Rural areas: the apple of retirees' eyes

Flickr photo by lrargerich.

A few years ago, Carol and George Snyder sold their longtime home in Lincoln, Neb., and decided to retire 270 miles away, to some acreage outside the town of Long Pine, Neb., population 320. By some measures, they didn't go about it the right way.

They couldn't be happier.

The Snyders don't think of themselves as being on the leading edge of any trends, but they are. They're part of a movement that a recent federal study suggests will see significant numbers of retirees moving from cities and suburbs to the countryside and tiny rural towns.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicts that baby boomers are heading for green acres, where in the next decade they'll swell the rural and small-town retirement-age populations by two-thirds, from 8.6 million to 14.2 million.

To be sure, statistically speaking, the typical boomer expects to stay right where he or she is and "age in place." But John Cromartie and Peter Nelson, who authored the USDA report, "Baby Boom Migration and Its Impact on Rural America," say significant numbers are headed for the hills, many of them motivated by a desire to be near places where they've vacationed or near longtime second homes. Many of them are going in order to be near family or friends.

In any case, significant numbers will be moving, and the principal magnets for them are scenic amenities (such as water access, warm winters and comfortable summers), recreation and/or cultural opportunities, and manageable housing costs, according to the study.

But there are other considerations, according to Bill Roiter, a Massachusetts psychologist who specializes in retirement issues.

"When most people start to think about retiring, the first thing they ask is, 'Do we have enough money?' " he said. "Then they say, 'We want to travel.' And then, for at least half of them, it's 'We want to move someplace.' "

After the novelty of moving "out there" wears off, retirees might find themselves missing some things they now take for granted: easy access to daily needs, to doctors and to airports. Or even to other people. Maybe they'll rue losing access to another job.

Roiter, 59, knows whereof he speaks. Recently he and his wife bid adieu to decades in Boston and moved to their longtime vacation home on Cape Cod, Mass., outside the small town of Chatham, Mass.

"The pace here is unbelievably better," he said in a telephone interview. "Chatham has a village center -- a main street with stores on both sides. It runs half a mile, and that's it.

"We sit between two ponds," he said of his current home. "I look out my office window and see trees and swans and ducks."

But Roiter is still working part time, and says that ducks aside, that's a factor that would-be ruralites ought to consider, especially with baby boomers' penchant for working as consultants after "retiring." ...CONTINUED

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