Why NYC Is One of the Best Places to Retire

If there's one thing we're told over and over again in pop culture in America, is that when you retire, you have to move to Florida. Well, I did move to Florida, not because I retired, but for a variety of reasons. Yeah, there are a lot of retirees here, but we're told that you've got to move to Texas. You have to move someplace warm. You have to move someplace where the taxes are lower. There's even the joke on Seinfeld that, you know, I didn't want to, but I'm of a certain age. I was forced, my parents were forced to move to Florida. Turns out that's not really true. There are new statistics out about retirement trends in America. And yeah, Florida is still pretty big, there's no doubt about it. But hold on to your horses. Guess what came in as the number two most popular destination for retirement in the United States. According to a new report from Safe Storage, or, excuse me, from Storage Cafe, the number two spot is. Drum roll, please. New York City. Now, some of you are scratching your head saying, well, wait a minute, New York City, no one would go there. It's violent, wildly expensive, overrun with dangerous socialists. That's what we're told all the time. Turns out the people who can vote with their feet, who can go anywhere, especially affluent people who have been successful in life financially, not that that's the only metric. Turns out they just love New York City. Now, a New York City real estate agent quoted in a story in the New York Times citing the sources from Storage Cafe, says that people love the fact that they're doormen. You know, when you're retired, you don't want to deal with as many hassles. They like building staff, they like a low maintenance apartment living. It's especially valuable to older people who don't want to shovel snow, don't want to deal with repairs, want easy logistics. Also, New York City has many, many of the top doctors in the entire world. A lot of successful doctors want to live in New York City. So if you want to deal with top doctors, actually living in New York City is one of the best places to do it. So I'm not going to kid you, it's not because New York City is suddenly a lot less expensive. No, that's not the reason. But for many seniors, let's face it, we live in a culture where, where so many public policies are skewed towards helping old people have more money. And hey, it benefits me too, okay? And if you are younger, if you are middle aged, it's Very difficult to accumulate wealth. It's very difficult for many people to even afford a home. But for many senior citizens, especially if they've sold their home, had perhaps a nice return on their investment, have a nice nest egg. New York City is increasingly seen as the best place to live if they don't want to live in Florida. Again, this surprises a lot of people who think, oh, why would you want to be there? It's expensive, it's cold. Well, it's not cold if you're not out shoveling snow and you can be inside and look at beautiful things. If you can go to Broadway, if you can see the opera, if you can go to fashion shows, if you can go to any kind of professional sports event that you want, guess what? New York City has it all. Also, if you're a foodie, no offense to my friends who love Applebee's, and I've been to one before. New York City has the greatest concentration of fine dining in America. Some would say the world. Other things of interest, the life expectancy is longer in New York City. The average life expectancy is 80 years old. So some people move there because they want to live longer. Now, causation correlation doesn't mean causation. It's also the fact that relatively affluent people live longer. And New York City attracts more affluent people because poor people can't afford to live there. It also attracts people who like to walk. Walking is a healthier lifestyle than driving all the time or just sitting at home on the couch and looking at certain partisan TV newscast and yelling at the TV screen. So that's, that's the issue. New U.S. news and World Report ranked New York City number three among 150 best places to retire. Now, no one's saying that New York City is suddenly really inexpensive, but it is attractive to an awful lot of people. Now, I mentioned on the show just the other day, I love New York City. I lived there for 20 some years and, and I go back frequently. And I'm not going to say I'm going to retire there because I don't plan on ever retiring, but I may end up having a residence there again at some point. And I am going back a week from yesterday. I'm going to be there for a vacation for a week because I enjoy the culture as well. So here's why I bring this up and why I think it's so significant from a communications perspective and for someone who just wants truth about what's going on in the world. We live in a world where many, many Political interests have an interest in scari you into thinking New York City is a big, dangerous, scary place because it fits a political narrative that makes you want to sometimes vote a certain way. Now here on this show at Filtered, I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. I'm not trying to convince you to just vote for one party or against one party, but I do want you to see how various political interests are trying to shape your worldview. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people buy into this narrative that because New York City has certain ethnic mixes and perhaps a wider variety of ideological backgrounds of people living there, it somehow makes it an awful and dangerous place. Let's look at the issue of crime. Some of you are saying, well, I would never live in New York City. It's crime ridden. Well, yeah, it was in 1970s and the 1980s. It was bad. As recently as the 1990s, there were almost 2,000 murders or a little over 2,000 murders. Today it's only a few hundred. You don't hear that talked about on certain political channels and certain tabloids in New York City. No one likes to talk. You don't get more clicks talking about murder down once again another year. You don't get more clicks for talking about that. And that's why so many people have a distortion. As recently as literally yesterday, I'm on the pickleball court here in Florida and casually mentioned to people I was playing with that I was going to be in New York City in the next week. And one of them said, oh, boy, you better bring your gun. Well, that's horrible reasons. That's. That's horrible advice for many reasons. One of them is New York City has very strict rules against carrying guns, especially unlicensed. You can get mandatory a couple of years in prison for that. So I'm not following that advice. But the motivation for this friend telling me this was he was genuinely concerned for my safety. And here he is living in Florida, Palm Beach County. Let's look at some of the statistics. So again, New York City in 2024 had 377 murders. Okay? Way too many. This is out of a population of 8,478,000. So that's 4.45 murders per 100,000 people. Again, way too many. But there used to be thousands. Compare this with Miami. Now, how many times have you heard in the media about all these people in New York City leaving to go to Miami? Turns out the murder rate there is 5.87 people per 100,000 so Miami is actually much more dangerous. Now, there's other stats you need to be aware of. It's not just Miami. It's. It's other cities as well. So Florida City has a very violent rate. 22.9% of violent crime per 1000 people in Florida City. Daytona Beach, 10.54 out of 1000 people victims of violent crime. Jacksonville, 5.5 people per 1000 victims of violent. Orlando, home of Mickey Mouse, Disney family friendly. Boy, you sure don't think of crime when you go to Orlando. I certainly know many people, so I would go to New York. I wouldn't go to New York City with my family. It's too dangerous. But of course I have to go to Disney. Well, you're being irrational. If you care about facts. And to quote one of my favorite conservative commentators, Ben Shapiro, facts don't care about your feelings. You are, in fact, endangering your life more. I'm not saying you shouldn't go to Orlando or live your life with. In fear, with sheets pulled over your head in bed. But Orlando has 5.62 incidents per 1,000 people of violent crime, which is lower than New York City. So I realize it's unpopular to say this. New York City has seen an 80% drop in its murder rate since 1990. No one believes me or did you get those statistics? Some of you are going to leave. It's. It's all publicly available. Look at the governor's office. Look at, look at, look at the New York City's own crime stats from its own police department. You can look at FBI statistics if you want. And before you say, well, TJ, cite your statistics. I just did, number one. Number two, Google it. Use ChatGPT. Because there is an unfortunate reality. All of us are guilty occasionally of confirmation bias that we. We only want to process new stories that confirm our bias. And that's why when you see someone pushed off a subway, which is unfortunate, rushed by a train in New York City, it's splashed everywhere. And it gets people nodding their head. This confirms the bias I have that New York City is this wild, crazy, dangerous place. Forget retiring there. I better not even go visit there. Well, you owe it to yourself to look at the facts. And fortunately, it looks like a lot of people are looking at the facts, namely senior citizens. People. You would think they're more concerned about safety because they're frail. Perhaps some are not saying all senior citizens are. They're frail and they're looking for quality of life and they want low taxes and low cost. Low cost. Yes, some do. I get that. But look at the statistics which I'm sharing with you. New York City now number two in the country as a destination site for retirees. So think about that. You know, we live in a culture where conservatives especially says, respect your elders. There's wisdom in life, in living life. Okay, why is it I never see any conservatives actually respecting the fact that so many seniors who have accumulated decades of experience of their life actually enjoy New York City and are voting with their feet by moving to Manhattan?