On the Road Again -- and Again:
Retirees Who Constantly Relocate

When Joe Dineen and Ginny Cooney retired to Martha's Vineyard from the Boston suburbs in 1991, they expected to live out their days along the shore. But after a few years, they got tired of having to elbow their way onto the overcrowded ferry.

Seeking a change of pace, they moved across the country to Sun City, Ariz., in 1995. After that, they lived on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in balmy Boynton Beach, Fla., and, as of last fall, in a lakeside retirement community in southeastern Michigan.

"We wanted to come back to a place with four seasons," says Mr. Dineen, 71, while taking a break from shoveling his driveway last month. "The snow is beautiful. I'm looking out the window at the lake, and there are all these pines that look just like Christmas trees."

There used to be two kinds of people in retirement -- those who stayed home and those who didn't. Now, there's a third category: nomads who relocate when they retire, then pick up stakes a few years later and move again. And maybe even a few times after that.

This wanderlust is the result of a combination of factors: the growing prevalence of decades-long retirements; a higher comfort level with moving among corporate employees who spent their careers being transferred from city to city; an increasing number of retirees with the financial resources to move around. And one other thing: the ever-present lure of a better place to live. With time, money, health and flexibility, why not keep looking for the perfect retirement spot?

There aren't many statistics available yet, but the phenomenon has become so noticeable that academics are already coming up with labels for it. Scott Wright, a gerontologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, refers to the trend of retirees with itchy feet as "Fanby," for Find a New Backyard.

Moving around has its advantages: the possibility of trading a more expensive address for a cheaper one; a built-in change of scenery; day trips to undiscovered places; and the chance to tailor your abode to your current lifestyle and needs. Plus, some retirees simply enjoy the adventure of moving to a new area and learning how to live there.

Retirement is no longer a single "blob" that lasts 30 years, says Ciji Ware, a 64-year-old author in Marin County, Calif. Rather, it's a series of transitions that retirees are starting to think of in increments of five to 15 years. Ms. Ware should know. While pursuing later-life careers, she and her husband have moved several times in search of a home that's the right fit. She recently used their experience as the basis of a book, "Rightsizing Your Life."

"The 50s are the empty-nest years," she says. "In the 60s, many people are slowing down an old career and maybe starting a new one. In the 70s, there may be grandchildren coming along. And in the 80s you may have health needs to think about.... You may not ever find the perfect retirement nest, but you'll find what suits your age and stage currently."

There are downsides, of course. "A lot of people are really impulsive," Ms. Ware says. "They see a golf course that's really great, and they don't realize there are terrible politics in the homeowners association."

When you move every few years, it's also much tougher to tap into a community and develop a support system of friends you could rely on in an emergency. The act of moving is almost always expensive, labor-intensive and fraught with emotion. There's the house-hunting and selling, negotiating, closing costs, packing, loading and unloading, unpacking and decorating. Now with the real-estate slowdown, some retirees, including Mr. Dineen, also are finding themselves for the first time with an extra home to unload and the prospect of a real-estate loss. "Does anyone want a house in Boynton Beach?" Mr. Dineen asks.

Talking with retirement nomads, it's clear they've reaped rewards but also suffered some disappointments in their years of serial relocations. We've tried to distill the highlights, and the caveats, in the lessons that follow.

Homework is still important

There's much to be said for spontaneity -- setting out for a new destination and home without spending months (or years) weighing every last pro and con. That said, many of the serial movers we interviewed said a bit of sleuthing remains an essential part of the process. After all, retirement havens sometimes have problems no one likes to talk about -- or think about while they're healthy. Mr. Dineen and Ms. Cooney made two of their moves because of unpleasant surprises. In Phoenix, Mr. Dineen was infected with a fungal condition called "valley fever," or coccidioidomycosis, caused by inhaling spores from a fungus in the soil in the Southwest.

Two-thirds of those infected have no symptoms, according to Arizona health officials. But others, like Mr. Dineen, develop flu-like symptoms that can last a month. The condition typically is not chronic but can be severe; in about 5% of patients, it can lead to pneumonia, meningitis or even death.

There are local newspaper articles in Arizona about valley fever, and public health alerts are occasionally issued. Reading up on a place you're thinking of moving to could alert you to similar potential dangers.

But as Mr. Dineen says, "It's something none of the real-estate developers tell you about.

"We loved it [in Arizona]," Mr. Dineen says, "but my doctor said if I stayed there, I probably wouldn't live as long as if I left."

The couple started over on Vancouver Island, where they enjoyed the Pacific Northwest views and favorable exchange rate. But when Ms. Cooney went to the emergency room four years ago to get help with a stomach ailment, they discovered a big downside: The hospital demanded payment upfront, because Medicare generally doesn't cover treatment in Canada.

The couple had researched the issue ahead of time. They knew they would have to pay for medical treatment they got in Canada and have to come back to the U.S. for Medicare. But just how that would affect them in the case of an emergency didn't hit home until it actually happened. "We were relatively healthy, but we're only getting older," Mr. Dineen says. "We thought, 'How would we pay the bill if one of us needed emergency bypass surgery?' "

Shortly thereafter, they sold their Canadian home and headed to Florida.

You can start over

There's one thing about nomads: They aren't afraid to admit they made a mistake.

In 1994, Linda Little, 64, moved with her husband, Henry Van Gieson, 73, from Seattle to a waterfront home along the Potomac River in Heathsville, Va. There were no stoplights or ATMs in Heathsville. The town was quaint. Too quaint, as it turned out.

"I had lived in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and suddenly the highlight of my day was a 40-minute drive to 'Wally World,' " Ms. Little says, referring to the nearest Wal-Mart.

