Where to live after the military

Where you settle changes what your job pays, what you spend on rent and, if you're retiring, how a state taxes your retired pay. The military's last move has its own clock, and it's much shorter if you aren't retiring.

If you're getting out this year, you may already have a place in mind: your hometown, your spouse's, or the town outside your last base. Before you sign a lease, check that choice against a few official numbers. What your job pays changes a lot from city to city. In May 2025, the median pay for registered nurses was $139,520 in San Diego and $77,090 in Huntsville, Ala. That's a gap of $62,430 for the same work.

Prices and taxes move too. Housing is often what makes one place cost more than another. And if you're retiring, the state you settle in can matter more than the one you served in. California, for one, taxes the military retired pay of anyone who lives there, wherever they were stationed.

The military will also pay to move you one more time, but only to certain places and only for a while. If you're separating without severance or separation pay, you have 180 days to ask for the move in writing and start your trip. If you're retiring with pay, you usually have three years, and so do people who leave with severance or separation pay after 8 or more years of continuous active duty. Here's how the move works, and how to compare places with official data.

Where the military will move you

The rules for your last move are in the Joint Travel Regulations, or JTR, DoD's rulebook for travel and moving. Which places it pays for depends on how you leave.

If you're separating or being released from active duty without retiring, and you aren't in the severance or separation pay group listed below, the military moves you to your home of record (HOR) or to the place you entered active duty, which the JTR calls your PLEAD. You pick which. Your household goods can go to either, up to your PCS weight allowance.

Your home of record is the place recorded as your home when you enlisted, were commissioned or were ordered to active duty. It's fixed. You can change it only after a break in service of more than one full day. You can correct it if a genuine error put the wrong place on your record, but the corrected HOR must be your actual home when you came in, not a place you'd now find more convenient. Your PLEAD is where you enlisted or were commissioned or appointed. For Guard and Reserve members, it's where you enlisted or were commissioned or appointed for immediate active duty. After a break in active duty of more than one full day, it becomes the place where you reenter.

The Army adds a point worth knowing for taxes: your HOR "is not necessarily the same as the legal domicile" used for income tax.

Nothing stops you from going somewhere else. The JTR lets you travel to a different place, but it pays only what the trip to your HOR or PLEAD would have cost. The same goes for your household goods. You can ship them somewhere else, but you pay any cost above the authorized move, and the transportation or finance office works out that excess.

If you're retiring and meet the rules below, you get a home of selection (HOS) instead. You can pick any place in the United States, or your HOR or PLEAD if it's outside the United States. You can also pick any other place, but then the military pays no more than a move to a place in the continental U.S. that you name would have cost. You can also ship your goods somewhere other than your HOS, or split them between places, as long as you pay any cost above the JTR's limit.

Choose carefully. Your HOS becomes final once you use government-arranged transportation or are paid travel allowances after you travel.

Not every retiree gets a home of selection, and some people who aren't retiring do. The JTR gives an HOS to these groups:

• Members retired for a physical disability or placed on the Temporary Disability Retired List (TDRL), with any length of service.
• Members retiring with pay for any other reason, including a transfer to the Fleet Reserve or Fleet Marine Corps Reserve, right after 8 or more years of continuous active duty with no single break of more than 90 days.
• Members who separate with severance or separation pay, or are involuntarily released with readjustment or separation pay, after the same 8 years of continuous active duty.

Separating without severance or separation pay isn't on that list, however long you served. If you retire without pay, retire for a reason other than disability with less than 8 years of continuous active duty, or get severance or separation pay with less than 8 years, you get no HOS. Your move goes only to your HOR or PLEAD. The household-goods request for the under-8-years severance or separation pay group follows paragraph 052012, but the cited travel provisions do not establish its personal-travel deadline. Confirm travel and storage limits with your transportation office before booking. And members serving in the continental U.S. who have no dependents and are separated under other than honorable conditions get neither a household goods move nor storage.

Your final-move deadlines

If you're separating without severance or separation pay, your written request for a household goods move has to reach a transportation officer, or their designated representative, before the end of day 180 after you separate. If it doesn't, your authority ends on day 181. After you apply, your goods have to be turned over for shipping as soon as practicable. To be paid for your own trip, you and your family must begin travel to your HOR or PLEAD before day 181. Government storage ends at the end of day 180.

