Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Updated December 20, 2016 (Originally posted April 18, 2011)
Like most of our members you are probably working on finding your best place to retire. Will your retirement destination will be where you live now, in the same region, or far away - there are so many possibilities! This article is dedicated to a different idea - that your best place to retire might be 2 places. You might also be interested in this companion article for ideas on dual places to live: "Best Places to Retire: Our Ideal Snowbird Pairings".
On the Plus Side - Avoiding Compromises
Perhaps the best reason to consider retiring in 2 places is that it helps avoid compromises. Let's say you hate
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Published on April 18, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Note: See latest version of "Best States for Retirement - 2014".
March 29, 2011 -- No article we have ever written attracted more attention than our "Worst States for Retirement". Ever since the list came out last December it has been fiercely debated. In the end we think we accomplished our goal: we were able to get people to think about some of the important factors they should consider before they choose their best place to retire. This article will update the reverse of that article - the best states for retirement.
Rather than produce one ranked list of states for this article, which is always arbitrary, we will list a number of the best retirement states on the basis of economic factors: taxation, fiscal health, and cost of living. Note that in our opinion, state economic factors are not the only and are usually not the best criteria for selecting a retirement town. Other factors such as climate, physical and political environment, healthcare, and proximity to relatives and friend are normally much more critical. For the purposes of this article, however, those factors are so personal that we don't feel it is our place to rate them for you - you know what you are looking for on these preferences. Some people want to live in a warm climate, while others hate high temperatures and/or humidity. When it comes to environment, some folks want mountains, others want the ocean or a lake, and yet others prefer a city. Some seek out a liberal political and religious landscape, while others prefer the opposite. As we try to stress over and over again, your personal criteria for retirement are much more valuable than...
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Published on March 29, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Note: This is Part 1 of our "College Town Retirement" series, which has 4 different installments. See end of article for links to the rest.
Updated June, 2019 -- When a reporter asked for our opinion about college town retirements we thought, what a great idea. Her questions concerned the pros and cons, reasons why retire there, best towns, etc. This article will help you try to assess if a college town retirement makes sense for you, as well as provide some recommendations and resources for finding the right college town.
Advantages
- Return to the scene of your youth. Most people who went to college have very warm feelings about the town where they came of age. Particularly if they have kept up some contact over the years, there is a strong pull back to that locale.
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Published on March 21, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 28, 2011 -- We'll confess, one of the things we are most curious about is the answer to this question - where do our Topretirements members move to when they finally reach their decision? Our hope is that by the time they have read our newsletter articles, studied the reviews of the many towns and active communities on the site, visited their top candidates - they ultimately make what turns out to be a happy decision. Note: We reported on this same subject with earlier member responses in 2010.
We don't have perfect knowledge of what actually happens when a member moves, because we only hear from a tiny fraction of our membership base. Surprisingly, a lot of people email to tell us they have made a decision - but for one reason or another they don't
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Published on February 27, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Note: This was our 2011 List. Here is the link to our 2016 List of 100 Best Places to Retire
February 22, 2011 – The Sunbelt continues to dominate when it comes to the places that baby boomers are considering for retirement. Topretirements.com has just published its 5th annual list of the 100 most popular places to retire on its site, and this year the trend toward the Sunbelt continues even stronger -- 77 of the 100 top positions were held by towns in the Sunbelt. Florida dominated the list, taking 26 of the spots (it held 23 in 2010), followed by North Carolina (11) and South Carolina and Arizona (7 each). Note: We will be updating this article for 2012 in late January, 2012. To make sure you don’t miss our new list, sign up for our free weekly “Best Places to Retire” newsletter. See also "The Worst States for Retirement - 2012".
