My dad was ill for most of the last five years of his life.

Indeed, there were times that if good medical care had been more than a few minutes away, he might not have made it. That's why one piece of advice he gave me has really stuck with me -- to make sure when we decided where we were going to retire that there was good medical care close at hand.

That's why when we shifted our attention away from Virginia and looked farther south, when we were trying to decide between Mt. Juliet, Tenn., and Fort Mill, S.C., we realized that neither of them passed a very important test. Even though Mt. Juliet is just outside Nashville and Fort Mill is five miles or so from Charlotte, N.C., neither had what my wife wanted as far as health care.

We have had a Blue Cross HMO for most of our marriage. For a good part of the time, it worked out fine. But as we have gotten older, as we have had more need for specialists and we have occasionally had trouble getting referrals. So Nicole decided that she wants to shift to Kaiser Permanente for our retirement, and neither Tennessee nor South Carolina has Kaiser.

Georgia, however, does.<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gyIt3atHEjQ&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gyIt3atHEjQ&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

Georgia also has a Del Webb community just south of Atlanta -- about 35 miles south -- that has fantastic home prices.

We're going to be able to get more house than we would have had in Virginia for about $40,000 less than we would have spend up there.