So I'm putting together a bucket list of places we should visit. Welcome all suggestions.
1. All of California: I've only ever been to San Francisco like 30 years ago. Never been to SoCal at all. Lots of places are too expensive and I'm not trying to be broke in retirement. But I see places near Napa going for around 550K. Maybe that fits the profile.
Yeah, the problem with California is that anywhere that there's a healthy job climate is expensive as hell...
...but the nice thing about retirement is that you don't need a healthy job climate.
So being well north of SF up in wine country is nice, and being too far for commuters trying to get to jobs in the Bay Area, won't be quite as expensive. Same with a lot of the Central Coast. Again wine country near Paso Robles is really nice. Being ON the beach somewhere won't be cheap, but in a lot of those areas you're never all that far.
That said, factor in that cost of living isn't just your house. Everything else is more expensive here too... Food, utilities, etc... And then there's taxes. You may not have super-high income in retirement depending on how you structure things, but sales taxes and the like are high here too.
I think living here is amazing, but it's not cheap.
Come on man, you know the rules about moving here... 
Same point as above... In retirement, the calculus changes. If I were moving to Texas in my situation, it would be for a tech job, so it would probably mean Austin or surrounding areas.
But if I were moving to Texas in retirement, I'd probably avoid the Austin area because it's too full of high-income tech workers who have driven up the real estate costs.
For Sam, I think he'd avoid Austin.
