The Geography of Aging: Why Your Dream Retirement Location Is a Trap

Moving to a remote beach sounds perfect at sixty, but it becomes a logistical nightmare at seventy-eight.

In 2021, a couple we will call Robert and Sarah sold their four-bedroom colonial in New Jersey and bought a stunning timber-frame home on nine acres in rural Vermont. They were sixty-two and sixty, avid hikers, and convinced they had beaten the system. Three years later, Robert needed emergency heart surgery, and Sarah realized the nearest cardiac specialist was a ninety-minute drive over roads that spend five months of the year covered in black ice. Their dream retreat had quickly transformed into a beautiful, gilded cage.

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