Category: Eldercare
August 2, 2020 -- This Article is an excerpt from a new book, "I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird", by Susan Cerulean. The memoir poignantly recalls her experience caring for her father (my father-in-law) as he suffered from dementia, and makes powerful connections to the natural world around us. We think this excerpt and the book will be of interest to many of our Members who have or will find themselves in a similar situation. Cerulean is a nature writer in Tallahassee, FL.
My father’s fate was some sort of internal lightening inside the brain, strokes that led to dementia, and a long decline. After his wife died, it fell to me and my husband Jeff to care for Dad during the last five years of his life. As many people do, we struggled to reconcile the minutiae of the bedside with our full time work and three sons to raise.
But taking care of my father was the right thing to do.
Within the first three months of Dad’s move to live close to us in Tallahassee, his life had returned to good order. We’d distilled the physical goods of all his previous homes into a small but pleasant space. I’d found a wonderful occupational therapist who had told me: “Your Dad is too high functioning for a lockdown memory unit. Bob is still very able to rise to expectations.” She confirmed my hope that assisted living could work out for him. We’d visited a dermatologist, an eldercare lawyer, an eye doctor, a podiatrist, the dentist. Two molars beyond repair had been excavated, and his teeth had been cleaned and polished.
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Published on August 2, 2020
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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.
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Published on August 4, 2020
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Category: Travel
August 11, 2020 - Someday this whole wretched Covid experience is going to be behind us. Just when - nobody knows - dependent on when we start to take it seriously, get an effective vaccine, a cure, or heaven help us, herd immunity. So when that happy day comes, we want to know - where are you going to go on your first trip!
Perhaps it will be family related. Your editor is going to get on a plane and visit his grandchildren in California. After that, it might be somewhere far away that is high on our bucket list. New Zealand, Scandinavia, Ireland - they are all possibilities. A cruise - probably not right away.
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Published on August 10, 2020
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Category: Retirement Planning
August 11, 2020 — Retirement lifestyles and preferences keep evolving, and we are eager to see where our esteemed Members stand on a number of key issues. Now that we are in a pandemic preferences might even be more fluid. Please take this quick, 10 question survey on the size…
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Published on August 11, 2020
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Category: Active adult communities
August 18, 2020 -- The results are in!
Many, many thanks to the generous 300+ Topretirements Members who took the the time to fill out our survey on retirement community preferences. Your input confirms much of our past research and offers fresh perspective on others. Once again your favorite amenity was walking trails. You also wrote in almost 200 illuminating comments - we just wish we had room to highlight every one - because they all offer a unique perspective.
HighlightsEveryone has their own unique take on retirement, that much is obvious from these results. That is particularly true if you look at the 134 comments made to Question 10, "Please describe your ideal retirement community". Here are some of the top takeaways from the survey:
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Published on August 17, 2020
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Category: Family and Retirement
August 19, 2020 -- If you are like a lot of the people we know, the pandemic might have led you into thinking about adding a pet to the family. Across the country and maybe the world, animal shelters and rescue operations have slimmer pickings, and breeders are not returning phone calls. So this seems like as good a time as any to revisit "Pets and Retirement". Topretirements has two very popular articles on this topic, "Are Pets and Retirement a Good Mix?", and "Pets, the X Factor in Retirement". Between the two they generated almost 100 reader comments, so we know this is a topic that resonates among retirees, who have different needs and lifestyles than working families. If you are tempted to add some type of pet to your family, these articles are a good place to help organize your thoughts and plans.
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Published on August 18, 2020
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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.
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Published on August 25, 2020
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Category: Family and Retirement
August 26, 2020 - Do you know someone completed devoted to Walt Disney characters or Disneyland/Disneyworld? MagicalPassings can arrange for loved ones to say goodbye with the help of Disney characters and themes. According to their website, the company "specializes in customized and themed end of life experiences for you and your loved ones... (with) Disney funerals." You can have character visits, a kiss goodbye from Mickey, listen to favorite melodies, or even have Captain Jack send them off to Davy Jones Locker.
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Published on August 26, 2020
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