When I made my decision to retire to Seattle to live near my daughter, I had a lot to think about, due to the high cost of living in Seattle versus the more affordable town of Glens Falls in upstate New York.
A single person can live in Glens Falls on $36,000 a year, less than the national average, but the one thing you must have is a car. There is no light rail, and the bus system is a joke, with some routes running maybe twice a day, and only in some areas. In Seattle, the cost of living for a single person is 57% higher than the national average, according to Best Places. So I was making a completely irrational decision, moving to an area where my income was going to be $3,200 a month. Some websites suggest that you need at least $4,000 a month to live here as a single person, and that is on the low end.
The difference between the two areas is the obvious of course: wages are a lot higher in Seattle than in Glens Falls. But retirement decisions are based on a fixed income, and Social Security increases do not keep up with inflation. In deciding where to retire, you need to determine how that fixed income can be divided to pay for monthly expenses.
The bottom line for me was about a $1,000 increase in living expenses by moving from Glens Falls to Seattle. I spent a couple of years working and reworking my retirement budget, looking at ways to save, and determined that if I was going to live here, the thing that would make it work for me was not having the expense of owning and maintaining a car.
What I had going for me was the example of my daughter, who has lived in Seattle since 2001, when she started graduate school at the University of Washington. Tracy has low vision and cannot drive, so she needed to live in an area that she could navigate without a car. The University District turned out to be not only accessible to campus, but an ideal place for her to live and work after she graduated, since Seattle was investing a lot in their public transportation vision for the future. The best thing that ever happened to her was choosing UW in the first place; living as an adult in Glens Falls would have never worked, due to the lack of public transportation and professional jobs, compared to Seattle, where she has been able to flourish. She showed me, during the 20+ years visiting her here, that I, too, could live without a car, and use that cost savings to make my home in Wallingford. I knew the area I needed to be in and started the hunt for the right place that was walkable and had links to the bus line and light rail.
When I was doing my retirement budgeting, I figured out the cost of owning a car in Wallingford using data from the web, including the cost of buying a car, maintenance, parking, insurance, gas/charging, and registration. Costs will vary based on the type of car, new versus used, electric or gas-powered, and what your life circumstances are. I am sure that if you calculate your own cost per month, you would get different results. And, of course, there are benefits to being able to just hop in your car to get somewhere more quickly than using public transportation. But you can also compare spending money on a car, which depreciates, to investing that money in a 3% certificate of deposit, which would get you a return.
I based my cost comparison on being retired and living near Tracy. My cost for a bus trip is $1 as a senior, and I also included some use of Uber (for which Seattle has the highest cost in the country). I compared that to buying a new gas-powered car, since it is hard to charge an electric car in an apartment building. And I assumed very little driving, since I am not working. As for car insurance, as you age, costs go up, since more accidents happen with drivers over the age of 70–we start getting treated like 16-year-old boys when they come up with our premiums. My calculations showed a savings of $800-900 a month by not owning a car.
My transportation costs living here have been about $125 a year, and that includes a few homemade pecan pies for friends who have driven me. I usually walk or take the bus, and have only just started to think about trying Uber by myself—up til now I have only used it with my daughter. And relying on public transportation does not limit me to the neighborhood: Tracy and I have taken the bus to Bellevue to go to an art fair, and also to Renton to check out an awesome Chinese restaurant that reminded me of an all-you-can-eat buffet in Las Vegas. The light rail opens up so many options for us, and we keep trying new areas. It has been over two and a half years since I drove a car, but I know I can always rent one if I need to go somewhere without access to public transportation.
I use my transportation cost savings to help me with my rent, and this allows me to live in a nice building next to two different bus routes and with a 98% walk score. The rent on my 550-square-foot studio is $1,650 a month, which has been stable since I moved in. I have a balcony, a washer/dryer, and, best of all, an elevator, since I am on the top floor. I love my place and hope to stay for a while. Living urban may seem more expensive to some seniors, but there are a lot more upsides than downsides, at least for me.
Please share any other options that you may have figured out using Seattle’s public transportation system, or any other transportation that helps seniors. I love learning about things from others who have already figured it out.
