Where Should You Retire in Knoxville?

Knoxville Financial Q&A Episode 11 | Where Should You Retire in Knoxville?

August 10, 2026

Where should you live if you're planning to retire in Knoxville? Once children are grown and school districts are no longer driving the decision, choosing a home can become much more about the lifestyle you want to enjoy during retirement.

In Episode 11 of the Knoxville Financial Q&A Show, Paul Ragone and Brian look at retirement planning from a different perspective: choosing where to live in Knoxville and East Tennessee based on the activities, hobbies and experiences you want retirement to include.

For someone who enjoys boating, convenient access to Knoxville's lakes, rivers and marinas may be a priority. Golfers may prefer one of East Tennessee's many golf communities, while someone who wants to spend retirement hiking, camping or fishing may value easier access to the Great Smoky Mountains and other outdoor destinations.

Mountain biking enthusiasts may be drawn toward South Knoxville and the Urban Wilderness, while retirees who enjoy restaurants, arts, entertainment and sporting events may prefer downtown Knoxville or nearby areas such as North Knoxville and South Knoxville.

The conversation also explores Farragut, Tellico Village, Townsend, Walland, Maryville, Hardin Valley, Bearden and other communities throughout the Knoxville area, along with some of the lifestyle considerations associated with each.

Where you choose to live can also become part of your financial plan. Housing, maintenance, transportation, recreation, dining and other lifestyle expenses all affect the amount of income you may need throughout retirement.

Rather than choosing a retirement destination based solely on traditional factors such as school districts or home values, it may be worth starting with a different question: What do you actually want your retirement to look like?

Watch Episode 11 of the Knoxville Financial Q&A Show above for a conversation about retiring in Knoxville, choosing a community based on your retirement lifestyle, and how those lifestyle decisions can fit into a broader financial plan.

Transcript

All right, welcome to episode 11 of the Knoxville Financial Q&A show. I'm your host, Paul. And I'm Brian. And as you can probably tell by the thumbnail, this one's going to be a little bit different than what we normally do. Yeah, we're we're shifting gears a little bit. We may be saying some things that might get us in trouble with some local real estate agents, but we you know wanted to try to change it up and talk about something that we've faced which is a lot of people really don't fully understand like retirement or what they want retirement to look like. And so we tried to to apply you know potentially looking at relocation either in town or if you're moving to town and try to apply where you might want to live to enjoy some of your hobbies.

This is not a knock against real estate agents. But the reality is they work with you maybe two weeks or a month. Whereas we are being a financial adviser, we we have the ability to work with clients for several years. We're looking at this from a different perspective than a real estate agent would. So, what we've decided to do is basically use real world experiences from our [clears throat] clients where school systems don't really matter anymore because they don't have kids in school at this point anymore. If you're in Knoxville, Farragate is probably going to come out as the number one spot and that's fine. I mean, they have great school systems. Yep. [clears throat]

And if you're younger and you have kids and you can afford to live in Farragut, go for it. But if you want to hike every weekend or every other weekend, Farragut isn't the best place to do that. No. But what So the way we're looking at this is you're either 5 years from retirement or already retired, just moving here possibly, or just empty neester. Maybe you're not quite to retirement yet, but the kids are grown and left. Do you still want to stay there? Yeah. So we're just basing this off of what our clients actually are doing. Yeah. We got clients that that have these conversations with us repeatedly.

I guess let's let's explore the first one, you know, like from a hobby perspective, which hobby, you know, let's start with one and then we'll go go from there on where you'd want to live.

Number one is basically a tie between boating and golfing. let's start with boating first. Yeah. So boating, I think from a boating perspective, you have a pretty wide array of costs. you can do something a little bit more cost-ffective like a pontoon and enjoy it. and you know, if you wanted to live in in or around Farragate, take advantage of a marina. Trying to think of other places that would be good just like for like a skiboat runabout or pontoon. , Jefferson Park is a great neighborhood. If you want your own dock and don't want to be at a marina, a place like Jefferson Park is great. Mallard Bay. Yep. , and these are just neighborhoods. Yeah. These are just neighborhoods that are in, in this case in West Knoxville. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's what we were, you know, where we talk about the wide array of boating. You know, if you get into the that 40 50 60 plus foot, I think we have a couple boats around here that exceed or get close to the 100 foot, you know. Yeah. If you're trying to if you're not going to a marina that's specifically set up for that, you're going to have to have like a house on the Tennessee River on the Clinch River. And by the way, if you do have a large boat, you might already know this, but it's possible to leave Knoxville on your boat and go all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. That's true. You can and I know Gulf of America. Gulf of America. And then secondly would be golf. And we have a plethora of golf courses and golf neighborhoods. some of the local winds to West Knox, Gettysvue, Avalon, Fox Den, Holston Hills if you get outside of West Knoxville. there's couple in Oak Ridge. the one that Greg Norman designed. What was that one? Yeah. So, this is basically combining the ability to boat and golf in in [clears throat] certain neighborhoods. So, Tennessee National is Tennessee National, the place you're thinking of. And Rarity Bay, that's a we had again that has boating because it's right there on the water, too. So, Rarity Bay is now Wind River. Oh, yeah. That's right. They changed it.

