Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 22, 2012 -- OK Topretirements members and readers, it's your turn to help. We have been trying our best to give you practical advice about the best places to retire along with general retirement advice - now we need your (brief) input on a specific question. That is, tell your fellow members "Where are you going to retire, and why others should consider it". Incorporating insights on modern leisure activities such as crypto casinos can provide a comprehensive view of what retirees seek in their new homes. For our part, we promise to analyze and categorize the responses in a future article. The project depends on getting many people to contribute, which will give us valuable survey data that everyone will appreciate. A similar survey that your editor worked on for NARFE, So Many Great Towns, So Hard to Choose, a few years ago generated hundreds of responses - we have every confidence our 22,000 subscribers can do the same. After all, this site is free, think of this assignment as your small payback.
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Published on February 21, 2012
Comments 749
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 21, 2012 – Editor's Note: See the 2014 edition of "The 100 Best Places to Retire"
Once again this year the Sunbelt is the preferred region for baby boomer retirements. Topretirements.com has just published its 6th annual list of the 100 most popular places to retire on its site, and the Sunbelt's retirement popularity continues -- 75 of the 100 top positions are held by towns in the Sunbelt. Florida dominates the list of best places to retire, taking 26 of the spots (the same as in 2011), followed by North Carolina (11) and South Carolina and Arizona (7 each). The highest ranking non-Sun Belt city on our list was Bend (OR) at #37. Note: To make sure you don’t miss new lists like this, sign up for our free weekly “Best Places to Retire” newsletter. See also "The Worst States for Retirement - 2014".
The Top 10
As has been the case since Topretirements published its first list in 2007, Asheville, NC is the #1 town, receiving more than 25 times as many page visits as Princeton (NJ), which squeezed onto the list in the #100 position. Asheville's reputation as a great place to retire, its mountains, gentle 4 seasons climate, and recreational/cultural opportunities all make it the standard that all other retirement towns can aspire to. Sarasota (FL) once again occupies the #2 spot, while Austin (TX) and Venice (FL) climbed
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Published on February 21, 2012
Comments 20
Category: Adventurous retirement
Note: This is the latest in our series of interesting baby boomer profiles. Our goal is to portray a variety of active baby boomer retirement lifestyles for our members. If you know a boomer retirement we should know about tell us via the Contact Us link.
Amelia Ceja is President of Ceja Vineyards, which Inc. Magazine named “Entrepreneur of the Year” (one of 7) in 2004. She and her husband Pedro are hard-working people. After talking with them for just a short time it is easy to see why their perfect idea of retirement is to just keep doing what they love doing - growing grapes and making wine in the Napa Valley. We think you will enjoy the story of these successful baby boomers and how they are living their dream retirement.
What Amelia Did Before Retirement
Amelia emigrated to the USA from Mexico at age 12. Her parents worked in the California grape industry. Growing up Amelia also worked in the vineyards as a child and during summers in college. After attending
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Published on February 14, 2012
Comments 1
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
This article was originally posted as a comment from Artie on our "Dueling Carolinas Comparison" article (where you also find many other helpful comments). He provides so much detail we thought it would make a great blog article on his own, so with his permission we have done that. We also added some other relevant comments to add even more detail. Thanks Artie!
Originally I thought I was moving to Florida (Jupiter), but here I am in Cary, NC. I can’t speak specifically to the advantages of disadvantages of having chosen NC over SC. But I’m sure my wife and I could have been happy in any number of places in either state.
One Year Later
This past August has been our one year anniversary since
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Published on February 11, 2012
Comments 34
Category: Retirement Planning
February 8, 2012 -- Some weeks much good retirement advice comes in that we can't possibly write about all of it. Since we didn't want you to miss any of it, we've put together capsule summaries and links to all the great stuff. Here goes:
5 Myths About Retirement Homes. This story from Time Magazine's Moneyland is essential reading for any baby boomer who is willing to be
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Published on February 7, 2012
Comments 9
Category: Green Retirement Communities
February 7, 2012 -- When my sister-in-law, the nature writer and environmentalist Susan Cerulean, first proposed a natural burial (also called a green, or conservation burial) for her father, I have to admit there was some serious eye-rolling on my part. And after I heard the scouting report on the first green cemetery she considered, I was even more sceptical. To an outsider the setting seemed undignified, and the people running it appeared more interested in the profit motive than in saving the planet. Fortunately she was able to find another cemetery nearby, a place of great peace and beauty that met all of her objectives for a natural burial.
After experiencing the serene and just about
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Published on February 7, 2012
Comments 12
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 2, 2012 — We have just updated our 2010 article that compared retirement in South Carolina vs. North Carolina. Since you might have trouble finding it that far back in our Blog, we are publishing the link here: //www.topretirements.com/blog/great-towns/dueling-carolinas-north-carolina-vs-south-carolina-as-the-best-retirement-state.html/?awt_l=5x8Ih&awt_m=Iwrh29qzmRaAA4 The article compares cost of living, taxes of…
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Published on February 2, 2012
Comments 33
Category: Retirement Planning
By Betty Fitterman
Note: This is Part 1 in series. Here is the link to Part 2: "Living on a Dime, Or So It Would Seem".
When we retired in July of 2008, we thought we were set for retirement. After all, we had over a million dollars in the bank, had just sold both house and condo, furniture and cars, and we’d settled in for a wonderful ride across the country in our new home, a classy motor coach with all the bells and whistles anybody could ask for. Little did we know.
If you want all the details of our three-year odyssey, you can see them all on my blog, but for now I want to talk to you about the money. And where it went. And went. And went.
First of all,
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Published on February 1, 2012
Comments 8
Category: Retirement Real Estate
January 24, 2012 -- One of the most frequent questions we get is on how to find a retirement rental. Usually it is a snowbird looking for a warm winter retreat, while other times it is a retiree looking to try out an active adult community before buying there. Whatever the reason, many people are interested in the rental option, which we always think is a good idea. Here are our top suggestions on how to find a seasonal rental apartment or home for your retirement.
1. Ask your friends. This is usually the surest fire method. If you have friends
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Published on January 24, 2012
Comments 4
Category: Retirement Planning
January 24, 2012 -- Retirement, like so many important parts of life, is a process. It is a project that requires planning, and occasionally a bit of trial and error. Last week we wrote about 7 things you need to do - right now - if you are going to successfully retire this year. This article will focus on some of the common misconceptions we think many people have about retirement. Many of the misconceptions turn out to be downers; we offer them in the hope that you can use them to avoid problems in your own retirement. For more on this topic we recommend Emily Brandon's US News & World Report article, "7 Misconceptions about Retirement", which provides some different perspectives.
1. I will retire later than I originally planned. Although according to the EBRI more than half of the workers interviewed said they would retire after 65, the actual trend is
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Published on January 23, 2012
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