Two years on the Bering Sea and a total of 7 years in Juneau. No place (including The Villages) that I would rather be... The downside includes very limited specialty health care. The need for that was a deal breaker on returning to retire.
The Permanent Fund Dividend (aka "check each year from the government") isn't enough to offset the higher cost of living. It is actually a great example of capitalism. A percentage of the royalty payments are invested each year all over the US (stocks, bonds, commercial property). A portion of the income from those investments are returned to Alaska's citizens each year (and the state Constitution article which established it makes it impossible for greedy legislators from getting their hands on the corpus). Just like the dividends many folks get from their stocks.
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