- Gen Xers are moving to retirement hot spots for better housing, lower prices, and warmer weather.
- Census data shows a rise in Gen X movers in Florida, central Texas, north Georgia, and Tennessee.
- Movers told BI they sought lower costs and taxes but faced high insurance and utility bills.
Gainfully employed Gen Xers are packing their bags for retirement hot spots.
They’re not foregoing the daily grind; instead, 45- to 60-year-olds are increasingly moving their families to warmer locales to take advantage of abundant housing, sunshine, and lower taxes.
Matt Hickman wanted to live somewhere with easy ocean access, good weather, and vibes that echoed his native California. In April 2020, the 46-year-old and his family moved to Orlando, which he said was more affordable than where they had been living in Colorado; a five-bedroom house cost around $90 a foot.
“I said, ‘You know what? If we move now in our forties, we can be set up so that we’ll have our house halfway paid off by the time we get close to retirement, and we’ll have beaten all the baby boomers who are going to move down to Florida and make it more expensive,'” Hickman said.
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Many in his generation seem to be on the same page. An analysis of Census data from 2020 to 2023, exclusively shared previously with BI by University of Virginia demographer Hamilton Lombard, shows that many counties in the south experienced large net increases in movers ages 45 to 54, particularly in Florida, central Texas, north Georgia, and Tennessee. Many New England, Missouri, and Idaho counties also experienced large increases. Meanwhile, much of California, the Midwest, and the Deep South — such as Louisiana and Mississippi — were in the red.
Some of the most popular counties for Gen Xers were those with older populations living in retirement communities — Gen Xers moved to “retirement destination” counties at a net rate of 5.1% between 2020 and 2023, compared to the US growth rate of 1.6%. Lombard suspected this trend was due to ample available housing in these areas and the generation’s rising savings.
In interviews with half a dozen Gen Xers who moved further south, most said they appreciated the lower cost of living, slower pace of life, and work opportunities. Still, some said they hated the weather, paid exorbitant insurance premiums, or didn’t enjoy the politics.
Hickman’s family liked Florida for a time. They landed in a predominantly 55-and-up community, visited a theme park often, and went to the beach six months of the year, but the humidity started to weigh on them. Plus, their homeowners’ insurance was $3,500 a year, property taxes soared, and they spent hundreds a month on utilities. As expenses — and bugs — piled up, they decided it was time for another change.
Hickman and his family landed in Atlanta, where they found a younger community along with cheaper utility and insurance bills.
Moving south to save money, but not everything is cheaper
Many movers told BI they moved south to save more in preparation for retirement, though some discovered prices are, in some cases, much higher.
Randy Foster, a music promoter, lived all over the Eastern Seabord but moved to Seattle in 2015. With rising prices in his area and nine months of no sun a year, he wanted to move south.
After a recent divorce, Foster, 55, settled in Florida’s Bradenton-Sarasota area in 2022, where his cost of living fell dramatically. Though he now has a car in Florida, he estimates he’s saved about 30% compared to Seattle.
Randy Foster
“I decided that Florida offered more opportunity, more freedom for me, more freedom to choose,” Foster said. “I spent a heck of a lot less on rent and all of my bills now than I did in Seattle.”
While he paid $3,000 monthly for a three-bedroom Seattle apartment, he pays about $2,000 in Florida for a four-bedroom house with a yard. His electricity bill is about 50% more in Florida, though his other utilities stayed consistent.
He said he enjoys earning $160,000 annually in a state with no individual income tax. Though he said he only has about $30,000 saved, as he hasn’t prioritized his retirement planning until recently, he believes he can continue saving more in Florida.
Escaping high taxes
Some movers said they left for Southern states with fewer taxes and better business environments.
Tracy Rockney, 57, worked in pharmaceutical regulatory affairs and built a consulting firm. The mother of three considered some southern states when deciding to leave Illinois but found Florida unappealing due to its humidity, hurricanes, and aging populations in the areas they considered. Her husband’s college roommate encouraged them to move to Dallas-Fort Worth.
Tracy Rockney
“We would rather live a community where there’s a mix of races and cultures and ages,” Rockney said.
In 2020, she moved to a Dallas suburb with her retired husband and their youngest daughter to limit her tax liability — Texas has 0% state income tax — and to improve her daughter’s education quality. She sold the Illinois home for $795,000 and bought her current Texas home for about $1.1 million.
She’s found the healthcare options better in Texas, and she said prices are generally lower than Illinois’. Rockney sold her business in August 2022 and left her most recent role as an executive vice president in late 2024.
She’s appreciated lower grocery prices, though her water bill skyrocketed to $150 monthly. Landscaping costs are “really expensive,” for which she budgets between $5,000 and $10,000 annually.
She appreciates Texas’ many outdoor activities, and her husband is the youngest person in his skydiving group. She said Texas’ business-friendly environment may help her when she starts up new entrepreneurial ventures.
“We kick ourselves and say we wish we’d done this move sooner,” Rockney said. “I wish I’d done it maybe when starting my business in 2015.”
Taking advantage of remote work
Some movers told BI they left the commotion of busier, more expensive cities for more rural areas while working remotely.
Elisa Suetake, 51, is hovering somewhere between retirement and work.
Suetake and her husband spent six years in San Jose, working in Silicon Valley. The couple would go to Hawaii three to four times a year but thought they could never work from there without getting cabin fever.
The pandemic, however, proved that wrong. In July 2021, they moved to Maui, tripling their property size for just $250,000 more than their San Jose home.
Their new property has a main house with five bedrooms, with an attached ADU, and there’s an additional smaller structure with three bedrooms. They plan on remodeling and renting out the smaller house while keeping the attached apartment for guests.
Suetake said that neither she nor her husband are planning on retiring traditionally — they’ll never stop working, but they will stop working for someone else.
“We’re never bored. We’re always learning something,” Suetake said. “It’s just that we don’t have a dedicated income stream from a company.”