The couple loved their home, and Mr. Van Gieson found enough entertainment with "a little golf course, boats and fishing stuff," he says. "But it was not so great for my cosmopolitan wife, who never could figure out what to do out there in the sticks."

They tried to scratch the itch for shops and restaurants by borrowing a recreational vehicle and spending the winter months on the road. But, in the end, they surveyed other retirees about their favorite places to live and moved to a development in New Bern, N.C. Before doing so, Ms. Little closely read the yellow pages to make sure the community "had enough amenities" -- a strategy she has employed before subsequent moves, as well.

"We were the first of our group to retire," says Ms. Little. "We kind of had to do it on our own, and there was a lot of trial and error."

Ed and Kathy Burton, who now live in South Carolina, encountered a similar problem when they moved from Las Vegas to Tellico Village, Tenn. There were no nearby hangouts or necessities. They knew that the 4,600-acre, lakefront golf community was somewhat isolated. But after driving 30 minutes to the nearest hospital -- to have a splinter removed -- Mr. Burton says he realized that he didn't want to make that drive during an emergency. With that, the couple took to the road again.

If you build it, they won't necessarily come

One of the biggest surprises for some people who move in retirement is that friends and family don't visit as often as anticipated. Moving a second or third time doesn't necessarily help -- even if you're trying to make it easier or more attractive for would-be guests.

Tom Lennox, a 72-year-old retired developer of government publications, spent six years in his first retirement destination, Santa Fe, N.M. Then he moved in 2003 to Sarasota, Fla., to be closer to family along the East Coast. He expected a stream of winter visitors to his villa, just a few minutes' drive from a white-quartz beach. "That hasn't happened. I've been very disappointed," he says. "My more immediate family live in Pennsylvania, [but] they all work or have responsibilities."

The same goes for grandchildren, Mr. Van Gieson and Ms. Little found. They expected to entertain so many kids and grandchildren at their first retirement home, along an acre on the Potomac, that they bought a place with a guesthouse. Despite the fact that they were only 90 minutes from family, they discovered that "the kids don't go to grandmother's house anymore," Mr. Van Gieson says. "You have to go to the kids' house. They have all their activities and friends and soccer and whatever. We learned it didn't matter where we lived as far as the kids were concerned."

Look out behind you

The serial movers we spoke with like to think of themselves as being in control of their periodic relocations. Retirees along the eastern Florida coast, for example, have cashed out during the recent real-estate frenzy and moved to the state's northwest coast, or to Alabama, says Mark Fagan, a professor of social work at Jacksonville State University in Alabama who studies retirement migration.

Then again, some retirees end up as serial movers because circumstances overtake them -- and they find themselves living someplace they no longer recognize. The most common situation is the retirement "hot spot" that becomes a victim of its own popularity and leaves retirees with more traffic and less elbow room than they bargained for.

That's what happened to Neil and Shirley McLaughlin after they moved to St. George, Utah, in 2001, from South Bend, Ind., where Mr. McLaughlin coached high-school football and Mrs. McLaughlin was a social worker.

They bought one of the first 200 homes in the SunRiver St. George development, which now has nearly 1,500 homes. St. George was named one of the five fastest-growing retirement communities in a 2005 ranking. "I felt that St. George was growing too quickly," Mr. McLaughlin says. "Real estate boomed, and I'm assuming it still is. But the traffic congestion is terrible in the wintertime."

The original draw for them heading west was "wide open spaces," not traffic congestion, he says. So last May, the couple picked up stakes and moved to a fledgling active-adult community in Broomfield, Colo., 11 miles from Boulder. They won a lottery and got to pick the first lot.

This time around, they checked for protections in place to slow future growth: "Our backyard looks out on an open area with ponds and a big open park. From our den, we can see the Flatiron Mountains," Mr. McLaughlin says. "The city zoning is very, very strict. There are 800 acres of open space, 51 miles of trails and unbelievable ponds everywhere."

Different isn't always better

Some nomads say the spark for their first move -- and the next and the next -- is the desire simply for a change in scenery, ideally something exotic and stimulating. A couple, for instance, might move from the suburbs to the city, and then from the city to a rural setting. Not infrequently, these moves become a search for the "perfect" destination.

But the retirees we interviewed counseled that perfection can be tough to find -- and that the best move, for some, is the one that finally delivers you to a place that reminds you of home.

That's what the Burtons have discovered in their 15 years of retirement. Although their first move kept them close to home -- a house on a marina not far from their former jobs in Boca Raton, Fla. -- they headed west in search of something completely different when they decided to exit the South Florida boating scene.

They found what they were looking for in Las Vegas, first in a master-planned community with three golf courses. They used Las Vegas as home base for exploring Nevada, Northern California and Colorado. A few years later, they heard about a mountaintop development under construction that overlooked Las Vegas and moved there, struck by the panoramic valley views.

Three years later, they had had enough. "You get tired of the desert," says Mr. Burton, 75. "You hardly see any birds. It's coyotes, and you occasionally see a mouse. Our front and back yards were rocks. You get tired of that if you were in Florida, where it's all green."

And so the couple began searching again -- this time, for a locale similar to their original home in Florida, but without the extreme heat and hurricanes. After considering spots in Colorado and living briefly in eastern Tennessee, they landed last summer at an "active adult" community in Fort Mill, S.C. Their home, surrounded by lush fields, is a few miles south of a development in suburban Charlotte, N.C., full of restaurants and shops that remind the Burtons of what Boca Raton was like 20 years ago.

"We're home," Mr. Burton says.

-- Ms. Greene is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau.

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