Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
June 1, 2016 -- Easy walkability to town, parks and lakes, and shopping were top considerations for retirement living when we surveyed our members 3 years ago. To help you find places that meet that criteria we have identified 10 Florida towns where it is easy and a joy to walk around in.
Some people's vision of a Sunshine State retirement conjures up a bleak landscape of strip malls and busy highways. The reality is that Florida also has some of the most livable towns in America. Towns where you can live downtown or close to it, and walk to everything that is important to you, day or night. In fact, in most of these Florida towns the walking is so good that you could even survive without a car.
more...
Published on June 1, 2016
Comments 35
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
June 8, 2016 -- Congrats on your retirement, you earned it! Unfortunately a happy retirement doesn't happen automatically - a lot depends on how staying young and maximizing your happiness every day. This article will share the best research we've seen to help you to live longer and get the most out of every moment of retirement.
To write this article we have taken a "Best of the Best" approach. To do that we assembled a list of great articles from around the web on the "secrets" and "mistakes" surrounding retirement. From each one we have picked out what we think is the most important tip or two. The result is
more...
Published on June 7, 2016
Comments 39
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
June 12, 2016 -- All over the country there is a craze raging with a very funny name - pickleball. You have probably heard about it, maybe because it is very popular in active adult and retirement communities. But the question is, should it be your next sport? This article will talk about the sport and help you determine whether you should give it a “whack”.
Pickleball got started in 1965 on a modified badminton court. Kids in gym class sometimes play it because it can be played indoors in a fairly limited space with minimum equipment. Since then it has expanded around the globe, but has really taken off as an activity in 55+ and active adult communities.
What is it the game and how is it played
Pickleball is played on a court that is roughly half the size
more...
Published on June 11, 2016
Comments 6
Category: Active adult communities
June 16, 2016 -- We've been wresting with a question about active adult and 55+ communities. The question is: does one side of the of the USA have a better range, selection, and type of active and 55+ communities than the other? Does the East (from Maine to Florida and west to Wisconsin and Louisiana) offer more, or is the Western half of the country (from Kansas to Hawaii and parts North and South) the one with more interesting active adult possibilities? The obvious answer finally came to us - ask our Topretirements Members - you have a range of collective experience that is incredibly valuable! So we are asking you at the end of this article to share your point of view about the areas that provide the best options for active adult living.
Part of the reason we ask comes from the challenge we continually face in adding new active adult and 55+ communities to our database. Although it usually easy to find a community we haven't yet reviewed in the Eastern part of the US on any given day, it is much harder to discover new or existing ones from the West. Which leads us to believe that perhaps the fence is much greener if you decide to retire somewhere in the East. But perhaps it is, as several frustrated
more...
Published on June 14, 2016
Comments 21
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
June 22, 2016 -- Most everybody has a drop dead requirement for their best place to retire. For book lovers, that can mean living in a town where there is an interesting bookstore. Sure you can buy books online at Amazon, but for many there is no substitute for being able to settle down in a comfy store where the staff knows their books, and the selections carefully vetted. In this article Lucy Burdette and her best-selling writer friends at JungleRedWriters.com review their favorite bookstore towns. As writers touring the country to give book talks and signings, they know book shops!
As we hoped, most of these towns are great places to retire - and not just because of their wonderful bookstores. The kind of town that cultivates and supports a good book shop is a place that has many other things going on too - good restaurants, shops, cultural events, interesting
more...
Published on June 21, 2016
Comments 32
Category: Home and Garden
June 22, 2016 -- We can all use help in the art of staying youthful for as long as we can. Especially if getting to be 55+ has brought a few physical limitations along with our increased experience.
The list of helpful products reviewed recently by NextAvenue.org runs a wide gamut. Predictably it includes computers, tablets, and smart phones. It also reviews portable music devices (with the advent of wireless, just about anything is possible), smart watches, and cameras. At least one, such as the Garvin Nuvi-Cam, would be great additions to your car when checking out possible places to retire (in addition to navigation, it includes in-dash camera and driver awareness features).
Electric bikes are another innovation that is game changing for many people. We experienced
more...
Published on June 22, 2016
Comments 5
Category: Retirement Planning
June 22, 2016 — Where will you live in retirement? Will it be in your current home, or something completely new in a very different region? Would you ever consider renting? Please take this quick 10 question, multiple choice survey and let us know. We will use your responses to…
more...
Published on June 22, 2016
Comments 3
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
June 23, 2016 -- The 2016 report of the independent Trustees of Social Security is out, and the news is nothing to be too happy about. Both Medicare and Social Security will soon be paying out more than they take in. The only small blessing for those currently receiving Social Security benefits is that it looks like there might be a small COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) of 0.2% headed their way in 2017. Here are some other takeaways from the report, which make it clear that action is needed to keep benefits at least at current levels:
- Trust Fund reserves in the Social Security program that pays benefits to retirees, spouses, and their survivors (OASI) are projected to become depleted in 2035 (unchanged from last year's report). At that time income
more...
Published on June 23, 2016
Comments 12
Category: Retirement Planning
June 28, 2016 -- As we completed our latest Member survey (Where to Next?) it seemed like an excellent time to provide you with a rundown of all the surveys we've done in the past. Frankly, we think they contain an amazing trove of your collective wisdom - not only the insightful comments made in the surveys themselves but also the Comments made after we published the results. You can see the results of the Where to Next Survey at (see "Where to Next Results ".
To that end, here is a quick capsule of all these surveys (the titles are links to the entire reports). Even though some surveys were done as early as 2010, they still make for interesting and practical reading! One interesting thing we found while summarizing all of our previous surveys is how the basic results stay so close from survey to survey and year to year. For example
more...
Published on June 28, 2016
Comments 0
