Great advice on here from sdr, scaredy, coronita and others.
Some other thoughts that should be factored in:
1. My father always said that retirees are in consensus that one should not jump into something with both feet. Instead, they recommend renting your house out and trying the new area first. You might just find you miss San Diego more than you thought you would.
2. You can pass the house through to your daughter once you die with a much higher limit than 500K…that might be a thought to avoid taxes…and in the meantime you can rent than thing out for several thousand a month and basically not have to worry about a job ever again if you don’t want to.
3. I would think long and hard about jumping out of engineering. You’ll work just as hard, worry just as much, and have just as little free time in basically any other career you choose…and do it for much less money. (scaredy said this much better than I did!) My best friend in college did that, he quit his Silly Valley sw job to become an artist. I reminded him they are actually called “starving artists”. He has learned that lesson the hard way and now his software skills are dated.
4. Flu and I have talked about this before – one really has only so many years until they really can’t work any more…health issues, etc. While you can still earn great income, do you really want to call it quits? I get maybe scaling back so you have more free time, but I would be cautious about changing too much all at once.
