Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Over the years, my husband and I have lived in several states since his retirement in 2001, including TX, CA, AZ. We lived and worked in PA for many years and loved it and as a matter of fact, we're making plans to relocate back to NW PA (Erie maybe) from our current location in AZ, but we've never considered living in OH. We had always thought it was expensive compared to PA but I'd like some feedback from retirees living in OH or have lived in OH as a retiree.
We know the pluses and minuses of living in PA but we're clueless about OH. Any information would be appreciated.
I enjoy Erie, but would be bored living there given the relatively great lack of cultural amenities, pro sports, restaurants, etc., compared to Greater Cleveland. Presque Isle, Allegheny National Forest, and proximity to NY ski resorts and Chautauqua, are great advantages of Erie. Day trips to Greater Cleveland, Niagara Falls and Letchworth State Park also are possible from Erie. I live in Lake County, 25 miles east of Cleveland, which is only a little over an hour from Presque Isle/Waldameer Park. Cleveland with the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospital systems is one of the world's great medical centers, certainly an important concern for retirees.
For Greater Cleveland, read through this thread starting with post 3. It has posts discussing Ohio's municipal income tax system, which doesn't apply to retirement income, and property taxes.
If you're interested in a more rural area, several acres of land, and lower real estate prices, living between Cleveland and Columbus off I-71 may fit your needs. Perhaps check out Wooster, Ashland, Greater Mansfield, etc. Use the search engine to search for communities of interest in Ohio.
Many Ohio counties have great metropark systems. Each of the five counties in Greater Cleveland have metroparks, greatly complementing Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which actually encompasses several metroparks. See posts 7 and 9 in this thread.
Use this Zillow website to search for home values for any community. I wonder if the low prices in Erie are a measure of the housing stock there, although there are some very nice neighborhoods.
Depending upon your age, this thread might interest you. Post 16 and subsequent posts discuss climate change and the prospective great migration to the Great Lakes region in coming years.
I enjoy Erie, but would be bored living there given the relatively great lack of cultural amenities, pro sports, restaurants, etc., compared to Greater Cleveland. Presque Isle, Allegheny National Forest, and proximity to NY ski resorts and Chautauqua, are great advantages of Erie. Day trips to Greater Cleveland, Niagara Falls and Letchworth State Park also are possible from Erie. I live in Lake County, 25 miles east of Cleveland, which is only a little over an hour from Presque Isle/Waldameer Park. Cleveland with the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospital systems is one of the world's great medical centers, certainly an important concern for retirees.
For Greater Cleveland, read through this thread starting with post 3. It has posts discussing Ohio's municipal income tax system, which doesn't apply to retirement income, and property taxes.
If you're interested in a more rural area, several acres of land, and lower real estate prices, living between Cleveland and Columbus off I-71 may fit your needs. Perhaps check out Wooster, Ashland, Greater Mansfield, etc. Use the search engine to search for communities of interest in Ohio.
Many Ohio counties have great metropark systems. Each of the five counties in Greater Cleveland have metroparks, greatly complementing Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which actually encompasses several metroparks. See posts 7 and 9 in this thread.
Use this Zillow website to search for home values for any community. I wonder if the low prices in Erie are a measure of the housing stock there, although there are some very nice neighborhoods.
Depending upon your age, this thread might interest you. Post 16 and subsequent posts discuss climate change and the prospective great migration to the Great Lakes region in coming years.
Thanks for all the links, however, since my husband and I are seniors (80/74) we're not interested in Cleveland or any other metro city. We've lived in CA for many years and have had enough of crime, traffic, hoards of people, and pollution. We could care less about "cultural amenities" or pro-sports events. National Parks are of no interest to us any more. We'd rather go out on the boat and fish and relax. We just want a quiet neighborhood to spend our days.
I thank you again but you didn't give me any info regarding cost of living, which is what I'm most interested in.
No offense to OP but this is comical. Is Cleveland affordable for retirees?! If you can't afford Cleveland, then you should consider a third world country. Data can be found online, but, yes, Cleveland is extremely affordable.
