Best Boomer Towns Blog

Boomers: Making the Move to a Dream Life

Every generation has its dreams. For the men and women of the Boomer generation, the pre-retirement chatter is less about which cruise line has the best buffet, and more about which city we should move to.

Every generation has its dreams. For the men and women of the Boomer generation, the pre-retirement chatter is less about which cruise line has the best buffet, and more about which city we should move to.

When I was growing up, my parents and their friends spoke endlessly of where they would travel upon retirement. My mother-in-law's list had about a dozen countries on it, most checked off over the course of just one frenzied decade of post-career touring.

I admit that I told more than a few jokes at my mother-in-law's expense. "She's never home," I'd intone. "Why doesn't she just rent out her house and give the cruise company as her address?"

The whole truth is, however, that she-as did many of her generation--had lived in the same suburban ranch house for 40 years. I laughed at her costly collection of postcards from exotic ports-but you know what? She was entitled.

Needless to say, it was never my dream to hit the road in an uninterrupted stream of organized tours and cruises. Even before the Great Recession took a bite out of retirement travel budgets, many Boomers had already turned our noses up at the endless vacation that embodied the Greatest Generation's retirement dream.

In fact, there is perhaps the faintest aroma of moral superiority when my friends and I speak about staying closer to home, to continue to working, to be enriched by the fountain of urban or academic culture in whose shadow we anticipate taking joyful refuge someday.

In brief, for the men and women of means of my generation, the pre-retirement chatter is not about which cruise line has the best buffet, but which city we should move to.And why not? The array of possibilities is intoxicating. We are, after all, the first generation who left home en masse to go off to college in cities and states scattered across the country. Once loosed from our roots, we followed job opportunities the way cavemen followed mammoths.

By the time my husband and I celebrated our 39th anniversary, we had lived in just about every region of the U.S. We raised our young family in Marin County, California, we completed their upbringing in Nashville, Tennessee; we followed career and care giving moves to Portland, Maine; Napa, California; Washington, D.C. and now Los Angeles.

Along the way, we've gotten good at picking up and moving on. We've simplified our belongings. (If it doesn't fit into one do-it-yourself UHaul, you don't really need it.) We know how and where to make new friends. (Hint: get a cute little dog.) We know how to try out a neighborhood first by renting, rather than buying. We know how important it is to have a Starbucks nearby.

We know, too, that there are significant regional, cultural, climactic and economic differences from place to place. Are you more the let-it-all-hang-out by the beach type, warm breezes blowing through your locks? Do you prefer to curl up by the fire during the long, cold winter with a good book? Do you want a combination of the above-with a twist of urban hip hop thrown in for spice? As we do in all things Boomer, we can almost taste the perfection in our lifelong search for Utopia on earth.

Thank heavens for the Internet. That way I can keep track of my friends who followed our generation's dream of the perfect place to Bali, St. Thomas and Iowa. We entice one another with visions of sand beneath our toes and the changing color of autumn leaves. And the best thing is we don't have to take a vacation to have all these amazing experiences. We just move to it. More articles by Carol visit http://vibrantnation.com

Dr. Carol Orsborn is VibrantNation.com Senior Strategist and author of 16 books on generationally based issues.