Savoring golden years outside the Golden State

Regarding “So Long, California” (by Marnell Jameson, Dec. 12): Count my family in with the dearly departed.

My husband worked for Arco, and we had lived in Southern California for three years. When Arco was bought by BP and my husband was able to take early retirement, we packed our bags and moved to Colorado. We felt that if we stayed in California, he would have to look for work because of the cost of living, but if we moved, he could retire. We had lived in Colorado before and had many friends here, so the choice was easy.

We are pretty tax-savvy so we knew what we were getting into. And that was a lot less money. Property taxes are about the same, [state] income taxes about half, and sales tax (in the area where we knew we would live) is also about half. Plus there is no need for earthquake insurance or a gardener.

On the sales tax issue, probably the largest single purchase subject to the tax is a car. In California, you pay the tax on the entire purchase price; in Colorado you pay on the [difference after] the trade-in. When we looked at buying a new car before we moved, the difference to us was nearly $2,000. So we waited to buy the car in Colorado.

We have winters here, sure, and we love that, but the cost of our gas and electricity for the whole year is about what we were paying in California anyway because the rates are so much higher there.

We have a better quality of life here. We hike in the summer and ski in the winter. We traded in our one house on the Palos Verdes Peninsula for two -- one in the Denver area and one in the mountains. We left a good high school behind (for my youngest son), but he’s a bright kid and was a “big fish in a little pond” rather than a “small fish in a big pond.” He loved the fact that the teachers and administrators knew who he was. And the school here was just fine. Our values are more in line here than they ever were in California -- think Hollywood crowd and influence.

Now we’re empty-nesters and we savor our lives here, and California is a distant memory. We wake up every day and say: “Life is good (in Colorado).” We have never and will never look back.

Debbie Tyber

Castle Rock, Colo.