Editor’s note: see the other articles in Patti’s series “Retiring in Wallingford”:
- How Did I Collect All This “Stuff”?
- Aging in Place in Your Family Home
- Navigating Volunteer Opportunities
- Retiring in Wallingford on a Budget
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Eastern Wallingford used to have a wonderful bus route called the 26. It connected Green Lake to Wallingford to Fremont to SLU to downtown. It was always packed and very popular. Therefore it had to die.
I live along Latona and can tell you the 26 got solid ridership during peak commute hours but was mostly empty most of the rest of the day. Then once light rail came along they redid a lot of the bus routes to connect to Link rather than sending so many buses downtown directly, and as part of that they replaced the 26 with a new Route 20 along Latona. It was a useful route for those of us in the neighborhood. It gave us new direct connections to the U District and Lake City that we didn't have before, along with a very similar travel time to downtown via Link, but the problem was that it just didn't get that much ridership.
With the 26, Latona got the benefit of perhaps more bus service than the relatively low density in the area might have deserved, because it was on the way between some higher-density places that did generate more ridership. The 20 didn't have as much appeal to folks in the Green Lake center (they had other options for getting to Link and the U District), it didn't serve the apartments near 40th/Stone at all like the 26 did, and so it's really the residents along Latona that make or break the route, and there just weren't enough regular bus riders in that group.
Gauging ridership as the 26 ran along Latona is silly. Sure some non-peak 26 buses were mostly empty as they ran toward the terminus of the route close to you, but they had heavier ridership as they ran through Fremont. And the 20 was a stupid "replacement" for the 26, designed to fail, which it did.
The 26 and other routes in District 4 were deliberately redesigned to fail so that the availability of transit couldn’t be used as a justification for changing zoning.
Latona wasn't even close to the terminus of the 26. It went all the way to Northgate. So if the bus was still mostly empty all the way from Northgate to Green Lake through Latona and only got significant ridership once it got closer to Fremont, why not just start it there? That's essentially what they did. The Stone Way->Fremont->downtown corridor is served fine by route 62 (though not as fast of a trip downtown as the 26X via Aurora), and the Route 20 along Latona was cancelled due to poor ridership.
The 62 is not a good substitute for the loss of the 26. Stone Way is almost a mile from Latona. Add to that the fact that the bus stop at I-5 and 45th (home of the 510/511) was yanked out as well, and East Wallingford is a much more poorly serviced by public transit than it was 5 years ago, even with the addition of light rail (which is indeed great).
I'm in full agreement that the area near I-5 is served by less transit now than it was five years ago. These days the closest transit to my house includes Route 62 (8 minutes walk), Route 45 (12 minutes walk), and Roosevelt Link (18 minutes walk).
I almost never ride the bus anymore since I got my scooter, and the scooter shortens the trip to Link down to 5 minutes, but for those who can't/won't ride one the longer walk to transit makes trips take that much longer and be that much less competitive with driving. It certainly makes airport trips with luggage more of a slog than they were before.
But again, Route 26 (and later Route 20) just weren't very well used through Latona and east Wallingford outside of peak commute hours. The ridership numbers were clear. Metro has a finite budget for running buses around town and they reallocated ours to somewhere it would be better used. I wish I had enough bus-using neighbors that transit could still run past my house. May that be the case again someday.
Latona and Eastern Wallingford in general were always doomed for bus lines. Its density is just too low. If it's built up like Roosevelt or Stone Way, you bet it'd still got a bus line running. The "designed to fail" part was the density, not the bus.
Latona was a transit corridor for over 100 years.
And Ballard was a dump until less 10 years ago, while Columbia City is only cool instead of ghetto also for less than 10 years.
Latona was a transit corridor in the old Seattle. Nowadays 45th finally got some efficient bus service with many specific bus-only lanes and designs, while a bus can get easy stuck on Latona just by somebody parking next to Muddy Cups.
The 26 wasn't particularly high-ridership off-peak, in large part because it didn't have great frequency. In exchange for no 26, we now have 15-minute all-week service on 40th and Stone Way, and both corridors connect to a Link station. The ridership trends certainly confirm that this is an improvement.