You can ask for more time for hardship, through your service's Secretarial Process. If it's approved, it's for a set period.

If you have a home of selection, you and your family must begin travel to it within 3 years after your active duty ends, and your household goods must be turned over for shipping within the same 3 years. The 3-year limit applies when active duty ends on or after June 24, 2022, which covers anyone retiring now. Government storage is much shorter. It ends 1 year after your active duty ends.

Extensions for this group also go through the Secretarial Process, for cases such as an unexpected event beyond your control. For anyone, no extension can run past 6 years from the date you separate or retire.

These are the JTR's rules, not a promise about your case. Military OneSource says final-move entitlements vary by service, and to confirm yours with your installation's transportation office or Military and Family Support Center. Household goods shipments are scheduled in the Defense Personal Property System (DPS).

What your job pays in each place

The best free source for pay by city is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, or OEWS. It covers about 830 occupations by state and metro area. The latest figures are for May 2025, released May 15, 2026. You can look up your own job in BLS's metro area tool.

Use your occupation, not the city's overall median. The median for all jobs was $50,980 nationally in May 2025, $47,010 in San Antonio and $71,060 in the Washington, D.C., metro. Those numbers blend every job in town. Within one occupation, the order of cities can flip. In Fayetteville, N.C., logisticians earned a median $98,670 and project management specialists $82,680, while nationally the project managers earned more, $102,320 to $82,320.

OEWS counts wage and salary workers only. It leaves out the self-employed, so it won't tell you what a contractor or business owner makes.

What it costs to live there

For prices, use the Bureau of Economic Analysis's Regional Price Parities. They compare price levels between places in the same year, with the U.S. average set at 100. A place at 120 is 20% more expensive than average, and one at 90 is 10% cheaper. They're built from the price quotes behind the Consumer Price Index, plus Census rent data.

The latest are for 2024, released February 19, 2026. BEA plans to release 2025 figures on December 10, 2026, so look for an update after that date.

Rent is what spreads places apart. BEA says housing rents are often the main driver of the differences. Across the 32 metros we compared, overall prices ran from 85.9 in Lawton, Okla., to 111.9 in San Diego. Housing ran from 53.2 in Watertown-Fort Drum, N.Y., to 179.3 in San Diego.

You can use the parities to adjust pay, too. BEA's real-income figures adjust local dollars by the price parity, and we did a simple version of that. San Diego's all-jobs median is $11,680 higher than San Antonio's. Divide each one by its 2024 price parity and the gap shrinks to about $2,800. It's a rough check, because it mixes 2024 prices with May 2025 pay.

For rent, HUD's Fair Market Rents are a free benchmark. Each one is HUD's estimate of the 40th-percentile gross rent, utilities included, for a modest unit. The fiscal 2027 figures took effect October 1, 2026. A two-bedroom FMR is $1,441 in the San Antonio area and $2,823 in San Diego. Some metros are split into more than one area: it's $2,064 in Tacoma and $2,549 in Seattle-Bellevue.

How states tax military retired pay

If you're retiring, look closely at the tax rules of the state where you'll live. California's tax agency puts it plainly. It taxes military retired pay received by any California resident, no matter where the retiree was stationed or claimed as home while serving, and it doesn't tax nonresidents on it.

Here is what the states we checked say about military retired pay:

• Texas's constitution bars a tax on individuals' net income, and Florida has no personal income tax.
• Virginia lets you subtract up to $40,000 of eligible military benefits, such as military retirement income, for tax year 2025 and later.
• North Carolina's deduction applies only if you served at least 20 years or were medically retired under Chapter 61 of Title 10. It doesn't cover severance pay.
• Colorado lets retirees under 55 subtract up to $15,000, a limit the state lists through tax year 2028. At 55 and older, the general pension subtraction is up to $20,000, or $24,000 at 65 and older.
• California excludes up to $20,000 of retired pay for tax years 2025 through 2029 if your federal adjusted gross income is $125,000 or less, or $250,000 filing jointly.