So, another one would be Tellico Village, which is a huge community. for some reason there's a lot of people from like places like Michigan there. Yeah, it seems like a lot of the retirees, a lot of the Chevy retirees. There's several golf courses there. There's a couple of marinas. There's some nice restaurants. All right. So, what do you think is number three on the list?

I'd say hiking and outdoors is probably the next priority that I that I hear most often is, you know, we want to hike every weekend or we want to I got clients that fly fish. I got clients that do regular fishing, bass fishing. I got clients that, but they their general consensus is they either want to camp, hike, or spend time outdoors. I would say for hiking, if you wanted to be within like 15 to 20 minutes of a trail head at any given moment of time, I would say Townsend, Walland. there's Hall Ridge towards Oak Ridge, you could go. They're a mountain biking destination, but they also have hiking trails.

Well, speaking of mountain biking, that's probably number four. Yeah, mountain biking is just exploded here. We've become a mountain biking mecca. I'd say we battle back and forth between us and North Carolina. and yeah, if you if your goal was to mountain bike all the time, Southnox kind of ends up being the destination. There are trails everywhere else, but that's the place if you just wanted to to mountain bike all the time. That's where you'd want to live. You got Baker Creek, you got Ijams. that some of those have kind of just flowy trail rides. Some of those have pretty intense mountain biking trails. but you could between good food and mountain biking and good breweries, you'd probably occupy a good portion of your time.

Yeah. And South Knoxville is like expanding like crazy. what Brian's talking about is the whole basic area is called the Urban Wilderness. So if you Google the urban wilderness, you can see what we're talking about. It's 60 plus miles of trails. I have never ridden there. I've walked on some of the trails and there's a cool couple of quaries in that area that you can go to. You're five minutes from downtown, which is pretty incredible because I don't know of any many other downtowns that have place that has 60 miles of trails and stuff like that where you can be on the trails all day, whether it's mountain biking or riding or swimming in the quaries or or whatever and then be in in downtown a twostar Michelin dinner at what's what's that restaurant? J.C. Holdway. J.C. Holdway. Yeah, they're a two-star Michelin restaurant. So, it's a a very unique situation. I feel like we're leaving Powell out. There's some decent places in Powell too, but nothing that's going to be as extensive as what we're talking about.

Something interesting about Powell, though, and I haven't been there, so I can't really say too much about it, but they're building like a their own community. Yeah. Belltown. Belltown. Yep. Which is something that in my opinion is desperately missing here. Like a planned community. Yeah. You got good restaurants, you got shopping, you got everything. We kind of have that in the Northshore Town Center. Yeah. I just think it's cool that they're doing something like that because honestly Knoxville doesn't really have many places that are just planned like that. It's sort of just a developer comes in, buy some property and build some houses. All right. So, what do you think number five is on the list? I think the fifth one on our list is people that just want to enjoy good food living in a downtown environment, but there's lots of stuff to do in our downtown, which is seems pretty small compared to Atlanta and some of these other places. We've got Ice Bears hockey arena downtown. We've got the new Smoky's Stadium, which is apparently a destination in and of itself. So, North Knoxville and and South Knoxville. What's what's cool about those places is one, they're really like they're becoming like the hot spots. Lots of new restaurants, breweries, lots of breweries. a bunch of new condos are being built. But if you don't want a condo, there's a lot of older houses there where they're smaller. They're not these big mansions like we have in in Farragate or part of parts of West Knoxville. So, and again, we're talking about people who are retiring. Yeah. You don't want to maintain a giant house. although some of the places that we've mentioned giant houses, if you live on, you know, a place that's on the lake and has a golf course, the houses are not going to be small. Brian just said a quaint little house, you know, North Knoxville and and South Knoxville. you can find something there that's still reasonably priced compared to some of the places that we talked about. Yeah. because people are discovering.

Also, if you know, if urban living is your is your thing, downtown Knoxville has I think probably one of the most underappreciated art museums that ever existed. I would agree with that. But there's all kinds of there's Market Square downtown. Yep. And Market Square downtown, they they build an ice rink during the winter. Yep. Which is pretty cool. There's a farmers market there all summer. Mhm. Every what? Every Saturday morning, I think it is. I moved here in 1989 to go to UT. And downtown was a ghost town. Yep. There was nothing happening. TVA towers. That was about it. and then you know a couple sandwich shops and a couple other like the strip had a you know a couple restaurants on it. Yeah. But anything beyond that was pretty much just deserted.

All right. So I guess the last one number six would be sporting events here. When I say sporting events, there's one sporting event. [laughter] We're talking about the V football team.

Believe it or not, people do plan retirement around that team. And you know, there's a what's called the Vols Navy where you can boat and tie up with other boats for the for the home games and that kind of stuff. And it's a big deal. And so they're building a pretty gigantic entertainment district. Now they're building, you know, a place that's going to have it's right next to the to the stadium. Yeah. They're removing a parking garage to build a massive Yeah. And so there's going to be several restaurants and entertainment venues and all that kind of stuff. There's but there's also going to be what they're calling a condo/h hotel. and I can imagine some of those condos being $2 million plus big money. Yeah. But I think you could expand that too to basketball and the baseball. Now we have Smokies. Smoky's Stadium is all within that and and the Ice Bears all within that small area. Yeah.