Thanks for all the links, however, since my husband and I are seniors (80/74) we're not interested in Cleveland or any other metro city. We've lived in CA for many years and have had enough of crime, traffic, hoards of people, and pollution. We could care less about "cultural amenities" or pro-sports events. National Parks are of no interest to us any more. We'd rather go out on the boat and fish and relax. We just want a quiet neighborhood to spend our days.
I thank you again but you didn't give me any info regarding cost of living, which is what I'm most interested in.
Apparently, you don't consider real estate costs to have any bearing on cost of living. Perhaps no person in this forum has any knowledge of the cost of living in Erie, apart from readily available home values. I provided you a link to finding real estate taxes for Ohio counties, but you would have to read it.
You didn't explain in your original post what you were interested in. If you had, I wouldn't have wasted my time expounding on Cleveland's cultural amenities. Although many, many seniors enjoy the offerings of the Cleveland Museum of Art and Playhouse Square. They are both exceptional.
If you like fishing, Lake Erie is a good choice, and Erie, PA offers excellent fishing piers. I believe the fishing is considered better in the more shallow, western basin of Lake Erie. Perhaps check out areas around Port Clinton, OH. Lorain, OH, has lower home values than Erie. So perhaps check out areas west of Cleveland.
Perhaps check out Conneaut, closer to Erie, with much lower home values than Erie and a very well rated hospital, also a University Hospitals facility.
As a senior, you should be very concerned about the quality of medical care. In this regard, Greater Cleveland is far superior to Erie and even most major cities.
To check out cost of living, nothing beats visiting stores and calling local utilities. Greater Cleveland IMO has very cheap groceries due to the great number of Aldi and Marc's stores.
If you are looking for a small town near water, Ohio is full of them. The cost of living varies as do property taxes. A retired friend here in Marietta (small town on the Ohio River) pays less than $1000 a year in taxes for her 3BR home, and pensions are not liable to city income tax. Other friends spend lots of time in boats, and the city has a public fishing dock for those who prefer to stay on land.
At the other end of the state, the spring run of walleye is a major event in Lucas County, and real estate in Toledo is still relatively inexpensive, though taxes there are higher than in SE Ohio.
COL depends on lifestyle. Diner meals can be had for less than $10. Farmers market vegetables are cheap and fresh.
There are three Aldis in Erie and one in Ashtabula. There are none in Conneaut. If you visit northeast Ohio or northwestern PA, checking out an Aldi is a good idea if you have no familiarity with them. Some Aldi stores have been modernized and are larger.
There is no Marc's east of Madison, OH.
If you visit Lorain, check out the Meijer in Avon. Meijer stores are large stores like Super Wal-Marts. They are very price competitive, cheaper than Wal-Mart and grocery chains like Giant Eagle and even Marc's and Aldi for certain products, especially with sales and "Mperks" electronic coupons.
Lake County in Ohio (I provided a link in my first post) offers a unique advantage for seniors. It has door-to-door mass transit vans, equipped with wheel chair lifts, with discounted rates for seniors and veterans.
The Cleveland Clinic is building a new hospital in Mentor and University Hospitals is taking over the modern, conveniently located TriPoint Medical Center at the intersection of I-90 and Route 44. Lake County has great beaches and several marinas and boat launches. There are fishing piers in Fairport and perhaps other locations. Mentor has a Meijer store. Fairport Harbor has several condo complexes on Lake Erie and on the Grand River.
Senior centers and libraries generally are very good in Ohio.
There are many semi-rural areas in Lake County, but likely more expensive than in Erie. Painesville, just south of Fairport Harbor, likely offers the cheapest housing options, but stick to areas south of Mentor Ave. and Main Street; the exception to this rule are the quaint streets running between Mentor Ave. and Jackson St. near the excellent YMCA/Painesville Senior Center (it's a mammoth Y with a couple pools). Painesville owns all of its utilities apart from natural gas, and rates are very low. While it's in Greater Cleveland, Painesville is a city of comparable age to Cleveland, with an historic town square. It's the county seat. Painesville utilities also extend into Painesville Township and Concord Township, which has more modern housing on larger lots.
