Published April 2024
If discretionary income is how much you have left at the end of the month, there's only one question
to ask next. How do you spend it? Of course, there's debt pay down. But, let's say for a moment you
really do have extra at the end of the month. How could that be budgeted in trading off between moving
to a place with better weather or larger houses?
Here we look at 2 cases at opposite ends of the spectrum:
- A retired couple living on social security seeking warm weather
- A tech couple with two kids with a preference for moderate weather
For the retired couple there are 560 zip codes they could even make a go of it in. For the tech couple
about a third of all zip codes 12k in total are viable. That being said, there is a high amount of variability
in those options for the tech couple. In both cases, let's see where both families could go for
optimizing weather and house size.
-June
Summary of Tradeoffs
[Weather] Moderate weather in the US is quite hard to obtain in one location. Comfort with extreme heat or cold actually broadens
the scope of enjoyable locations. For a tech couple seeking moderate weather, most options would offer around
200 out of 365 days of enjoyable weather. Conversely, for a retired couple who favor warmth, the majority
of their options would provide over 250 days of enjoyable weather per year. On this parameter, the retired couple
are more likely to be satisfied with where they live.
[Housing] The tech couple obviously have more housing options and can consider Estate Grade housing, or
rather homes where every small feature originates from a different part of the world. However, for the
retired couple, housing will be somewhat of a challenge, with a maximum flexibility of up to 2000 square
feet Builder Grade homes even being considered.
[Tradeoffs] For the retired couple, considering weather and housing together actually reveals new locations
that wouldn't have surfaced in top results when sorting by one dimension at a time. For instance, Arizona
may be overshadowed individually in both weather and home size categories, but together it emerges as a top
50 location. Louisiana becomes an intriguing option for this couple, especially with Florida being too expensive.
As for the tech couple, it's no surprise that California ranks highly. However, similar to the retired couple,
when factoring in weather and house size, a spot in Louisiana now becomes of interest.
Multi-Objective Optimization is imperative for navigating the complexity of optimizing where families can
live. Despite the diverse requirements and priorities, it's reassuring to find that there are places where a
growing tech family could reside in close proximity to retired parents, ensuring everyone's happiness.