Neither the 31 or 32 go downtown. Both buses get stuck in the morass around U District station and arrival times are completely unreliable.
Yeah they should paint some bus lanes there. I'm honestly happy not so many buses go directly downtown anymore. The Link train is so much faster. I remember one day this summer the train had some issue so I took the 62 home from downtown, and I was riding it almost an hour. The train (when it actually works) gets me to Roosevelt in 15 minutes, and then it's a quick scooter ride home from there.
It was the opposite of being packed in the Wallingford stretch, which is why it died. I live close to it and used it often, and it was a very very awkward bus line. It usually has the long version of the bus, because the stretch from Northgate to Lake City are jam packed. South of Northgate stretch not so much.
My family both loved the fact it's reliably on time and empty and loathed the thought of it's impeding doom even at the beginning of the revamp of the 26 line.
Wrong. Countless times I picked up the bus in Wallingford and by the time it got to the Aurora Bridge it was sardines.
Yeah, for all the iteration of bus routes on Latona, it got packed after it passed some other higher density areas that's not East Wallingford.
You know, these days all the bus lines got packed when they got to the Aurora Bridges still, just that they don't pass East Wallingford anymore. Do you know even the route 62 today is mostly packed by people living in West Wallingford/Stone Way and not other stretches of Wallingford it passes?
It's low density that doomed the chance of better bus lines for the neighborhood. It's kind of ok if the public transit is flush with money. Whenever that's not the case, lower density places by default will be sacrificed first. Can you tell where in Wallingford are the densities high? And those places will have the positive feedback loop of better transit -> more likely to have more high density housing -> capability to maintain better transit, as opposed to East Wallingford can forever only hope for being a passthrough for transits that link other higher density areas. Consider the location, it's hard to see anything other than the east-west ones.
Thank you so much for your perspective as a retired person. I've lived in Wallingford/Fremont basically my entire adult life (almost 20 years now), and can't drive so a car has never been an option. Maybe there's things that would be easier with a car, but, as you note, are they $1000/month easier? I don't think so, and transit/biking/walking has gotten so much better just in those two decades, while climate change is getting even more obvious and pedestrian deaths just keep stacking up, so the choice is even easier now.
I'm looking forward to that car-free retirement you have now!
Glad I can inspire you; urban living actually is better as you age. We are close to class A medical facilities, public transportation, lots of public art, entertainment and as you age driving at night is also an issue. Sounds like you have made it work for yourself as well. Best decision I made was moving to Wallingford. Lots of opportunities with volunteering and being with younger people is more interesting. I actually love my building seeing younger people living urban and loving it. The best part for me is being near my daughter who has made this area her home and now it is mine as well.
Have you ever looked into getting an electric bike or scooter? I find they're much faster than walking and much cheaper than car ownership. I live about 20 minutes walk from a Link station, and the bus isn't any faster unless I time it perfectly, but my scooter gets me there in more like 5 minutes. The secure bike/scooter parking at the station costs a whopping $0.05/hr.
Maybe if I was younger, the downside of getting older (almost 70) your bones are not as strong and breaking one is a whole lot harder. Although my balance was not all that great when I was younger. Glad to hear it works for you though.
Yeah, fair enough! I'm only 40 so my balance is still just fine, and I appreciate that you can ride a scooter or electric bike without breaking a sweat. It's definitely not for everyone, but I do think a lot of people tend to underestimate how useful these newer electric conveyances can be and so should maybe just give one a try just to see.
Yet another well-written, well-reasoned article from JustPatti. Thanks!
Thank you for enjoying my articles. I have enjoyed writing them. This is the first time at almost 70 that I had the guts to write anything that was not required for work or school. I spent my life afraid to write since I am dyslexic and I am a terrible speller and was ashamed growing up to write anything. Auto spell and an editor are my savior, and I do have to check my spelling at times to make sure I haven't written something that makes no sense.
Love this!
I spent my college years near your origin, studying at RPI. Coached a kids swim team and sometimes would end up at the Glens Falls YMCA! 🙂
I used to live across the street from the Y on Glen Street across from the pond.