Have Two Addresses, Will Travel Call them sojourners: most are retired, but all have parlayed the original family house into two far-flung abodes in places they love.
By Marlys Harris

(MONEY Magazine) – Like mallards, they are spotted easily every fall and spring, winging their way to better weather. These human migrants, dressed in jogging suits and other casual duds, jam lines at airports with overflowing suitcases or clog highways in cars packed to the dome light with sheets and pots and food processors. They are a small but growing flock of mostly retired people -- call them sojourners -- who split their time between two places. Most keep a house back where they worked and raised children and buy a second dwelling where they can escape from winter's frost or summer's steam. Many of them have discovered they can sojourn on less than mammoth money. By shuffling their real estate holdings creatively, some people run two households and two cars on an unprincely retirement income of as little as $22,000 a year. Managing double lives, however, in places sometimes thousands of miles apart takes planning, coordination and endless ergs of energy for the semi-annual schlep. The joys can fade if housing budgets are strained, summer clothing consistently turns up in the wrong place, two states weigh in with tax bills or the unoccupied house is invaded by burglars. Resourcefully, most sojourners have scoped out ways to cope with the problems and enhance the advantages of their migratory existence. While retirees have been commuting semiannually for generations, the new sojourners represent an economic vanguard, says Robert Atchley, director of the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Ohio. There are simply greater numbers of retired people whose incomes can support the back-and-forth life. Many can afford to own two dwellings now because of the tremendous appreciation they realized on the houses they bought 30 or 40 years ago. They begin migrating for obvious reasons. ''We wanted the best of both worlds -- to enjoy warm weather in the winter and to be able to see our relatives and friends regularly at home,'' says Veronica Wytrwal, 67, who commutes with her husband Raymond, 81, a retired doctor, between their spacious Victorian house near Albany, N.Y. and a condominium in Jupiter, Fla. But their rewards turn out to be more bounteous. After a few years, many sojourners say, they have been able to develop new coteries of friends -- some of them more stimulating than the ones left behind. They also find sports and other challenging recreations that they had never ventured before. Another motive is something Atchley calls the ''tree urge.'' ''Sojourners move around to commune with the planet,'' he explains. ''They want to live with things that are growing.'' Case in point: Jane Smith-Hutton, 70, the widow of a naval officer. Her primary residence is a condo in Palo Alto, home base for a demanding lecture series she presents on historical topics for the Daughters of the American Revolution. Every April, however, she travels east to a remote mountaintop house that she built five years ago in Hendersonville, N.C. There she enjoys a second spring and life in what she calls ''the forest primeval.'' An avid gardener, Smith-Hutton has turned meadows around her house into flowering carpets. In keeping with the horticultural theme, she calls her house Shobu, the Japanese word for iris. Commuting also lets people live in a retirement community long enough to enjoy its benefits -- people of the same age with similar interests, endless opportunities for golf and recreation and early-bird restaurant specials. Yet they need not commit themselves to full-time residence in what they view as a ghettoized Wrinkle City. Years ago, Harry L. Holtz, 69, former chief executive officer of First Trust Co. of Saint Paul, and his wife Pat, 67, began escaping Minnesota winters by vacationing in Arizona. Pat Holtz, who competes in swimming meets, came to love the dry heat and winter days around the pool. When Harry retired, however, he was reluctant to give up business entirely. He also wanted to keep his hand in the civic affairs of the Twin Cities, where he sits on the boards of several charitable foundations and does fund raising for Children's Hospital and the Minnesota Orchestra. To accommodate their diverse needs, the Holtzes decided to stay in Minnesota more than half the year and spend the rest of their time in Arizona. They sold the big house in which they raised their three children and bought two $200,000 condominiums. One overlooks the Minnesota River in Mendota Heights and the other fronts on a man-made lake in northeast Scottsdale. Pat usually stays south for the whole winter, while Harry hops north once or twice to attend to business and philanthropic obligations. But when he is in Arizona, he says, ''I'm less hyper. There's less tension. In Arizona the phone rings all morning -- in Minnesota it rings all day.'' It took years for fellow Minnesotans Phyllis and Robert Prigge to put a somewhat similar plan into effect. Phyllis, 57, a real estate agent, and Robert, 66, a former schoolteacher, figured that when they retired, they could afford to commute to Texas by selling their house in suburban St. Paul, buying a place down south, where prices are lower, and using a vacation cabin for summer sojourns in Minnesota and visits to their children. They had begun making regular visits to Harlingen, Texas when Phyllis' parents retired there in 1963. The Prigges came to value Harlingen, which is near Brownsville, not only as a low-cost winter escape from frozen Minnesota but also as a base for exploring Mexico, one of their hobbies. In 1980, four years before Robert was due to retire, the Prigges bought their cabin, on Leaf Lake near Henning in the northwestern part of the state. They paid that off in 1983 and began looking for property in Harlingen. That same year, a friend's three-bedroom ranch house came on the market, and they bought it for $32,000 at ''a very low interest rate,'' says Phyllis. Then they sold the St. Paul house and stashed the money in income-producing investments. The earnings pay the mortgage on the Harlingen house, about $300 a month, with plenty left over. Their total tab for two houses, including taxes and utilities, is $527 a month, which they can easily swing on their $1,800 monthly income. Shallower-rooted retirees are finding creative ways to re-establish themselves in two altogether new and appealing locations. Don and Pat Woods, both 66, now spend 10 months of the year in Anacortes, a pleasure port on Puget Sound near Seattle, and the rest of the year in the balmy breezes of Kauai, one of Hawaii's most unspoiled islands. Woods, a former regional manager for manufacturing with Texaco in the Midwest, wound up his career in Chicago. When he retired in 1981, he and his wife sold their house and built a bi-level in Anacortes, near where their three daughters lived. ''The house is really too damn big, but it has views of the water from both floors,'' notes Woods. A year later a friend approached him with a novel idea. He had just bought a $120,000 one-bedroom condominium on Kauai and wanted to form a partnership with five other couples who would share the expenses. The Woodses signed on. Each couple is entitled to two months in the condo, part of a development that sits high on a cliff overlooking the crashing surf. From their living room window, they gaze at a garden of hibiscus and oleander. They spend their days golfing, swimming in the ocean and hot-tubbing at the condo pool. The Woodses sound like stars from a segment of TV's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but ''on a budget,'' adds Don. ''We're not rich -- we don't have that much surplus.'' One-week time shares on Kauai cost $10,000 to $15,000, while the condo owners paid $20,000 each for their two-month shares and chip in only about $100 a month for maintenance. The one real hitch in the Woodses' arrangement and others like it is air fare. There are no direct flights from Seattle to Kauai. The Woodses have to fly to Honolulu and take an inter-island plane from there. They pay $350 to $400 each for a round trip, depending on the season. Commuting to a foreign country need not be much more expensive. Jean Blum, 77, a retired lawyer, and his wife Gloria, 47, lay out $450 for each round trip to Acapulco, 2,200 miles from their other home in Los Gatos, Calif. They spend about nine months a year in Acapulco, where decades ago Blum bought a three-story Mexican-style townhouse up a hill three blocks from the bay. He paid about $40,000. Now, he says, even small condos on the beach cost about $150,000. Houses elsewhere in Mexico are much cheaper, but sojourners south of the border face heavy start-up costs. Mortgages there are as rare as bagels. ''You have to pay cash,'' Blum reports. After that, though, the living is easy. Food, clothing and almost everything else is cheap. One exception: air conditioning. The dollar buys a lot of pesos -- currently about 2,200 -- and a lot of labor. The Blums employ three live-in servants for a total of $300 a month. Alas, few retirees happen on such existences without enduring a fair amount of muss and fuss -- not to mention thoughtful planning. Those who contemplate back-and-forthing should ponder this sampler of complications and the solutions some trailblazers say work for them:

-- Double furnishings. Those who live in two places find that they own not just two dwellings but also two of everything else. Some try to cut costs by buying a furnished apartment or decorating from the attic. For the first years, they lug blenders and TV sets with them, but that can be a pain in the neck, shoulders and arms. The most successful sojourners seem to be those with a knack for turning any place into a nest, which may explain why so many commuters say their chief hobby is decorating. Couples who avoid the problem of lugging things -- and of transportation when they get there -- by driving from place to place sometimes use the trip to soak up the sights. Henry Van Ahnen, 69, a former mechanical engineer, and his wife Ruth, 68, cheerfully cover 1,500 miles between their houses in Swansea, Mass. and Fairhope, Ala., on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. ''We go all the way through the Shenandoah Mountains during the spring and fall, and the foliage is just beautiful,'' he says. As for the costs of travel, he explains, ''The trip is relatively cheap because we stay with relatives.'' -- Two sets of wheels. For many, however, a car journey is just too long and arduous. They commute by airplane and often buy two cars. Next to homes, autos are the most expensive items to have two of. To cut costs, some sojourners buy a used car for one locale. Jane Smith-Hutton maintains cars in California and North Carolina, but neither is a high-status vehicle. In California, she has a big 1963 Oldsmobile that belonged to her mother; in the East she drives a 10- year-old Ford wagon. The running costs, she claims, are negligible. Don and Pat Woods can't drive to Hawaii, but they have worked out a cooperative arrangement for a car as well as their condo. ''Five of us who own the apartment also went in on a car -- a 1982 Mercury Cougar purchased from a rental car company,'' says Woods. Their share cost only about $1,000. -- Deciding where home really is. Sojourners should make up their minds soon which of their two homes will be their official residence. Charles Longino, director of the Center for Social Research on Aging at the University of Miami in Florida, points out that double domiciling doesn't always last forever. One spouse may fall ill or get tired of making the twice-yearly hajj. A couple may then have to settle down in one of the two places. You are well advised to figure out which of the two is most inviting as your eventual stopping place. -- Barring burglars. The security of the unoccupied house is a major worry. Condo owners are least threatened because the development's management usually provides a guard and sometimes a patrol service. Those with freestanding homes hire house sitters or have relatives check in. Smith-Hutton's mountain retreat is far too isolated for neighbors to visit regularly. Several years ago, she arrived to find that there had been a break-in. Her homeowners insurance didn't cover her because she wasn't in residence at the time. Since then she has installed a burglar alarm that costs $180 a year; it sets off sirens in her house and in two different local police stations. ''You always lock the gate after the horse has run away,'' she laments. -- Catching up with the mail. Harry Holtz, the former bank CEO, found that one ) of the biggest hassles was mail. Bills and letters invariably piled up at the wrong address, thus provoking the ire of creditors and correspondents. Now, his daughter picks up mail in St. Paul, sorts it and forwards urgent items by Express Mail. He also leaves a supply of signed checks made out to the telephone company, the power company and others. His daughter fills in the amounts when she gets the bills. -- Doubling up on doctors. Another problem is coordination of medical care. Holtz still relies on his Minnesota physician, but he has also recruited a Scottsdale doctor to examine him, order lab tests and confer with his Minnesota doctor by telephone before prescribing treatment. Both doctors maintain his medical records. -- Making friends. Social adjustment is necessary. One sojourning woman felt that every time she commuted, she had to break the ice anew with her friends in the other place. It sometimes took weeks to get back in sync with her crowd. Some people avoid the problem by moving back and forth as a group. Gang sojourning? Isabel Johnson, 67, and her husband Henry 71, a onetime salesman for Du Pont, own a condo on Great Egg Harbor Bay in Ocean City, N.J. They and their circle of friends belong to the local yacht club and get together for dining, dancing, concerts and bridge. They also hold twice-a-month ''tea'' parties in dry Ocean City. Every winter, says Isabel, ''everybody heads south to Delray Beach in Florida together.'' They don't travel in a caravan -- ''we all drive or fly down separately'' -- but they continue the party, including ''tea,'' down south. Some might find such relentless groupiness oppressive, but Johnson firmly declares, ''this is the way we want to live.'' Indeed, those words express the common justification most sojourners give when asked how they can withstand the ordeal of errant luggage, long car trips and double household expenses. ''We have thought about the life we are leading quite a bit,'' says Henry Van Ahnen of Fairhope and Swansea. ''But we haven't discovered any real drawbacks.''

