Category: Retirement Real Estate
WASHINGTON, May 8 - Builder confidence in the single-family 55+ housing market for the first quarter of 2014 reached the highest first-quarter reading since the inception of the index in 2008. That's according to the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) latest 55+ Housing Market Index (HMI). Compared to the first quarter of 2013, the single-family index increased 4 points to a level of 50, which is and the 10th consecutive quarter of year over year improvements.
Good news from baby boomers fueling the market
"There are many factors contributing to the
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Published on June 2, 2014
Comments 9
Category: Checklists
June 3, 2014 -- Congratulations on your retirement, be it impending or already underway. You've worked hard to get to this point, and we hope you enjoy every well-deserved second. But before you get too carried away with your new-found freedom, we would like to bring to your attention some housekeeping items that need to be taken care of. These are in addition to, and in fact go off in a different direction from, the to-do items in Part 1 of this series: Now That You're 65: 10 Items You Need to Know. There is also a Part 3.
Peace of Mind and a Gift for Your Heirs
Today's To-Do list has to do more about taking steps to simplify the job for your heirs, once you pass on to Woodstock
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Published on June 3, 2014
Comments 14
Category: Home and Garden
By Jan Cullinane
June 10, 2014 -- Single women are the second-largest group of homeowners after couples, and they purchase almost twice as many homes on a first-time and repeat basis than single men do, reports the National Association of Home Builders.
More women than men live alone, and single women are more likely to own their homes than single men (56 percent compared to 47 percent). Recognizing that women are the prime drivers of the transaction in 91 percent of home purchases, more and more builders are creating
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Published on June 10, 2014
Comments 19
Category: International Retirement
June 11, 2014 -- Our friend Rick recently wrote us with a great question on how ex-pat retirees deal with healthcare and healthcare insurance when living in another country. We thought we had addressed this question in the Blog before, but after careful searching it doesn't look like we did that in any great depth.
Here is the question:
Recently one of our Bayview Park tennis players was traveling to Mexico, where he fell gravely ill and needed an emergency operation... Now it seems, since he first got sick on the plane flying there, Medicare will reimburse him for medical costs in Mexico... I will be traveling to Mexico soon myself, where I used to live, and may be spending more time there again. My question is about medical care and coverage abroad. I understand there are Medigap policies that may cover this, but I was wondering if
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Published on June 10, 2014
Comments 6
Category: Retirement Planning
June 16, 2014 -- Your past responses to our various retirement surveys have been so interesting we just had to do it again. Today's survey focuses on the "Where" about retirement - where you are thinking about retiring to, what kind of community, and why. Since we created this survey over 1900 community minded folks have taken, here is a link to our complete report on the results, along with many of the more interesting/representative comments.
In the coming weeks Part 2 of this series will focus more on the financial and related issues having to do with retirement. Stay tuned
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Published on June 16, 2014
Comments 0
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
June 17, 2014 -- The Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University is making available a free diagnostic test, SAGE, to help assess cognitive, thinking, and memory impairments. It is a simple exam you can give yourself in just a few minutes.
Although it might be scary to realize that perhaps you might be prone to
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Published on June 17, 2014
Comments 0
Category: Downsizing
June 18, 2014 -- Downsizing and raising children have at least one thing in common- it's a lot easier to tell other people how to do it than it is to do it yourself! Topretirements has published several articles about downsizing (see Further Reading at end of article) due to member interest. In this article we will explore some new tips from all over, and hope that you will contribute your own suggestions in the Comments section below.
1. It is never too early to start.
We can't tell you many of our friends didn't leave enough time for
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Published on June 17, 2014
Comments 59
Category: Retirement Planning
June 24, 2014 -- Thanks to the over 1800 members who took the time to contribute their valuable insights to last week's "Where You'll Live" poll. We appreciate you sharing! As promised, here is a detailed report on the findings. At the end of this article you will also find a complete report of the more than 450 individual responses to question 11, "Do you have anything else you would like to share about your retirement living preferences and the reasons behind them?."
Highlights
Your input provides confirmation of many opinions we hold about retirement preferences in general, along with some surprises. For example, it is not much of a stretch to bet that most of you are interested in retiring to a warm weather clime, with the Southeast and Southwest at the top of your preferences. We did not expect to see the level of interest there was in a suburban environment. And we were blown away with
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Published on June 24, 2014
Comments 52
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
July 1, 2014 -- Congratulations on getting the kids through college. With today's out of control tuition costs, that was no easy task. And nice going with the retirement, we hope you get a hard-earned rest from a lifetime of work. The “Broke” part isn’t so good though, so here are 8 steps on how to help fix that.
Unfortunately you are not alone. It is estimated that
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Published on June 30, 2014
Comments 88
