HELP! I'm struggling with an important decision

This is long, but hang in there, if for nothing more than to chuckle at my misery.

You may think it’s silly to come here to ask for help on this, but I need help talking through an incredibly important decision I’m really struggling with – I am struggling to decide where to retire.

Here’s the background.

My last day in the Army will be August 31, 2026. I will be 48, and Mrs. t_b_f, 46. My oldest daughter will be heading off to college, and my youngest will be heading into his junior year.

I want a clean break from the Army, rather than take an Army civilian or contracting job. I recognize I’ll need a somewhat serious job to help get the kids through college. I anticipate they will both receive some amount of merit scholarships (or JUCO first), and understand I will likely not be able to fund their entire education. My wife also works.

Given that I do not want a government job, the cost of living in Northern Virginia probably means we won’t stay here. Even if a post-retirement job helped exceed my current income, I feel like we’d mostly just be working to pay for an expensive house in a place we don’t necessarily want to be in. But it is definitely great here.

The opportunity has presented itself to buy the home I grew up in and the accompanying 10 acres. My father is getting too old to appropriately take care of the place. They have bought a small lot on a nearby river and want to build a smaller house. They currently keep their camper on it, and spend the weekends and holidays there. It’s in Bumfuck-Middle-of-Nowhere, Alabama. The house is fine, if just a bit small. It was built in the 80s.

The thought process is that we buy their house – for which they’re asking a ridiculously low price – next summer and let them live there while the build. About six months before I retire, they move out, we add a bathroom and some closet space, and move in.

Sounds nice and clean, doesn’t it? That’s not the part I’m struggling with. We’re struggling with the decision of whether we should do it AT ALL 0r go somewhere else.

1.) Cost of living is dirt cheap. We could probably live there and not work again, except to keep busy. Like Forrest Gump, I’d cut that high school grass for free!

2.) It’s home. It’s close to family – her parents are nearby, and older and declining faster than mine, so being there for them would be awesome. My siblings are close, and my nieces and nephews are young enough that I could be involved in their life – you know, crazy-drunk-uncle who takes you hunting and shows up at your softball and football games.

3.) It’s remote – rural Alabama in every way. The nearest small town is about 15 minutes away. A town of 40K is 30 minutes the other way and has everything you need. Montgomery is 45 minutes away, and Birmingham is an hour north (but those ‘burbs can be reached in 45).

4.) It’s Alabama – quality of life there is generally low, obviously. Healthcare is important, but I have pretty solid insurance.

5.) There’s also a political component. In my career, we haven’t always lived in what you’d call liberal bastions – Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, and now NOVA. We have never minded rural, but we have always been just passing through. It hasn’t bothered us, but things like the abortion bans, rural hospitals closing, and this frozen embryo thing gives me pause when I consider my daughter might follow us. We kind-of figure she’ll stay here and go to school in Virginia when we move away. But my son and whatever future wife he winds up with likely won’t have that luxury. But that’s also not a given.

6.) Education – I’m not trying to bury the lede here, but this one is weighing on me. My kids are in great schools. My daughter will finish here regardless, but my son will not. I feel incredibly guilty that I’m even considering taking him out of this environment and moving him to rural Alabama. He makes phenomenal grades, and I’m certain he’ll do fine. And we’re very involved in their education, which I believe can help mitigate some of that. Given where we’ve lived thus far, he’s sort of a small-town kid. He’s comfortable in that environment. But he doesn’t understand the difference in where he is and where he’d be going.

At the end of the day, it comes down to this – I’m pretty much done with the Army, and I’m going to retire at basically my earliest opportunity. I have an opportunity to move back home and be financially secure in a not-so-great place, be around my family (mildly MAGA-types), and I’m concerned about my son’s education.

My wife really has no opinion, and we sometimes struggle to have conversations about it. I believe some of that is because she’s a bit scared of the thought of settling down after being transient for our entire 25-year marriage (lots of moves in the newspaper business early on, too).

Even I’m a bit wishy-washy on it. One day, I can’t wait to do it. And the next day I call myself crazy for even thinking about it. It may seem like the easy button, and most of the time “easy” is good.