Just east of Painesville on Mentor Ave. are several grocery stores -- Giant Eagle, Marc's, Sav-a-Lot, and Aldi, with more stores including a Target, Wal-Mart, Lowe's and Meijer even before reaching the Great Lakes Mall and additional strip shopping centers. Mentor has one of the largest retail complexes in Ohio. Home Depot, Sam's Club and Menard's (a very large home supply warehouse store) located off Heisley Road just south of its intersection with Route 2.
Lake County is an extraordinarily convenient place to live, with little of the congestion found in many metro areas such as in California. This is partially because, even though it is the smallest county in Ohio in area, it has three freeways serving the county (I-90, Route 2 and Route 44) along with Route 20 and several state roads.
One annoyance in northeast Ohio is that Ohio has boosted natural gas payments to the natural gas companies to aid in the rebuilding of Ohio's aged natural gas infrastructure. The base monthly fee for East Ohio Gas, not including the cost of natural gas, now is $36/month. Rebuilding the natural gas infrastructure will be an issue in Erie and other older communities.
Over the years, my husband and I have lived in several states since his retirement in 2001, including TX, CA, AZ. We lived and worked in PA for many years and loved it and as a matter of fact, we're making plans to relocate back to NW PA (Erie maybe) from our current location in AZ, but we've never considered living in OH. We had always thought it was expensive compared to PA but I'd like some feedback from retirees living in OH or have lived in OH as a retiree.
We know the pluses and minuses of living in PA but we're clueless about OH. Any information would be appreciated.
Ohio is probably cheaper than Pennsylvania. It is certainly cheaper if you will be leaving a large estate, as Pennsylvania has an inheritance tax. Ohio has neither an estate tax nor an inheritance tax. In Ohio, unlike Pennsylvania, all property tax increases require a vote. School districts do not set property tax rates; voters must approve any increases. Many school districts now have income taxes, based on either total income or just earned income. Voters must approve any school district income tax, along with any municipal income tax increase beyond the base rate of 1%.
There are no mandatory vehicle inspections in Ohio. Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, and Summit counties require E-Check every 2 years; the other 81 counties do not. Like Pennsylvania, there is no personal property tax, so license & registration are cheap. You can register your vehicles for up to 5 years at a time. I have synchronized my license & registration so that they are both due every 4 years. Before bringing an out-of-state vehicle into Ohio, triple-check to make sure the VIN on the title matches the VIN on the vehicle.
Like Pennsylvania, Vanguard offers a tax-exempt municipal bond fund for Ohio. In Ohio, Ohio municipal bonds are free from federal, state, city, & school income taxes. This is especially desirable in school districts with total income taxes. I own Ohio municipal bonds, both through the Vanguard fund and as individual bonds.
Ohio libraries tend to belong to consortiums. My Wayne county library card allow me access to all 47 CLEVNET libraries.
Per WR's suggestion regarding the towns of Mansfield, Wooster, etc further south of Cleveland. I just moved from Mansfield, as there was not enough there for me, but it, or some of those other towns mentioned, might work well for you. Mansfield is very affordable as far as housing prices go. We had a nice house and large lot and paid $117,000 back in 2019. You could go boating and fishing on the large reservoir which is quite lovely and the Mohican Forest is also close and you can just drive through and enjoy the scenery without leaving your vehicle, if you are not into hiking in the great outdoors. I found the hospital there to be quite good for a smallish town. (although I guess Mansfield is considered a city). There is adequate shopping/dining in the adjacent city of Ontario, but downtown Mansfield really doesn't have a whole lot. If affordability is your main concern, however, Mansfield would certainly fit the ticket.
If I were considering that area again, though, I think I would choose Wooster. It has a nice downtown and very good fair every year. Just seemed like it was more lively than Mansfield, but again, that may not matter at all to you.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Aldi stores
