help you understand how to obtain a driver's license, how to register your vehicle, how to do business in the state and many more subjects as well. A couple of representative examples can be found at http://ohio.gov/ and http://www.texas.gov/en/Pages/default.aspx. Similar sites exist for most cities (e.g., http://www.dallascityhall.com/ ) and many counties (e.g., http://www.tarrantcounty.com/egov/site/default.asp ).
Once you've decided which part of the country you'd like to move to, you can look for a house or property for sale on Realtor.com. This site allows you to specify the things that you need to find in a home including the price range, number of bedrooms and baths, whether you want a condo or single family home, etc. If you find a house you are interested in, you can get even more information on Zillow.com. Zillow contains information such as a five-year value graph, taxes and assessed value.
If you need information about housing for the elderly in your target area, the US federal government has information on that subject at http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Seniors/Housing.shtml . This site also contains tools such as an elder care locator.
If you plan to work after your move, sites such as Career Builder and Monster can help you find a new job before you take the leap to the new place. You can also check the classified ads on Craig's List to see what jobs are available in the target area.
The bottom line here is that before you decide to retire to the place you've always dreamed about, if can't check it out in person, it would be a real good idea to do as much online research as you can.
No comments:
Post a Comment