Green Retirement Blog

Green Your Retirement Climate

Picking the right climate for your retirement, could save you a lot of green, and help reduce global warming. Retiring to a temperate climate, eliminates much of your household heating and cooling needs, and it’s costly expense. Moving from one extreme to another, from Maine to Arizona for example, will probably not result in any great savings.

How much less savings do you need by choosing the right climate for your retirement? $81,000. That’s the amount extra you are going to need to save for retirement, to continue paying higher heating and cooling expenses, during your retirement. How long will it take you to save $81,000?

If you retire to Phoenix Arizona, the fifth largest city in the U.S. with 90 days a year of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, you will be forced to live in an artificially cooled environment most of the year. Unnecessarily paying high electricity bills, contributing to global warming, all the while breathing in un-healthy recycled air. If you choose to retire in San Francisco instead, temperatures range between 55-75 degrees year round, you don’t need an air conditioner and only minimal heating in the winter. Our cost for electricity and gas, here in San Francisco, is only $30 per month.

What about comfort? Who really wants to spend their retirement shoveling snow or sitting under an air conditioner? Picking the right climate for retirement also has a big effect on health and comfort.

Retirement gives you the opportunity to choose where you want to live. Your choice could have a dramatic impact on the environment and your pocketbook.