Florida has huge cockroaches called Palmetto bugs. These guys love hot and humid climates and can also spread disease.How do you determine which ares have lots of bugs?
Florida has huge cockroaches called Palmetto bugs. These guys love hot and humid climates and can also spread disease.How do you determine which ares have lots of bugs?
I grew up in MA had looked into places in southern NH and found that the property taxes were very high, at least compared to where I currently live in AZ. For an equivalent priced house the property taxes were about 4X what I currently pay, more than offsetting any savings in income/sales tax.
How do you determine which ares have lots of bugs?
How do you determine which ares have lots of bugs?
LOL. We're in Indiana and nothing that's really scary. But my brother lived in Texas for awhile and they had their yard sprayed every 3 months for scorpions and large spiders lol.
I'd like to move to the Carolinas someday (not near the coast)...not sure what kind of odd creatures we will find down there.
I've done a lot of looking at various places, and for us the key data are weather (I'd be ok never seeing snow again in my life), low crime (at least VIOLENT crime), reasonable cost of living, city size greater than 50,000 but less than 200,000 (hate traffic/crowding/pollution), nearness to amenities (this one difficult to explain...read next paragraph), less than an hour to a major airport, and nearness to quality health care.
As for amenities, it's hard to explain what I mean...so I'll give examples. I currently have two major hobbies....woodworking and musclecars. The nearest woodworking store to me is 70 minutes. The nearest speed shop for cars is about 50 minutes. That's a real pain. We have no major league sports near us. My wife is tall, and our local stores don't carry "tall" pants...so we have to drive 50 minutes to shop for her pants. If I want to buy a new car, we only have 1 car dealer for each make...can't leverage competition easily. We have only 1 Uber driver in our entire city, so we have to take turns being designated driver when we're out. We don't have a local TV station...the nearest one is Indianapolis so the weather report doesn't focus in on our area. The list goes on and on...but you get the idea. Our city population is about 40,000.
Well, we went to Springfield IL and liked it better than Springfield MO lol. Except the weather is too cold for me in winter (in both Springfields lol)I like your list of criteria for a retirement location! Sounds about like ours were, before we decided not to move. Some interesting towns that we found were Springfield, Missouri; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Huntsville, Alabama.
As for bugs, we like the solution here in the New Orleans metro area. They spray/fog from trucks and airplanes, alternating between several effective sprays. I haven't had a mosquito bite or spider bite since I moved here a couple of decades back, nor have I seen any ants in my kitchen.
We still have plenty of other wildlife, though, lots of lizards, raccoons, possums, rats, nutria, and (on the positive side) some beautiful egrets, pelicans, seagulls, and other interesting birds.
We have scorpions here in southern Switzerland. I didn't expect that.
-BB
Apparently crime as well. I didn't expect that. Good friends who snow bird here were victims of a break in in Geneva. Just shows how little I know about that part of the world. YMMV
Southern Switzerland is more along the Italian border, like Zermatt or Lugano?
Geneva one of the larger cities would have crime and perhaps more crime in the French part than the German or Italian parts?
Yes, Geneva (in the west of the country) is a bit of a crime "hotspot" (relatively!) for Switzerland, but still far below most other places of similar size and demographics. Explanade is right--southern Switzerland is more the canton of Ticino, which shares a border with northern Italy. The crime rate here is essentially negligible. Some petty theft, but virtually no violent crime.
One study of crime and other safety stats among 125 countries published in February of this year showed Switzerland as safest in the world, even more so than Japan, which was also in the top 5.
I have never once in 11 years here felt unsafe, even walking alone in the early morning hours. So, there's that.
-BB
LOL. We're in Indiana and nothing that's really scary. But my brother lived in Texas for awhile and they had their yard sprayed every 3 months for scorpions and large spiders lol.
Good info. When we visited Sedona AZ we were warned about scorpions...to check our shoes each day before putting them on. Sure enough, found a small one (nearly translucent..yuk) in my shoe and had to kill it. I live in Indiana and the worst thing we have is Cicadas every 7 or 17 years lol.Here is SE Arizona, spraying every 3 months is considered light if you see scorpions regularly. Most folks have a bug guy coming out monthly during the warm months, April through Oct. Things get really ugly July-Oct and I have sprayed heavily as frequently as every 3-4 WEEKS!
Yes, scorpions look (and are) as nasty as you'd think, esp the huge ones that can approach 3 inches long. Thankfully, the spraying w*rks, but you have to keep a consistent schedule, typically monthly, in problem areas.
Interestingly, problem areas aren't everywhere. Some folks rarely see them. In our area, scorpions weren't a problem for the first 8 years in our new subdivision. Now, we are constantly facing an invasion. We even see them in the winter if we don't spray regularly. On the other hand, folks down the street in slightly older homes don't have a big issue. Location is everything!
Yep the scorpions are nasty in Az. I used to check my shoes all the time. Only saw a few scorpions in 17 years. One in our garage. One in the gym. And our next door neighbor was stung, requiring 2 trips to the Er.