A Florida retirement for a couple requires somewhere between $750,000 and $900,000 invested, with average Social Security covering only $55,000 of an $85,000 annual budget.
Retirees leaving Pennsylvania, Illinois, or New York gain near-zero state tax savings since those states already exempt most retirement income.
New Florida homeowners pay two to three times more property tax than longtime neighbors on identical homes for their first decade of ownership.
Read More: Learn 7 ways to generate income with a $1,000,000+ portfolio (sponsor)
Every year, people in their late fifties and early sixties run the same mental spreadsheet: sell the house up north, buy something smaller near the water, cash the Social Security check, and let Florida's zero income tax do the rest. The pitch has real appeal, but it is incomplete. What people rarely price is the cost of leaving: the friction of selling into a slower market, the insurance line item that quietly resets your budget, and the tax break that turns out to be smaller than the brochure suggested. Here is what the move actually takes.