When it is time to retire, what helps makes your decision on location? Is it the installation, the local area or does it matter

Great responses by all,

I have about 1 more PCS, unless I get promoted this upcoming board.. (Fingers still crossed). Although we have had some great assignments, I am just not sure where I want to call "home" when its all said and done.. We have a home where we grew up, but it is not where we want to go back to. Its a shell of what it was and reminds us of Mayberry, everyone knows everyones business... Just trying to find out what the consensus is on how it is decided where you want to go, when you take the uniform off that last time...

SFC (Join to see) My first suggestion would be to lose the idea that where you are is something you are tied to, unless you really love it there. Right now is most likely the last time in your life that someone else will pay for your move. Ask yourself where you want to be, and go from there.

I took a good look at the area we lived in and decided, after much discussion with my wife, that we did not want to stay in Norfolk forever. That was the first decision. Norfolk was great and had a lot going for it, but we really did not want to retire there, it just was not for us.

Second we were not sure where we wanted to go, but we knew that we could put out stuff in storage for a year (with a good chance of a one year extension) and really take a good look at the areas we thought we might want to settle in.

NOW - my plan was in play, but getting the wife to buy in was a little harder. Sell the house and move into the RV. (We already had an RV and both liked to travel, but how do you get a woman to part with the NEST?) Eventually she agreed and we did. Moved into the RV full time and started looking for "The Place."

After traveling and having a great time for TWO Full Years the Government said, "hey, we have your stuff. Where do you want it?" In hindsight we should have sold, burned it all and just stayed on the road forever, but we found the area and then the place. DID it matter? Maybe, maybe not! I think as long as you are happy it is where you are. We lived by this for a long time and still hold it to be true:

Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.