WHY RELOCATE? The Daltons love Charlotte (metro area around 3 million), but when Dave retired as a manufacturing executive in 2021, he craved a more active, outdoor lifestyle. He and Jill both wanted a walkable small town with vibrant culture—an arts scene, great food and a more youthful population.

They went all in on Abingdon, with a historic main street, access to trout fishing and biking, more than 30 restaurants, and the nation’s longest-running professional theater. And with the town’s median age of 45, retirees are able to mix with younger residents. “Can you say dream town?” asks Jill.

DOLLARS AND SENSE: The Daltons bought a three-floor historic house from 1803 and are making the renovation a retirement project. Adding HVAC and bumping up those low Jefferson-era ceilings isn’t cheap, but costs in general “are a fraction of what they are in Charlotte,” Dave says.

NEW ABODE, NEW HORIZONS: “Life is more relaxed, and there’s a warmth from people you don’t always get in an urban setting,” Jill says. “Once you meet someone here, you look out for each other.”

According to Dave, there aren’t enough days in the week for all the activities Abingdon offers. He already serves on an Abingdon board and a tourism advisory council, and there’s hiking, kayaking, horseback riding, an annual fiddler’s convention, pickleball and tons of golf. “I thought people were supposed to slow down in retirement,” he says, “but it’s not looking that way.”

WHY RELOCATE? “Don’t laugh,” says Hess, who had lived in small Kansas towns all her life, “but my gut was telling me that if I stayed in Burlington, I would turn into one of those little old ladies who never leaves the house.” She admits she felt she’d been “coasting ” ever since Sam, her partner of 22 years, passed away 13 years ago. So after retiring as a computer program analyst at a nuclear plant in 2020, “I felt like stepping out of my comfort zone and pushing myself a little.”

DOLLARS AND SENSE: City life is more expensive. Hess’ senior living community in Kansas City required entrance and service fees, and K.C. prices are higher for things like dinners out and entertainment, but “that’s why I worked a desk job for 34 years,” she says. With plenty of activities at her complex—there’s a fitness center, for example—the convenience and camaraderie balance out the costs.

NEW ABODE, NEW HORIZONS: “It feels like a fresh start to me,” says Hess, who loves being within 30 minutes of countless activities and events. Having people from her community to do things with is icing on the cake. She attends Kansas City Monarchs baseball games, summertime jazz band concerts and dinner theater events, as well as visiting local historical societies, libraries and quilt shops. “At first I was a little bit hesitant going around town, but now I’m happy even if I’m getting lost and finding my way back home.”

WHY RELOCATE? Joe and Barry met and married at a gay synagogue in Los Angeles, where Joe was studying to be a rabbi after a career as a systems analyst and Barry worked as a cantorial soloist and teacher. They wanted out. “I had lived in Los Angeles for 25 years already and was, like, I’m ready for something new,” says Barry. After Joe landed a rabbi gig deep in Appalachia, the move was on.

DOLLARS AND SENSE: “Morgantown is dirt cheap by California standards,” says Joe. “We never could’ve afforded a house in L.A. or any hot California real estate market.”

NEW ABODE, NEW HORIZONS: For a pair of confirmed urbanites, moving to a quieter locale meant finding God in the details. “Figuring out your favorite flavors of ice cream, taking long walks, spending time with the nice lady next door who feeds our cat—the little things take on greater meaning here,” Joe says. But the pace carved out more time as well. Barry found a late-in-life calling as a public servant: He spent two terms on Morgantown’s City Council and even ran for U.S. Congress in 2022.

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,” says Jennifer. 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.

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.

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.

WHY RELOCATE? Magical as it was, “farm life was just too costly and challenging ” to maintain as the Murrisons got older, so “we made the hardest choice we ever faced,” says Teri, a travel writer. “During the wintertime especially, we were hiring people to come in and clean up horse poop and do other things we no longer wanted to do.” The Murrisons sold the farm and moved to Idaho’s capital city in January 2022.

DOLLARS AND SENSE: “When you factor in the cost of keeping animals and how much we paid to irrigate and for power and gas, we’re saving a significant amount,” says Rich, a retired educator. The Murrisons re-homed their three horses. That leaves extra for urban niceties like dinners out (“all kinds of great ethnic restaurants nearby,” Teri says) and pursuing passions like skiing.

NEW ABODE, NEW HORIZONS: “We hit the neighbor lottery,” Teri says, with warm and welcoming residents on all four sides. 

David Hochman is a contributing editor for AARP The Magazine who writes frequently about homelife and housing.