The ties that bind

Our Oregon friend is self-employed and plans to work for many years to come. We have other friends, however, who have moved, or who are planning to move, thanks to impending or actual retirement. For instance, we know a married couple, still two years away from retirement, who have begun searching for a community in which they can live out their days. While they aren’t necessarily going to leave California altogether, like many of us homeowners, their current home is a substantial portion of their investment portfolio, and they’ll need to pull cash out of it to finance their retirement. They may yet retire in California — there are many communities here that are affordable, as long as one doesn’t need to work — or they may end up moving to a nearby state.

Downsizing has long been the path to retirement for a great many people in this country, and from a financial standpoint it makes a lot of sense. But it often requires that the retirees cut the many ties that they have built up over their working life. My wife and I, for instance, having lived in the Bay Area for 35 years now, have many close friends nearby. We work hard to maintain those friendships; by regularly going to our friends’ houses; by going on trips with them; and by attending each other’s important events, such as our children’s weddings. If we were to move, we would still try to see our Bay Area friends from time to time, but clearly we would see them far less often, and thus our ties to them would gradually weaken.

In an ideal world we’d retire to somewhere cheaper and bring all of our friends along, but that isn’t terribly realistic. However, we do have two sets of friends — who are close friends with one another — who ended up doing something along those lines. A couple of years ago, the first couple left California, thanks to a rather unusual set of circumstances. The husband was in line to receive a large windfall from his employer and his tax advisor urged him to establish residency in a state with no individual income taxes. Since their kids had already flown the nest, and because they love outdoor activities such as cycling and skiing, they had few qualms about selling their Redwood City home and building what turned out to be a stunning house close to the shores of Lake Tahoe, in Incline Village, Nevada. Although the husband still works — he flies from Reno to San Francisco most weeks — they are loving the Sierra lifestyle.

Recently, the second couple retired, and although I suspect they did well enough to remain in the Bay Area, they were attracted to the lifestyle that our Incline Village friends are now enjoying. This second couple also loves skiing and the outdoors, and so they, too, moved to Incline Village. Today, the two couples live roughly 3 miles from one another. They ended up not only making a financially advantageous move, they managed to maintain one of their closest friendships while doing so.

There is no question that the Bay Area is an expensive place to live, and I can see the logic in moving to somewhere cheaper — especially if one doesn’t need to be here for work. But whereas moving may make financial sense, it comes at a cost: the stretching, or outright severing, of the many ties that bind us to this wonderful part of the state of California. Personally, I’m not ready to cut those ties, and so I stay, waving goodbye as friends slowly begin to move away.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.