As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
New: Community Explorer. Discover Your Perfect Community Quickly Based on Lifestyle, Amenities, and Unit Type.
Try It NOWCategory: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 29, 2020 — We have updated our 2016 list for “10 Great Places to Retire in the Southwest That Won’t Break Your Budget“. The good news is that there are still some great places to retire that are affordable. The bad news is that most home prices are…
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 9, 2020 -- Although the pandemic has been horrendous for activities like dining out or social gatherings, others are experiencing a gold rush. One of those is biking (cycling to our British brethren). Walk into a bike shop now and say you need a bike - get ready for a 3 month wait. Want a used bike... sorry. The same goes for bike parts and repairs. As people avoid mass transit and have more time on their hands, biking has never been more popular.
While it is a great activity, it is a lot more enjoyable when you live in a place where the infrastructure is set up for it. When bikers and cars are kept separate it is a lot safer and more fun. Bike lanes, special traffic signals, concrete barriers, and under/overpasses make all the difference. No one wants to bike along a narrow berm next to speeding cars, or face daunting intersections with multiple lanes to cross.
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 2, 2020 -- There are are tens of millions of baby boomers, and just about every one of us has a slightly different retirement dream. Some might have one requirement in common, but the two or three other things on their lists make them unique. In this new series we are will explore different retirement quests, along with examples of retirement towns that match. As other articles in the series are written, we will link to them here.
A Topretirements Member asked last week about great places to retire for foodies. Secondarily, she is also looking for good healthcare, nice weather, and middle of the road cost of living. If those preference describe what you are looking for, this article will provide a few places for you to consider.Knowing what you are looking for - great!
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 26, 2020 -- You are probably only going to have one retirement, so you might as well make the most of it. At least, that's the way we think about it. So why settle for a "nice" place to retire, when you have actually have the option to go for the gold - a town that is interesting, charming, bustling - one you never tire of. Here are 10 possibilities for you to consider, chosen by region, and along with the criteria we used to select them.
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 4, 2020 -- Not everybody's retirement dream is to pack up and move to the Carolinas, Florida, or Arizona. In fact most retirees never move far from they lived when they stopped working. The Mid-Atlantic states have a big advantage for people who live in that region or the Northeast, and who are not looking for a big change. For those who prefer to be within easy driving distance of friends and family, proximity to where they live now is a big plus (even bigger in this time of Covid!). In this article we have come up with a list of the 14 most popular retirement towns in the Mid-Atlantic states, based on site visits at Topretirements.
The Mid-Atlantic states are generally considered to be Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Virginia, which borders most of those states, is close enough that we are considering it here.
With 5 winners, Virginia had the most towns on this list, followed by Delaware and Pennsylvania with 3. All of them are great places to retire, no duds here. Most are near the coast, while others are in the mountains. Here is the list, along with a few of the active adult communities in the region that also got a lot of site visits here. The towns are presented in order of popularity.
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
July 22, 2020 -- The quest for an affordable place to retire is important to many baby boomers whose reality is living on limited retirement savings and Social Security. Finding an affordable place that offers a great lifestyle is a real plus for them. Over the years we have produced multiple lists of affordable places to retire, and this article continues that series (see end of article for links to more).
The 11 affordable places to retire listed here are unique: they are all Member suggestions from previous Blogs. In fact we've used their comments to describe the towns and regions, although we added home pricing where possible. Ten of them are on or near the water. These towns have home prices that are generally quite affordable compared to the US Zillow Home Value Index of $248,857. In regions like the Pacific Northwest and the coast of Florida where home prices are high, we chose towns with prices lower than the rest of those regions.
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
July 14, 2020 – We have just updated our comparison of retirement in two really terrific Pacific Northwest states – Oregon and Washington. Both are growing fast and are expensive in most, but not all areas. One advantage they offer is that their relatively mild climate means many people are…
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
July 8, 2020 — It is a familiar question... what is the best state for retirement? There are many ways to answer that question, and in fact over the years we have tried several. There is the the lowest taxes viewpoint. Or, a comparison of other economic factors like cost of living. Alternative approaches include best climate, absence of natural hazards like hurricanes, geographic features like beaches and mountains, political climate, financial health of the state, medical care, etc.
Ultimately, identifying the best state for retirement is a very personal question. In the end it boils down to what is the best state for YOUR retirement. It is very possible that your best state is where you live now, if it meets your desires, since 80% or more retirees do not cross state lines after they retire.
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
June 2, 2020 -- Back in 2014 we wrote a piece (updated this March) that tries to make the point that people's stereotypes might keep them from finding their best place to retire. Will Stereotypes Keep You From Finding Your Best Place to Retire? was quite popular and generated 65 interesting Comments. Those drove home the message even better, because they were the experiences of real people as they went through the process of finding a place to retire. This article features a selection of some of the more interesting, wide ranging Member Comments from 2014 - we think you will find them still useful! (PS - we took snippets from the Comments, you can read them all in the article).
Paula on Las Vegas
There’s nothing like seeing a place in person to help either confirm or dispel stereotypes. My DH and I recently spent a week in Las Vegas, somewhere we’d never been (and had never desired to see), staying with friends who in the housing crash bought a small second home there (their first home is in Ithaca, NY, where we also live). We were very pleasantly surprised at the incredibly reasonable cost of living there — if our friends were to move there for year-round residence, they would easily save $10-15K on property taxes (less than 20% of what they are here), income taxes (none), cheaper gas and groceries, incredible senior centers and Ys and discounts for Nevada residents at museums, Vegas shows, etc.
more...
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 15, 2020 -- Since the reaction to our first "10 Great Places to Retire You Never Heard of" was so positive, here are 10 more to consider. This exercise has been fun and a great way to prove the point that there are so many interesting places to retire that never get the consideration they deserve. One of these just might be the perfect place for you to retire!
To try to spread things around, this time we have looked for best retirement towns that are geographically diverse and add towns from states not represented in the first 10. Most are fairly affordable, while some of the towns in prime locations reflect the cost of living in a very desirable community. Most of these "undiscovered" towns have fairly small populations.
more...
