What If I Move in Retirement?

People move in retirement for all kinds of reasons — to be closer to grandkids, for warmer weather, for better access to healthcare, for a lower cost of living, or simply to escape a hefty state tax bill. Whatever’s driving it, a move reshapes two things financially, and they don’t always pull the same direction:

• Your taxes — state income tax, and how that state treats Social Security and retirement income.
• Your cost of living — housing, property taxes, healthcare, everyday expenses.

A move to be near family in a pricier area might raise your costs even as your taxes change; a move to a low-tax, low-cost state might improve both. RetireRange lets you model both sides so you can see the net effect on your plan — instead of guessing.

New here? Build a baseline plan first with Getting Started. Background: Taxes.

The two levers a move pulls

1. Taxes — RetireRange models this for you. Pick a destination and a move year, and RetireRange applies that state’s brackets, standard deduction, Social Security treatment, and — in the states where they’re modeled — its retirement-income and military-pay exclusions from the move onward, for all 50 states plus DC, including the no-income-tax states. See Taxes for each state’s rules.

2. Cost of living — you estimate this. RetireRange doesn’t know what a given town costs, but you do, roughly. Reflect the change by adjusting your spending target from the move year: lower it for a cheaper locale, raise it for a pricier one. That’s how a move made for reasons other than money still shows up in your plan.

Step by step

1. Set the move. On the Household tab (Plan Settings → "Plan a move during the retirement window"), choose the destination state and the year you’d move.

2. Adjust your spending for the new cost of living. If the move changes your everyday costs, reflect it: lower (or raise) your spending target from the move year onward — the spending phases feature makes a step-change at a chosen age easy. Moving to be near family in a high-cost city might mean a higher target; downsizing to a cheaper region, a lower one.

3. Save it as a named strategy (the Strategies button) — "Move to FL in 2034." It captures both the planned move and the spending change.

4. Run Comparison on the Compare tab; with Compare against baseline on (the default), your stay-put baseline is drawn automatically beside the move. Load Baseline (⤺) returns you to your plan.

What to look at

• The tax summary chart — state income tax should shift from the move year onward (to zero if you move to a no-income-tax state).
• Success Rate and legacy — the net of the tax change and any spending change. A tax win can be outweighed by higher living costs, or the other way around; the plan-level numbers tell you which wins.
• Lifetime taxes paid — useful, but read it the right way (see the caution below).

The dollar benefit flows straight through. RetireRange draws your actual state tax from the portfolio each year, under every withdrawal target — so paying less (or more) state tax changes your legacy automatically. There’s no special target setting to switch on; just compare the move scenario against staying put.

And don’t chase "lowest lifetime taxes" on its own — find the high-success-rate plan first, then compare taxes within it.

What the comparison covers

• RetireRange models the income-tax difference between states precisely, and lets you model the cost-of-living difference through your spending target. It does not automatically know a location’s housing costs, property taxes, or the one-time cost of moving — fold those into the spending target, or weigh them outside the model.
• Ran a move comparison before October 2026? Run it again. Every state’s figures were checked and many corrected, so rankings have shifted. Popular destinations such as Louisiana, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Montana got cheaper in the model, and states that tax Social Security only above an income limit (Colorado, New Mexico and others) now apply that limit. A few, including Oregon, Connecticut and Vermont, got more expensive. Michigan got much cheaper for retirees: its full retirement deduction is now modeled.
• Social Security: Montana is the one state that taxes it outright. Rhode Island exempts it only from age 67 and below an income limit.
• Every state’s retirement-income and military rules are now applied (October 2026). Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine and Missouri got noticeably cheaper for many retirees, and Oregon got more expensive for military retirees — so re-run any move comparison you made before then. A few narrower breaks still aren’t applied (see Taxes), and county/local taxes aren’t included, so a state can run slightly high.
• A government pension keeps the state that pays it. Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana and Massachusetts exempt their own public pensions but not another state’s, so moving between them can switch that exemption off. (Missouri exempts any government’s pension, up to a cap.) See Income sources.
• Two places the model is too kind: Washington shows no state income tax, but it taxes large long-term capital gains (7% above roughly $270,000), which RetireRange doesn’t model — retirement-account withdrawals aren’t affected, but a big brokerage sale would be. And a high-income New York plan understates state tax, because New York’s benefit recapture and New York City’s tax aren’t modeled.

Let RetireRange find the best timing (for the tax side)

If tax savings are part of the reason, the year you move matters — relocating before a big Roth-conversion or RMD year can save more. Hand it to the state-move optimizer to search for the best move year.