A retiree collecting the average Social Security benefit of about $1,976 per month faces a simple math problem: that check covers roughly 14 months of median housing costs in Mississippi but barely seven in California. The gap is not anecdotal. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis quantifies it through Regional

When Linda Ferraro retired from teaching in Connecticut in 2023, she gave herself one rule: no more shoveling snow. Within a year she had closed on a two-bedroom in Sarasota, Florida, joined a pickleball league, and started wondering why she hadn’t moved sooner. Her story is one version of a