Help me talk through this, please … I’m losing my goddam mind over this.

 

If you can - buy the house, hold on to it. And if you can, find a place to rent where you want to live until the kid finishes high school? Be "snowbirds" or whatever the equivalent would be in Bama? Just a thought. Congratulations on your career - I know families bear a heavy burden in a military career. It's great that you are thinking of them.

 

Retiring at 48 to a home in rural Alabama? I think it would take me three days tops before I went completely insane. And that's not factoring in my child's education.

Obviously, though, that's not home for me. Your mileage may vary greatly.

Best advice I can offer is to try to picture your potential daily life as thoroughly as you can and ask yourself if you would be happy.

And I would seriously consider delaying any such move until your son is off to college. I don't think moving my son to Bumfuck-Middle-of-Nowhere Alabama late in high school would be an option to me.

Good luck with it, whatever you choose.

 

Can you afford to send tbf jr. to a private high school for a couple years?

 

Talk to an attorney and accountant. There may be some way to manage things to make it simpler and cheaper. Or more complex, but ultimately cheaper.

My cousin is a retired federal agent and wants to get the hell out of NOVA now that his youngest is graduating high school. If you don't want to do contracting, I don't see much to staying around.

 

Some things to consider:

Worth remembering we live in the great age of remote work - and education.

Make sure you have reliable broadband at the folks house. That's a must. Before the move, find a job that allows you to live wherever you like, and in which you're unlikely to be replaced by AI.

You can bolster your son's in-person education with homeschool and online learning. He can take plenty of college prep courses remotely. You can all travel together for long museum and music weekends to regional cities like Atlanta and New Orleans, Memphis and Nashville.

With the money you save buying your folk's old place, you'll maybe have enough of a nest egg to think about a getaway second place down near the Gulf.

But if none of that adds anything to your thinking, then it's probably not the right move.

 

I’ll echo what Dan and others have said. If you can financially swing it, wait a couple of years before your son finishes high school. Two years doesn’t seem like much time for a 48-year-old, but to a teenager, that’s a good percentage of their lifetime.

And if you can buy your family’s home, a couple of more years in Virginia is, you can use the short breaks when you’re visiting Alabama as a tryout to see if you’d like staying down there permanently.

 

We've considered buying it and renting it while we stay here.

 

I've put quite a bit of thought into what I'll do to occupy my tie. I'll likely have to do SOMETHING for work, eas what even it it's only part time for beer money. It was a "small farm" when I was growing up. We had a few cows and a couple of horses when I was growing up. I think I'd be happy doing some of that -- a few cows, chickens, and couple of pigs. Keeps you busy and cuts down on the trips to the grocery store.

The education is what's holding me up, really. That and the devolving political atmosphere. I feel like he'd be OK, but there's definitely a difference in the 50-kid class he'd be going to, from his high school of 3,000. There's less diversity in education, but they do offer dual enrollment at the local JUCO down the road.

I also think he's more comfortable in the smaller environment and would be happier on smaller baseball and football teams, for example.

 

In rural Alabama, private schools aren't better -- they're just a way to avoid sending your kids to school with black kids.

 

I love Northern Virginia and have made it my home for almost 20 years, but I fully support the idea that it is NOT a place to which you should ever retire. We’re off to the Finger Lakes as soon as the kids finish school — or maybe sooner.

I agree with others who caution against such a drastic change to your son’s education at such a late time. If he only has a year or two left when you retire, I’d recommend trying to gut it out in NOVA until he’s done, especially if you can rent the house in Alabama.

With your experience and time in, you could probably get a part-time consulting gig to keep you afloat here until you move.

Also, the access to health care is not a minor issue. I don’t know if you’d be dependent on TRICARE or the VA, but I know someone who retired from the Army and moved to rural Georgia, and upon seeing veterans’ issues with access to care, started his own business where they chauffeur these vets to all of their appointments, since they’re so scattered and remote and can’t get there themselves.

 

Now you do. But what happens to it --- if anything --- on Sept. 1, 2026?