Now I'll give you a serious plug for Bozeman, MT area, where I live. No sales tax, but who is to say what tomorrow brings. Yes, up to 6.5% state income tax. Got a lot of complicated health issues, stay away, because some of those are best handle elsewhere. If you like the outdoor and your soul needs feeding, consider it. Making friends, no matter where you are, is as easy as you make it, no matter your age. There are adult groups everywhere, and certainly here in a wide range of hobbies/activities.
Bozeman has been rated high for quite a while in those magazine/internet best places to retire. Had nothing to do with what got me here about a decade before that benighted publicity started pounding us in my paradise, Gallatin County. Fish, horses and wide open spaces (room to make a big mistake...ooops, I digress into Dixie Chicks), a sky astronomers die for, the mournful cry of a coyote and the western wind singing you a lullaby. Plus about every big box store and bad food franchise you can name. Oh, and there is just 1 place in the valley that makes a decent bagel. There is no good Italian restaurant within 400 miles minimum, but Bozeman is a University town growing and full of ethnic restaurants that come and mostly go like the wind. Theatre production, music, adult education etc is here.
Irritable old bugger that I am I mostly hang out with the antelope and mule deer and try to avoid the pumas, lynx, bobcat, and coyote feeding parties. Love to see and hear those buggers from a distance.
Please don't come. We have enough of us here now.
PS. Cost of living in certainly not cheap and real estate is only cheap by CT standards.
