Go west, not-so-young man
Florida is no longer the preferred choice as a retirement haven
No baggage. After separating from his wife of 43 years, 70-year-old Roger Kunz suddenly found himself footloose and faced with starting over. He decided, quite literally, to take wing. Kunz sold his worldly possessions and moved to Winfield Airpark in Altus, Ark., a "fly-in" community where plane-owning residents can taxi right to their front doors. A flyboy since his youth, Kunz picked up a Rans S-14 ultralight experimental aircraft on eBay and now spends his time soaring over the Arkansas River Valley. "I left all my baggage and my wife in California, and I am following my dreams," he says with unabashed enthusiasm.
Some retirees are returning to the places of their youth. "Typically these are college towns, locations of military bases, or second-tier cities where housing is still affordable," says Lori McMillan Bitter, partner with the Mature Market Group of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson Worldwide. Of the 50 to 60 regulars in the Men's Breakfast Club at the Lakeway Activities Center west of Austin, 15 to 20 are retired military personnel. Many first encountered the city when they were assigned to a military base. Gary Stuart originally fell in love with the Santa Fe area in 1960, when he was in the Army and was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, for a year and a half. "The motel where I once stayed when I was on a three-day pass was still here 40 years later," he says.
But many cities have become retirement magnets simply because their populations have aged. The retirement-age population in Anchorage grew by 72 percent, from 8,258 to 14,242, from 1990 to 2000. "The growth that we're seeing is from people who lived and worked here and are opting to stay," says Ann Secrest, a spokesperson for AARP Alaska.
To retired teacher Peg Stout, 75, living in Anchorage is like "living in a box of Christmas cards." She and her husband, a retired Army colonel, first came to Anchorage in 1971, when he was transferred to nearby Fort Richardson. They've been here ever since. To them, Alaska's mountain vistas, uncrowded streets, and spectacular northern lights more than make up for the long winters. "Ours is a drier cold. We can dress against it, and so the cold up here just doesn't go through you like that wet East Coast cold," says Stout, who even helps her daughter, a champion dog musher, prepare for the Iditarod.
As the first baby boomers turn 65 in 2011, some of these demographic trends will accelerate. By 2030, the number of seniors is expected to swell to 79 million. Where will they live? Will they move, as many of their parents did, or stay put? Because of higher incomes, researchers say, more boomers will have the wherewithal to move than prior generations did; yet studies also show they are just as likely to stay put because of family ties, preferring frequent travel over relocating.
Staying put. "The World War II generation was the flight-to-Florida, flight-to-Arizona market. We don't think the boomers are going to migrate the way that their parents did," says McMillan Bitter. "I think that they are going to have to work longer, which means that they are going to have to stay close to where there are jobs."
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