Lack of jobs due to NASA cutbacks?
Lack of interesting stuff to do?
Mosquitoes?
Property taxes may not be cheap?
Most of the state is a stinky swamp? See also: mosquitoes.

I lived in Daytona for a couple years in the early ’80s. It’s definitely not California. The culture is completely different. The weather is different.

The Daytona 500 is the high culture event of the year there. It’s not as redneck in Daytona as it is 15 miles inland from Daytona (you might hear banjo music out there). But everything there is a few notches in that direction (as compared to California). And it’s just generally quite a bit scruffier there than it is out here. Main Street (when I was there, anyway) was populated with scruffy drug addicts and strippers. The oyster bars were some loud, shit-kicking places. And the low-rent bars had low tooth counts and a violent vibe.

Spring break is a massive party. But it’s all kids and, at my age, it would be more of a pain in the neck than anything else.

It’s obviously quite humid there, but I liked the weather. Lots of thunderstorms in the summer. Nice, warm nights. Great water-skiing weather and lots of lakes to ski on (watch out for alligators and water moccasins).

The beach is fantastic. You can drive on parts of the beach and park right there on the sand (back then the whole beach was driveable; I think it’s more restricted now). The water is warm. The waves aren’t usually as big, but they’re body-surfable.

I don’t remember the bugs being as bad as everybody says. Except the cockroaches. Almost everybody had them and they were extremely difficult to completely eliminate. The mosquitoes were only really bad in the swampy parts.

It’s a culture shock from California, and I wouldn’t live there again. But it’s not all that bad.

scaredy, I was last there in ’83 and witnessed the driving on the beach. It was in August (thunderstorm and hurricane season), not spring break.

Don’t you have an old Datsun P/U or El Camino sitting around your premises? You could install small fans on the posts behind the two front seats and get the vehicle “roadworthy” to take a little jaunt there and see if you will like it. You’ll fit right in! You can get there is three days of hard driving or 4 days of more leisurely driving :=0

There are several inland campgrounds from Daytona Beach that are cheap accommodations for tent (or pop-up tent) camping. However, the fleas that time of year are horrible (the whole state is a giant sandbox, which quickly absorbs the rain). They are so thick that you can barely see the person (3 ft in front of you) whom you are talking to. And don’t try to boil shellfish on your campfire or your fleas will be much worse … they will literally blind you.

A couple of the roads around there are toll roads with wide shoulders where hoardes of RV’s park whenever there is a space shuttle launch. Sitting perched on beach chairs on the roof of an RV parked on the side of the road for 8 hrs straight waiting for a launch is a favorite past-time of tourists in that area.

I hobbled out of FL a walking Calamine bottle with my arms and legs a crusty pink shell and the rest of me generally looking rather “lobsterized.”

And this was after diligently using repellent :=0

As much “fun” as I had there, I haven’t had the chance to go back . . .

Although lots of people love certain parts of FL (Jupiter, Boca, Lauderdale, Sarasota etc.), the people we’ve known who have retired to Florida and other less expensive cities, did it primarily because they could no longer afford California.

You’d be surprised how many people who are flush with funds in CA, or other expensive locales during their working years, can’t afford to live in those locations later in life. Many articles, such as the one you read, seem to be targeting retirees who want to maximize their retirement dollars.

I think everyone should retire whereever they want to retire, but we’ve lived in or spent extended periods of time in many places all over the world, and we plan to stay in San Diego for the balance of our lives–retired or not.

[quote=spdrun]Other than housing costs (and if you have a paid-off home by the point of retirement, you have that problem basically licked) what makes San Diego particularly expensive? OK, gasoline is about 25% more expensive than in the rest of the country, but you’re not paying for energy in other ways, since HVAC costs are minimal.

Food and other goods didn’t strike me as being horribly expensive in SD. Yeah, you have state income tax and sales tax, but it’s not huge in the grand scheme of things.[/quote]

Agree, sp. The “too expensive to live there in retirement” comment is just what we’ve heard from some people we’ve known who have left the state. Of course, we’ve heard that from younger people also–friends of our kids–who couldn’t find high paying jobs or afford to buy a home here after college.

Seems like he’s set for life regardless of where he lives. A million invested in rental property at 7% cap (doable conservatively, these days), is $70k/yr, plus $600k of cash in the bank remaining to play with. Why would he want to trade a house in heaven for one in desertfuck?

He might be well-advised to keep a line of credit against the house, of course, for emergencies.