Contributed by: Roger Nusbaum (http://randomroger.blogspot.com) -

One of my favorite blog posts was from 2009 and titled The Five Best Places To Retire. It was a tongue in cheek post about what long time reader SD later dubbed as tax arbitrage. The basic concept was to live in a state with no income tax that was also next to a state with no sales tax. You'd pay not income tax and buy whatever you need in the state with no sales tax (this doesn't work for automobiles).

A not so exhaustive search lead to finding five border towns that meet the above criteria;

• Ranchester, WY which is very close to sales tax-free Montana

• Spearfish, SD close to Montana but actually an empty part of Montana

• Walla Walla, WA which is near sales tax-free Oregon

• Homer, AK there is no sales tax or income tax in Alaska

• Denio, NV which is near Denio, Oregon actually neither Denio appears to have anything

The reason to circle back to this is that Yahoo had an article about US tax havens and number one on their list was Wyoming. The other tax havens merely have low taxes as opposed to choosing states with no taxes one way or another. In addition to no income tax Wyoming also has low property taxes, sales tax and gas tax. There were comments on the original post from three years ago asking why anyone would want to live in Wyoming. In some parts of the state the scenery is stunning and for outdoorsy people there is a lot to do.

It is also bitterly cold for a portion of the year. With all the money saved on taxes, a condo could be rented in San Diego for a couple of months during the winter or for a cheaper winter renting an RV and staying in Quartzsite, AZ is another option.

Speaking of Alaska it pays out a dividend to all of its residents from oil that moves through the states. One year it was over $2000 but most of the time it has been below $1000 and in 2011 it was $1174. The fund has had issues over the years with poor performance and changing benchmarks but an extra $1000 per person for people living a modest lifestyle is enough money to be useful.

There is a new reason to consider retiring in Alaska in addition to the tax arbitrage and the Permanent Fund dividend--although you'd probably need that RV in Quartzsite for at least three months. With the debut of the show Goldfathers last night , a show about families in Alaska mining for gold, one in three Alaskans now star in a TV reality show and these people get paid. They don't get paid a lot, certainly not in the first season. I found some unsubstantiated numbers to suggest $1000-$2000each per episode which is small by TV standards but for a $3000-$4000 monthly lifestyle it sounds pretty good. The key though is getting a second season.

The Osbournes (not Alaskans) reportedly made $5000 each per episode in the first season but in the second season got bumped to $1 million-$5 million per episode (different sources have different numbers). While that won't happen for your reality show in Alaska maybe $15,000 per person for a 12 episode season is plausible which is very significant for the people who have saved $600,000-$800,000 or less. Apparently the Roloffs all made $75,000 per episode toward the end of their run.

To increase the odds of getting a reality TV show in Alaska I suggest opening a cake shop. All of the other cake shows are in the lower 48.

Again, the above is tongue in cheek but someone has already done this or will do it although maybe not in retirement age. I've never watched an entire episode of Deadliest Catch but it has been on for years and I'm thinking at least one of the deckhands moved up there for the work, was popular one way or another and made a little bit of money from it--not life changing money but maybe good head-start money. If not Deadliest Catch than maybe one of the other long running shows about Alaska.

As crazy as the above might sound we each have something like this in us, at least I believe we do, and it can absolutely be driven by our interests. As stated many times before this requires a huge investment of time and planning. The case has been made here many times that some of the things that people have always relied on may not be as reliable as they once were but the need to get by financially in retirement or later in life has not changed. As one comment in the post from three years ago pointed, in 2006 Walla Walla made a real best places to retire list.

About Roger Nusbaum (http://randomroger.blogspot.com) Roger Nusbaum is a portfolio manager with Your Source Financial of Phoenix, and the author of Random Roger's Big Picture Blog, which has been profiled in several top business publications, including Barron's and Forbes. Nusbaum has also been a financial consultant with Morgan Stanley, an investment counselor with Fisher Investments and an institutional equities and options trader with Charles Schwab. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from San Diego State University