City or country? How older americans are deciding where to move | members only

Jennifer and Lynn O'Connell swapped suburban Orange County, California, for small-town Muscle Shoals, Alabama. A welcoming church and an affordable way of life were the main draws.

Robert Rausch FINDING A PLACE OF FAITH AND AFFORDABILITY JENNIFER OLIVER O’CONNELL, 58, AND LYNN O’CONNELL, 63, went from suburban Orange County, California, to the small Deep South town

of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. WHY RELOCATE? “California prices are insane!” says Jennifer, a yoga teacher and freelance journalist. Lynn, a service engineer for tech businesses, was commuting

57 miles each way. Neither liked “the stranglehold of constantly working only to feel like we were just scraping by,” as Jennifer puts it. The O’Connells wanted a place that aligned with

their Christian values. “Muscle Shoals instantly hit our hearts,” Jennifer says. She sent an email last winter to a pastor there whose sermons she appreciated. “He got back to me within an

hour. Then a campus coordinator connected me with a Realtor who helped us find a home. I was, like, we’re doing this!” Last June, the O’Connells moved. DOLLARS AND SENSE: Money goes much

further in Muscle Shoals. “We have a great three-bedroom, two-bath house that’s roughly half the rent we were paying for much less space in California,” says Lynn, who landed a service route

with a regional communications and IT company. NEW ABODE, NEW HORIZONS: Having a built-in spiritual community provided a soft landing. “An entire crew from church showed up at our house to

move us in and make us feel cared for,” Jennifer says. FOLLOWING FAMILY, JOBS AND HEART STEVE RODGERS, 59, AND JANE RODGERS, 60, went from a tony D.C. suburb to the hustle-bustle Big Apple

to the quaint village of Hobart, New York. WHY RELOCATE? In 2019, after their son, Sam, experienced a significant health crisis, the Rodgerses left the leafy D.C. exurb of Leesburg,

Virginia, their home for 20 years, to be near Sam in New York City. With his health stabilized in 2023, Jane and Steve headed way upstate, to Hobart, New York (population 397), for ample

space and a quieter, more affordable ease into retirement. DOLLARS AND SENSE: Even with downsizing, moving from a single-family home into a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment wasn’t cheap.

“Rent, groceries, restaurants, taxes — literally everything costs more in New York City,” says Jane, a nonprofit executive who, like Steve, can work remotely. It helped to have additional

income from renting the Virginia place, but Steve, who designs security systems, wanted to reinvest the cash after selling that home in 2020. “Property within a two-hour drive of New York

City was out of our reach, so we pushed to three hours, and, yep, that did it,” he says. NEW ABODE, NEW HORIZONS: The Rodgerses found a beautiful old four-bedroom house on an acre and a

half, with a converted barn/guesthouse “that is part of our retirement plan,” says Jane, whose goal is to work two more years. Steve intends to work until age 65. “We’ll use the guesthouse

as an Airbnb beginning next year, and hopefully that income will keep us going,” Jane says. And “we have enough space to host Sam and his friends anytime he wants to come up,” she adds.

Doreen Hall Vann digs into some Spam Musubī with her son Zaiden. The family moved from O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, to Las Vegas, which has much lower housing costs. Roger Kisby PRICED OUT OF PARADISE,

SIN CITY BECKONED DOREEN HALL VANN, 51, AND MARQUISE VANN, 46, went from tropical Pearl City in central O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, to go-go greater Las Vegas. WHY RELOCATE? A Native Hawaiian, Doreen

assumed she’d live out her days on O‘ahu. But after a daughter moved to the mainland for a nursing job, Doreen decided in 2019 to follow with her husband, Marquise, and son, Zaiden, now 10.

“In a more affordable setting, we could work to live rather than living to work,” she says. DOLLARS AND SENSE: Hawai‘i has the highest cost of living in the U.S. Doreen couldn’t believe the

savings: The four-bedroom, three-bath house she and Marquise, an Air Force reservist and truck driver, bought for $300,000, “would have cost twice that back on O‘ahu.” NEW ABODE, NEW

HORIZONS: Doreen feared that homesickness would overwhelm her, but Las Vegas has Hawaiian barbecue restaurants, hula shops, famous Hawaiian entertainers. “It’s easy to live aloha here,” she

says.