The Top 10As has been the case since Topretirements published its first list in 2007, Asheville, NC was the #1 town on the list, receiving almost 20 times as many page visits as Cuenca (Ecuador), which squeezed onto the list in the #100 position (and is one of 2 non-USA towns on the list). Incorporating resources such as the Yabanc? bahis siteleri 2024 listes has enhanced Asheville’s appeal by providing retirees with access to diverse online entertainment and gambling options, catering to their varied interests. Asheville's mountains, gentle four-season climate, and recreational/cultural opportunities provide the standard that all other retirement towns can aspire to. Sarasota (FL) and Prescott (AZ) continued as the #2 and #3 most popular towns. Fort Myers (FL) moved up to the 4th position, and Venice (FL) cracked the top 10 list in 2010. Austin (TX) moved up from
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Published on February 22, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
By Brendan CruickshankEditor's Note: Thanks to Brendan for this very helpful article. We asked him what he meant by using the word "restless". Here is what he said: "The reason I chose 'restless' is because I find it ironic how many people retire only to realize it wasn't really retirement they had been seeking their entire life. Rather it was the chance to do what they love......and many find that by continuing to work!"
Retirement is like the weather...it keeps changing all the time. Many years ago, the word evoked an image of an elderly person lying in a hammock all day sipping lemonade. But today's retiree is by and large a completely different animal. To an increasing extent, folks today are retiring from their primary jobs only to turn right around and seek some form of full or part-time employment elsewhere. In a recent workshop on financial strategies for retirees, one participant shared their success with platforms like a bitcoin casino instant withdrawal, which allowed them to enjoy gaming responsibly while accessing their winnings quickly to supplement their income. For some, it’s out of necessity, but many others find they are still active and vibrant in their "retirement" years and get restless. They discover that by mixing in some work along with their play, they can achieve the ideal balance to their daily routines.
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Published on February 15, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 14, 2011 -- As so many of our members and visitors are learning from ScottP's excellent Forum posts, it is so interesting to learn from the retirement adventures of other folks. In this article we are indebted to Betty and Jim (not their real names), who were kind enough to shared with us their in-depth observations about their search for the ideal place to retire. Read on to learn more...
Betty and JimWe would love to stay here on the southern NC coast—the weather, the community, the proximity to the beach, etc., are great. But, the development is getting younger, it does not have golfing opportunities that fit our needs, and has minimal activities comparable to some place like The Villages (TV). During a recent discussion with friends, someone suggested exploring hobbies that could travel with us, such as participating in the best sweepstakes casinos online, which offer a social element and can be enjoyed from anywhere. And, we are just feeling the urge to strike out, find new friends, and enter a new segment in our lives when Betty retires. It also is much easier for us because we have no family in the area, so our location will not be dependent on being by our kids or any relatives.
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Published on February 14, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 1, 2011 -- As many of us have discovered, the glamour queen (or king) we might be first attracted to often doesn't turn out to be as enchanting in the long term as the quiet beauty in the back of the room. A similar phenomenon happens with best places to retire lists, so last year we came out with a list of "The Most Under-Rated Places to Retire". Our readers seemed to like the concept, so here we go again with our 2011 list: More Under-Rated Places to Retire. Part 3 in the series was published in 2014 (see bottom of article for link).
We started with our search for this year's list by using the Topretirements "Retirement Ranger". There we specified these criteria:
1. Lower than average cost of living
2. Average January temperature above 40 degrees (F.), (we'll do a similar list
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Published on February 1, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
We've got to hand it to Yahoo, nobody comes up with more "best" and "worst" lists than the search giant. This week they announced their "10 Winter Wonderlands Retirement". Their chief criteria were the likelihood of having lots of snow on the ground for most of the winter, along with cost of living, access to medical care, and availability of other amenities.
Here is their list:
Juneau, AK
Aurora, Colo.
Burlington, Vt.
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Published on January 25, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
The most frequent comment on all of the websites that have been covering our "Worst States for Retirement" article has been this one: "How can the same state be on the best and the worst list?" A typical comment is the one made by "stylesb" on the AARP.com site: "Real credible info. Connecticut is on both the Best and Worst ranked states for retirement."
The main reason why a state might show up on both lists is that the lists were prepared by different organizations using different criteria. That's the situation with Connecticut, which is #9 on the Topretirements' list of worse states, and #8 on the Money-Rates' list of best states for retirement. The lists use different rating criteria. Topretirements used the fiscal health of the state, taxes, and climate as its 3 criteria for choosing the worst states. Money-Rates used climate, crime rate,
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Published on January 17, 2011
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