Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 27 -- Your Topretirements editor was just in Nantucket for a whirlwind vacation. This island retreat is the summer vacation hot spot, particularly among those who live nearby (think New England), or with very big checkbooks. To get here you can take the ferry, always a great ride on a beautiful day, or fly. If Queequeg, the chief harpooner in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, came back to visit Nantucket he would probably recognize many of the buildings, but not the people. The town is crawling with very prosperous tourists and families, many with young children in tow. No place on earth could be cuter, more charming, prosperous - or expensive. Shop after shop offers beautiful baubles and expensive pieces of art. The beaches, bike trails, shops and restaurants are all wonderful too. If you have the means and you dream of island living, Nantucket (ACK) might
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Published on August 27, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 23, 2010 -- Your editor was pleased to be chosen by NARFE, the National Association of Retired Federal Employees, to write the feature article, So Many Great Retirement Towns, So Hard to Choose", for the September issue of their magazine. In June NARFE asked its readers to write in with a short, Twitter length (140 characters) recommendation for why their community would make a great place for other federal workers to retire. The project was amazing because of the number and quality of responses. Hundreds of towns from all over the world were recommended, with 30 or more communities getting multiple mentions. These retired federal workers also gave dozens of fascinating reasons for selecting a community, along with strong opinions on why they wish they had not chosen certain towns (mostly
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Published on August 23, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Updated February 7, 2021 (originally published August 2010) -- Note: We added a similar article in early 2017: See "Which State Is Better for Retirement: Arizona vs. Florida".
When it comes to comparing retirement destinations, how do various states stack up against each other? There are some natural rivalries such as: the biggies (AZ vs. FL), north vs south (as in North Carolina vs. South Carolina), the Pacific Northwest (Oregon vs. Washington), the Mid-Atlantic (VA vs. DE vs. NJ), and so on. To help you decide which might be better places for you to retire, we present the first in our series of articles comparing retirement states. We welcome ideas for future comparisons (see all in the series at bottom).
Our approach in this article will be to evaluate various factors for each state, letting our readers draw their own conclusions from the facts. As always, reader input is extremely important. We encourage you to use the Comments section below to tell your stories and express your
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Published on August 23, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Editor's Note: We heard back from an unhappy visitor a while back who was disappointed after taking a lengthy detour to visit Maryville, Tn. She wondered how we could have ever recommended such a place, which she and her husband found ordinary and worse. After we explained that her comments would be very helpful in keeping our reviews more balanced, "Ela" graciously wrote back with a very informative note explaining what she and her husband are looking for in a retirement town. It was so good that we asked and she granted permission to reprint it
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Published on August 9, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 3, 2010. You can probably imagine the questions that come up when your editor meets someone and they find out about our association with Topretirements.com. The #1 question is almost always, "Where is the best place to retire". They mean it as a serious question, so before we respond we have to pause and try not to be too overbearing. That's because the answer we always give - "That depends on you" -could seem a bit snide. (Here is the link to our list of the "100 Best Retirement Towns for 2010").
Sure, we know that Asheville (NC), Sarasota (FL), and Prescott (AZ) are the 3 most popular retirement towns at Topretirements. But does that make them the best?
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Published on August 3, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
July 20, 2010. You've heard of the most affordable places to retire. The most tax-friendly places. The best retirement towns for the arts, or for bicycling, golf, libraries, bookstores... etc. In fact, Topretirements has reported on all of those elsewhere on this site. But there is another sub-category of best places to retire that you might never considered - livability.
Livability means many things to different people. We just read an article at New York Magazine, "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York", where the author devised his personal livability formula. In it he identified the factors that
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Published on July 20, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
This article is part of a series. See "For Further Reading" section at end for links to the rest of the articles Updated February 17, 2020 with current prices
Originally published June 15, 2010 -- What's not to like about retiring to a place on or near the water - except maybe the price that usually comes with that lifestyle. Until the polar icecaps melt some more, no one is making any more ocean front property, which means that as a rule only wealthy people can afford to pay for the privilege of watching the sun come up and down over the water from their front porches. Fortunately for the careful shopper though, there are different kinds of waterfront, some some of them affordable. To get helpful articles like this on a regular basis, sign up for our Free weekly "Best Places" newsletter.The first place we started when researching this article was our own Retirement Ranger. When we took our free, 10 question quiz we tried to keep it simple - we specified only 2 environmental selections - "coastal" and "lakefront" and "lower than average" cost of living. The Ranger came back with 100 choices in the USA, from which we chose 11 for this article.
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Published on June 14, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 25, 2010 -- You've probably been at a party where you discovered you didn't know a soul. Remember the feeling you got when a total stranger came up to you with a friendly smile and welcomed you? With that one warm greeting your anxiety probably went down, you stopped second-guessing your decision to come, and you started to enjoy the party. When it comes to retiring to a strange place, states and towns that seek out retirees might give you that same warm feeling. This article will explore what we think makes for retirement-friendly states, cities, and towns.
Types of friendliness
States (and towns and cities) have several types of friendliness that they could offer:
- Economic. This is mostly available in the form of tax relief, of which
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Published on May 24, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 18, 2010 -- Nobody loves a good list more than we do. To that end we decided to come out with our own 10 Best of the Best List. Our goal here is to assemble the best of Topretirements in one place, making it easier for our visitors to find our best stuff, quickly and easily. In this list you will find:
- The best places (towns and cities) to retire
- The best places in the world to retire
- The best under-rated places to retire
- The best active adult and 55+ communities
- The best retirement feature articles
- The best retirement blog stories
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Published on May 18, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 4, 2010 and updated April 6, 2015 -- Florida and Arizona have long been the favorite 2 states for retirement migration. A study from Del Webb, however, finds that the Carolinas, North and South, might have usurped FL and AZ's traditional positions as the favorite retirement destination states. This article will concentrate on how and why North Carolina overcame Florida to become the number 1 retirement destination in some people's eyes. In addition to trying to explain how this important shift has come about, we will also review some of the top places to retire in this diverse state. We encourage you to read all of the articles in our Dueling Retirement series (listed at the end of this article), including: Dueling Carolinas: NC vs. SC
North Carolina's Secret Sauce
A warm winter climate has traditionally been the most important reason
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Published on May 4, 2010
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