Georgia's rule changes in 2027. For tax year 2026, its revenue department's page, as published on October 2, 2026, lets retirees under 62 exclude $17,500 of military retirement income, plus another $17,500 if they have more than $17,500 of earned income in Georgia. A 2025 law, House Bill 266, replaces that for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2027. Retirees under 65 can then exclude up to $65,000 of military retirement income, with no earned-income test, and each spouse on a joint return can claim the exclusion separately.

Each rule has conditions, and states change them. Check the current rule with the state's own tax agency before you count on it. The IRS keeps links to every state's official site.

VA benefits are a separate matter. Federal law says VA benefit payments, such as disability compensation, are exempt from taxation.

If you have a VA disability rating and plan to buy a home, property tax differs by state too. Texas gives a total exemption on your home if VA pays you at the 100% rate and rates you 100% disabled or individually unemployable, plus a partial exemption on one property based on your rating. You apply to the county appraisal district. The Comptroller lists April 30 as the deadline, but says the Tax Code allows late applications for certain exemptions.

Florida gives honorably discharged residents a total homestead exemption for a service-connected total and permanent disability, and a $5,000 reduction for some veterans rated 10% or more; you apply to the county property appraiser. Virginia exempts your principal home if you're rated 100% service-connected, permanent and total. For other states, start with VA's list of state veterans affairs offices.

Licenses, health care and family

If you or your spouse holds a license, check each state before you commit. Requirements vary by state. The Labor Department's CareerOneStop License Finder shows what a state requires for an occupation and which agency issues the license. Some professions have interstate compacts that make a license usable across member states, including EMS, nursing, physical therapy, counseling and psychology. DoD's Defense-State Liaison Office keeps the list and links each compact's own website. The list doesn't show which states have joined, so check that on the compact's site.

For VA health care, your address matters. VA's standard for primary and mental health care is a 30-minute average drive from your home or a 20-day wait. For specialty care, it's 60 minutes or 28 days. If VA can't meet them where you live, you may be eligible for community care with VA's approval. Alaska, Hawaii and New Hampshire have no full-service VA health facility. You can check any area with VA's facility finder.

If you retire, TRICARE Select is available everywhere, but TRICARE Prime depends on where you live.

If you have children, the National Center for Education Statistics lets you look up public schools near an address, and Childcare.gov links to each state's child care resources.

One example, start to finish

Example (fictional) Renee Alvarez is a 42-year-old Air Force master sergeant retiring after 22 years of continuous active duty. Her active duty ends June 30, 2027. She wants work as a logistician. Her husband, Marcus, is a registered nurse, and they have two children in grade school. They're weighing San Antonio, Virginia Beach–Norfolk and Colorado Springs. Her retired pay will be about $40,000 a year, an example amount for this story.

Her job pays most in Colorado Springs, even after prices. Dividing each median by the area's 2024 price parity gives about $102,800 there, $93,400 in Virginia Beach and $85,000 in San Antonio. Marcus's pay ranks differently: about $99,700 in San Antonio, $95,500 in Colorado Springs and $91,400 in Virginia Beach. On her retired pay, Texas has no income tax, Virginia's $40,000 subtraction covers all $40,000, and Colorado's under-55 subtraction of $15,000, which the state lists through tax year 2028, leaves $25,000 for Colorado to tax.

Marcus checks the Nurse Licensure Compact's site to see which of the three states have joined, and CareerOneStop for the nursing board in any that haven't. They look up schools and VA clinics near the neighborhoods they like, and they note that TRICARE Select works in all three places.

They choose Colorado Springs. Because Renee is retiring with pay after more than 8 years of continuous active duty, she gets a home of selection. Counting from June 30, 2027, government storage ends June 30, 2028, and their goods must be turned over and their travel started by June 30, 2030. No extension could run more than 6 years past her retirement. Since the choice becomes final once they use a government move, Renee asks her base transportation office to confirm her entitlement and dates before she books the shipment in DPS.

This is general information, not tax, legal or financial advice for your situation. Your installation transportation office confirms your own move entitlement and dates, and each state's tax agency has the final word on its own rules. For free tax help, Military OneSource's MilTax service is open to service members, spouses, survivors and recent veterans.