The classic retirement pipeline has been established for years: Grow up in the Northeast, make your money in a place like New York, and then retire to Florida for the low cost of living and easy beach access.
But a new migration pattern is emerging. A confluence of factors have soured things a bit for those who moved to Florida, and now thousands of them are becoming “halfbacks”: They’ve moved halfway back north and settled in a state like South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, or Tennessee.
For anyone weighing their own retirement plans, this trend offers a useful lesson; the calculus of where to retire is changing fast, and Florida may no longer be the automatic answer—or at least, it’s not the final one.