I've been retired for 11 years, and my wife and I now split the year between living in SE PA in the winter, and SW MT in the summer. The first several years after I retired, we traveled all over the Pacific Northwest before finally settling in the area we liked best, which is Paradise Valley, right along the Yellowstone River and 35 miles north of Yellowstone National Park.

While I can't help you with specifics on the regions you mentioned, here are a couple things that come to mind relative to what we've experienced comparing MT to SE PA. (You might want to keep these kinds of things in mind as well, because they can represent a big impact on your overall expenses/experiences no matter where you relocate.)

1. Food Prices are about 25% higher in MT. Probably similar in many western/semi-rural areas.

2. We drive a LOT more during the summer in MT than we do in PA, in part because of the distances between places that we go to (for example, a trip to the grocery store for us in MT can range between 40 and 100 miles round trip, versus a 2 miles round trip in PA.) I know that the state of WA has much higher gasoline costs than either PA or MT, but some areas in WA may have lower electricity costs. Water costs can also be a significant consideration in some western states/areas.

3. States obtain revenues in multiple ways. PA taxes primarily earned income (i.e. wages earned from employment), so there is no state and local taxes (in the county where we live) on Soc. Sec., pensions, and withdrawals from IRA's and the like. MT has no general sales tax, but automobile license registrations are much higher than in PA. (I just paid about $450 to license a new Ford pickup truck in MT, where as it would have been about $50 in PA). On the other hand, MT has lifetime licenses available on many recreational type vehicles and trailers, and they are relatively inexpensive.

4. Insurance costs are considerably higher in MT than in PA. We probaly pay 25-50% more in MT for property and vehicle insurances.

5. There seems to be a much wider range in the quality of services that we obtain in MT vs in PA. While many businesses in MT offer outstanding service, more often than not we've found all too many that work on their own time schedules, which is a much slower pace than in the east, and some with questionable quality.

6. We've found it is very hard to fully evalualte health care in MT versus PA. For example, we have experienced some outstanding orthopedic care in MT, but this past summer had to wait 2 months for an appointment with a gastroenterologist who then told us he would have to send us to Seattle, WA for specific testing! YIKES!

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For me, I'd look at all of the cost considerations, but unless I had to live within a very constrictive budget, I'd want to place most of the emphasis on where my wife and I would be the most happy - things like geographic considerations (how much rain and snow does the area get, and is that to my liking? what about fires in the summer, and can I handle a month or two or smoke filled summer days, for example? or, how about WIND - something we do not think of in PA, but it's a daily consideration for us in MT. OR, how well we would get along with the neighbors, and where are our friends and family and how readily and how often can see them?)

John