You know, if you just like sporting events, that's you want to be as close to downtown as possible. Just know this though, one thing about living downtown is there isn't a grocery store. Nope. Right. So, there was a Walmart right there near campus, got shut down. The Walmart's shut down. Publix is still there, though. Okay. Okay. But it's still not like you're going to walk from your condo by the stadium to Publix. It's four miles. It's a drive. Probably four miles as the crow flies. And what are you going to do? Carry all those bags back with you? So, that's really not a realistic scenario. Of course, you can Uber or something like that. Yeah. Or have delivery. Yeah. So, I mean, you can still pull it off without a car, but Yeah. But all to tie it back to like financial stuff when we start talking about these conversations, this comes down to planning, making sure you got enough money saved because having your groceries delivered, living in downtown, which is already going to be a little bit more expensive. You know, you got to make sure you plan accordingly. You got to make sure you save accordingly. Got to make sure that you know your goals, dreams, lifestyle fits your savings, budgeting, planning.

I'm going to throw this one in as sort of a bonus. we mentioned Farragut before, mostly because of the school systems and it's just a really nice place to live in general, right? But if you have an active lifestyle, it's really hard to beat Farragate. they have built so many greenways. They continue to keep expanding them. I personally like I can leave my house. Both Brian and I live in Farragut, by the way. I [clears throat] could leave my house and do a 15 mile loop without ever going across any sort of main road. It's pretty incredible. But they also have four big parks. one of them they continue to expand which is, McFee Park. Pretty amazing place. So, there's a place called Biddle Farms that's sort of it's sort of has like a its own retail area. Yeah. It's got a little like grocery store, restaurants, kind of like that town, right, type apartment complexes and luxury condos. And now they're on the townhouse phase which are detached from each other. So, it's it's a decent little spot if you don't want to like have maintenance but want to live in Farragut. Mhm. Right. It's a cool place and they're they keep adding some more restaurants.

An area that we haven't talked about yet. I kind of feel bad about this. We're not picking on you, Harden Valley, but Harden Valley is a growing they've got a community college campus. They got a new high school, new middle school, new elementary school. it's rapidly expanding there. There's a lot of areas out there that have been built up. it's closer to that Haw Ridge.

So, I guess if you wanted to go Melton Hill Lake, Milton Hill Dam, if you wanted to be on the water, you could get to it out there. but it's predominantly just a a suburbia oasis. you know, it's got bunch of strip malls and a bunch of some restaurants. Pretty good restaurants. Yeah. it's kind of the place that you go to. It's kind of like Fargate. We have a little bit more water than they do or more access to water than they do, but still nice. Yeah, it's definitely a hot destination. Just what 10, 15 years ago, it was mostly just farmland. It's good and bad, right? You know, I used to enjoy driving through there because it was so peaceful and beautiful, and now it's houses.

Now it's houses and traffic. Like Brian said, we hadn't mentioned Harden Valley, but it is a destination where a lot of people are moving to. Yep. All right. So, in recap, you know, if golfing is your your poison, your your pick of choice, you got Tellico Village, you got Fox Den, you got Avalon, Avalon and Gettysvue. Those be your your probably top destinations there.

If your retirement goal is to be able to boat whenever you want, we're talking about Jefferson Park and Mallard Bay, but there's, you know, a whole area around Choto Road. Yeah. So, if your goal is to to hike, if your goal was to more specifically hike the Smoky Mountains and you wanted to be there quick, I'd say living in the Townsend, Walland, maybe Maryville area, you could get there within 15 minutes, maybe 20. By the way, Cade's Cove in the summertime on every Wednesday for the full day and I think Saturday mornings up until about 10, you can Cade's Cove is a loop and it's 11 miles. I think it's 11 miles, but you can bike instead of drive on and they shut it down for vehicle traffic. Yeah. No, no vehicle traffic. It's one of the most amazing experiences I think I've ever had since I've been living here. It's incredible. there's all kinds of wildlife and, it's just such a beautiful place. Incredible views of the Smokies. Whether you live here or not and you just happen to be catching this video, it's something I would I would put on your bucket list. Sure.

Brian just mentioned Maryville, which we hadn't talked about. just real quick, I mean, that place is expanding like crazy, too, with a bunch of really high quality restaurants. They have an incredible, greenway system as well.

Finally, if you love restaurants and going out and dining and all that kind of stuff, obviously it's downtown Knoxville, but like we mentioned, there's North Knoxville and South Knoxville, which aren't downtown proper, but still have that downtown feel and Sequoyah Hills and Bearden. You got like that micro area of restaurants and concentration of stuff that's almost all within walking distance.

Yep. Hopefully this helped a little bit if you're planning on retiring here and you know you're not basing your where are you moving to just on school systems, right? I guess with that said, signing off. Signing off.