BOX: Get the Facts The taxing double life

Attention, would-be sojourners: those with dual residences may wind up with dual income tax bills -- one from each state in which they have a home. Back home in Indiana may be where your heart and your main address are. But be careful about investing money where you winter, because a few states -- particularly California -- may try to claim you as a resident so that they can tax the income you earn within their borders. Worse, they may attempt to stick you with their top-bracket rate. ''Sojourners sometimes make the mistake of keeping a substantial portion of their assets in each state,'' says Robert Rose, an accountant with Frost Ruttenberg & Rothblatt in Niles, Ill.

The right choice of an official residence can save a bundle. That, for example, would probably not be New York, which has a graduated income tax that tops out at 8.375% for joint incomes over $34,000 this year. Texas, on the other hand, has no income tax at all, while Florida levies only an intangibles tax on a couple's investment assets over $40,000, and its $1-per-$1,000 bite is more like a gentle nip. Once the choice of an official residence is made, you can nail it down by registering to vote, obtaining a driver's license from that address and using it on passports, deeds and contracts. You should also keep most of your securities and savings accounts in that state. Most important, file your federal tax returns using your primary address. In addition to all this, some states -- Florida, for example -- require that a declaration of change of domicile be filed with a local court. William Zabel, a tax lawyer in New York and Florida, also recommends that you notify your employer and insurance companies paying pensions and annuities of your official residence. ''If the companies that will pay these benefits are located in the state of former domicile, they may not release the funds unless they receive a waiver from that state's tax authorities,'' he says. Finally, your estate could wind up with death-tax bills from two states as well as the federal government. This threat is unlikely to arise in the many states that impose taxes only on estates subject to federal taxation -- those over $600,000. Above that level, your estate gets a dollar-for-dollar federal credit for any state tax up to a certain limit, which depends on the size of the tax. The state merely collects an amount equal to the credit that would otherwise go to the IRS. In a few states, however, the death tax could exceed the allowable federal credit. Further, the laws of many other states could trigger a death tax even if your taxable estate is less than $600,000. So anyone who occupies homes in two states should really consult an estate lawyer.