What It Takes to Retire in the Town With Florida Winters and Colorado Summers

Nobody actually lives in a single town with Florida winters and Colorado summers. That town is a construction: a condo near the Gulf, a place in the Rockies, and a calendar built around avoiding hurricanes and shoveling snow. It is one of the most-asked retirement scenarios from readers in their late fifties and early sixties: we love the beach in February and the mountains in July, can we actually pull this off? The answer is yes, but the arithmetic reflects a two-address life, and the carrying costs and tax mechanics are where most people underestimate the target by a quarter million dollars or more.

The Real Cost of a Two-Address Life

Start with the housing footprint. A modest coastal condo in Sarasota, Naples, or Vero Beach runs in the mid-six figures, and the Case-Shiller national index sits at 335.1 in May 2026, in the 90th percentile historically. Florida property tax on a $500,000 condo runs about $5,000 with homestead, HOA on a well-run building is $700 to $1,200 a month, and windstorm and hurricane insurance now routinely lands between $4,000 and $8,000 depending on roof age and distance to water. Call it $30,000 a year in Florida carrying cost before utilities.

The Colorado leg forks two ways. Owning a second place in a resort county (Summit, Routt, La Plata) means another $400,000 to $700,000 outlay plus wildfire insurance that has become uninsurable in some ZIP codes. The cleaner move is a five or six month lease in a shoulder-season mountain town, roughly $2,800 to $3,800 a month furnished, which annualizes to $18,000 to $22,000 without property-tax and insurance exposure. Renting the Colorado side keeps optionality and avoids doubling your natural-hazard premium risk.

Building the Working Budget

For a Medicare-age couple living this scenario at a comfortable level, the annual number lands around $105,000 to $115,000. Roughly $30,000 in Florida housing carry, $22,000 in a Colorado summer lease, $12,000 in food (the 2024 BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey pegs total average annual household expenditures at $78,535, but retirees skew heavier on housing and healthcare), $8,000 in utilities across two places, and healthcare running $11,000 to $14,000 for a couple. That assumes Original Medicare with a Medigap policy, which suits this lifestyle because Medicare Advantage networks do not travel well between Florida and Colorado. Add the 2026 Part A hospital deductible of $1,736 as a reminder that out-of-pocket exposure still exists. Cars, travel between homes, gifts, home maintenance reserves, and federal taxes on withdrawals absorb the remaining $20,000 to $25,000.

The Math That Turns Cost Into a Portfolio Target

A couple with average earnings histories claiming at full retirement age can expect combined Social Security in the $48,000 to $58,000 range, and the 2026 COLA of 2.8% keeps that indexed. Subtract $52,000 in benefits from a $110,000 budget and you need a $58,000 annual gap from the portfolio. At a 4% withdrawal rate that implies about $1.45 million. At a more defensive 3.5%, which suits a scenario with two properties exposed to insurance and climate shocks, the target rises to roughly $1.66 million. For an early retiree in their late fifties bridging to Medicare, add another $18,000 to $28,000 a year in ACA premiums, which pushes the target closer to $2 million.

The Domicile and Insurance Trap

Florida ranks 4th on the 2025 State Tax Competitiveness Index with no individual income tax, while Colorado ranks 32nd and taxes retirement income (with a partial exclusion for those 65-plus). To preserve Florida domicile, you generally need to spend more than half the year there and pass the facts-and-circumstances tests: driver’s license, voter registration, homestead exemption, primary physician, vehicle registration. Cross the 183-day threshold in Colorado and the state can assert residency on your entire portfolio’s income, including capital gains realized in Sarasota. A 7-months-Florida, 5-months-Colorado calendar works; a 50/50 split does not.

The second trap is insurance. Florida windstorm premiums have doubled in many coastal ZIPs since 2022, and Colorado wildfire non-renewals are now common above 7,000 feet. Underwrite your budget assuming premiums rise faster than the headline CPI, which sat at 332.6 in June 2026. A reasonable planning assumption is 8% to 12% annual increases on both policies for the next decade. That single line item, compounded, is what turns a $1.45 million portfolio into a $1.7 million portfolio ten years in.

What It Actually Takes

To live this scenario without stress, a couple should plan on roughly $1.6 to $1.8 million in invested assets at Medicare age, a 3.5% withdrawal rate, combined Social Security claimed strategically (typically the higher earner delaying to 70), Florida established as legal domicile with the calendar to prove it, and Colorado handled as a lease rather than a second deed. Assume a 5% to 6% real return on a balanced portfolio to sustain the draw through a 30-year horizon. The number that makes this work is the reserve you build for the insurance and domicile realities that quietly re-price the whole plan every year you own it, not the sticker price of two homes.

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