Where Should I Live Near the Beach? Start With These 7 Questions

Where Should I Live Near the Beach? Start Here

“Where should I live?”

I hear some version of that question all the time.

“What’s the best beach in Florida?”

“Where can I afford to live near the beach?”

“I need a job. Where should I go?”

“Where can I retire near the water?”

"Where do YOU live?"

Everyone wants the name of a town.

I get it. It would be much easier if I could point to one place on a map and say, “There. That’s the one.”

But I can’t.

The best beach town for you could be completely wrong for the next person. Before you start scrolling through houses and imagining yourself drinking coffee with an ocean view, there are a few things you need to figure out first.

1. What can you actually afford?

Start here.

Not with the prettiest beach. Not with the town you loved on vacation. Start with your money.

And don't look only at the price of a house or apartment.

Sometimes moving just a few miles away from the water can make a significant difference in monthly costs. Of course living directly on the beach would involve many expenses.

Figure out what you can comfortably spend every month and work backward from there.

Beach life isn't much fun if you're broke.

2. Do you need a job?

This changes the conversation completely.

If you're retired or can work from anywhere, you have a much larger map to choose from.

If you need local employment, you need to look beyond the beach and ask what people actually do for a living there.

Tourism and hospitality are obvious, but coastal communities also need healthcare workers, teachers, tradespeople, government employees, real estate professionals, restaurant workers, retail employees and plenty of other people who keep a town running.

Don't choose your town first and hope you'll figure out the income later.

3. How close to the beach do you really need to be?

This one can save you a lot of money.

When people tell me they want to “live at the beach,” I always wonder what that means to them.

Do you need to see the water from your window?

Do you want to be five minutes away?

Would twenty or thirty minutes be perfectly fine if it gave you a nicer home, lower costs and more choices?

There is a big difference between living on the beach and living a life that includes the beach.

You may discover that you don't need beachfront living at all.

4. What do you want your Tuesday to look like?

Vacation is not real life.

A town can be wonderful for a week and completely wrong for you 365 days a year.

Think about an ordinary Tuesday.

Do you want restaurants and bars nearby? Live music? Shopping? Boating? Golf? A quiet neighborhood? A downtown? Lots of people around you? Almost nobody around you?

Do you want to know your neighbors or disappear into the crowd?

That's the life you're choosing—not the sunset photograph.

5. What do you need nearby?

This becomes increasingly important as we get older.

How close do you want to be to good healthcare?

Do you need a major airport?

Do you want stores and restaurants nearby?

How far are you willing to drive for specialists, entertainment or family?

A gorgeous little coastal town can lose some of its charm when everything you need is an hour away.

Remote can be wonderful.

Remote can also be inconvenient.

Know which one you're signing up for.

6. How much coastal reality can you handle?

I love living near the water.

I also know what comes with it.

Storms happen. Flooding happens. Insurance can be frustrating. Salt air is hard on houses and cars. Tourists arrive. Traffic changes with the season. Your favorite restaurant may have a two-hour wait when everybody else decides they want to visit your little slice of paradise.

You don't need to be afraid of those things.

You just need to know they exist.

Living at the beach isn't the same thing as vacationing at the beach.

7. What are you really looking for?

This may be the biggest question of all.

Sometimes when someone tells me they want to move to the beach, the beach isn't really the whole story.

They want a change.

They want freedom.

They want warmer weather.

They want to meet new people.

They want less house and more life.

They want to start over.

The beach may be the setting, but the life you're trying to create matters much more than the ZIP code.

So before you ask someone else, “Where should I live?” ask yourself what you want your life to look like when you get there.

Then start looking for the place that fits that.

There isn't one best beach town.

There is only the one that works best for you.