Category: Adventurous retirement
August 17, 2011 -- If exploring charming villages or savoring the beautiful countryside appeals to you, one of the best ways to experience these pleasures is… on a bike. Your Topretirements editor and wife Roberta are just back from a wonderful biking trip along the Danube in Hungary and Slovakia. Although there a quite a few choices in biking tours, including a self-tour, we chose VBT for ours. Some other choices include the more expensive Butterfield and Robinson, Euro-bike, and Backroads.
Whether you are retired already or just thinking about it, bike trips or other active tours are a great way to explore new territory and relax. This short article will give you an idea of what the experience is like in case you are considering one. For those to whom cycling seems a bit too adventurous, there are also walking tours, wine and food tasting tours, and barge tours. For those who crave more excitement there are options like kayaking, fishing, backpacking, and float trips.The beauty of using a tour company vs. a self-guided tour is that
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Published on August 17, 2011
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Category: Active adult communities
August 16, 2011 -- As a followup to last week's article on the "10 Worst Retirement Mistakes", our faithful member OldNassau just brought an incredibly interesting article to our attention. "Toby is Moving to Tidelands Condominiums: Anatomy of a Real Estate Decision" outlines the detailed reasons why Toby, a realtor in the Palm Coast (FL) area, recently downsized and purchased a short-sale condominium in Tidelands there. We think you will find it useful, particularly
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Published on August 16, 2011
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Category: General Retirement Issues
Updated July, 2023 - Originally published August 6, 2011 -- (Note: This is a 3 part series. See links to Parts 2 and 3 in the "Further Reading" section at end).
The most beautiful thing about retirement is that is the perfect moment to reinvent yourself. The kids are grown, your mortgage might be paid, your fight up the career ladder is behind you. It's a "do-over", now you are free to do anything you want to, an amazing opportunity! You are only limited by your imagination and your resources (and the former can help with the latter).
To help you maximize this unique chance to start life all over again, here is our list of the 10 worst retirement mistakes you can make. We hope you will keep them in mind so that your reinvention comes off without a hitch. And if you have your own mistakes or success strategies to add, please let us know in the Comments section.
Worst Retirement Mistakes
1. Start planning your retirement the day after you retire. That's too late. Smart
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Published on August 6, 2011
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Category: Active adult communities
August 2, 2011 -- Note: We updated this list in 2012 and 2013. See "Surprises Galore: Our 2013 List of Most Popular Active Adult Communities". The Sun Belt and Delaware are where it's at when it comes to popular active adult communities. That's what we found in our new list of the most popular active adult communities for 2011. The only places outside of the sun belt to have communities on the list were Delaware which had 12 communities on the top 100 this year (up from 5 in 2010); The Village at Penn State in State College, PA.; and Sage Village in Boulder, CO. In an attempt to open it up and introduce more variety this year, we increased the list from 50 to 100. As in the past, the Sun Belt achieved near total domination over its colder brethren.
Florida, the runaway favorite, topped the 2011 list with an astonishing 40 communities. Arizona followed Delaware with 11 communities, and then North Carolina, which had with 10. South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia also had good representation.
We take several conclusions away from these results:
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Published on August 1, 2011
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Category: Active adult communities
Note: This is Part 1 of a 3 part series. Here is the link to Part 2, "Jay Michaels' Search for the Perfect Active Adult Community", and Part 3: 5 Years Later
July 26, 2011 -- Our friend Jay Michaels was kind enough to send us his notes about his recent trip to the Williamsburg, Virginia area and the 55+ communities located there. He and his wife are considering retirement there. We hope you enjoy his impressions as much as we did. BTW - have you been out visiting regions or communities - we'd like to hear from you too!
We visited Williamsburg a few weeks ago and liked it - it is an attractive area. Williamsburg is about 45 miles east of Richmond and closer than that to Newport News. The area is appealing to us because it keeps us reasonably close to our children but is also a bit warmer than the area of Pennsylvania where we currently live.
The people are open and friendly and seem to be very happy with living in Williamsburg. Just about everybody we met was
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Published on July 26, 2011
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Category: Eldercare
By Maria Tadd
July 25, 2011 -- According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), about 90% of retirees and 80% of baby boomers say they want to remain in their neighborhoods indefinitely. It is generally agreed that this is a good thing too - gerontologists have found out that aging in place vastly improves the quality of life for seniors and is a lot cheaper for society than residential facilities.
The reasons for this are not all that surprising. It is not just our house and belongings that provide comfort but it is also the cultivation of long-lasting friendships; caring neighbors who
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Published on July 25, 2011
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Category: Active adult communities
July 19, 2011 -- The Huffington Post is the world's master of controversial publishing. Recently they really stirred things up in their "expose´" of Home Owners Associations (HOAs), "Home Owners Associations Cause Trouble in Retirement Communities". Their one-sided broadside apparently hit a nerve too, generating 634, mostly angry, comments at last count.
The thrust of their mostly one-sided article was this: bad guy HOAs unreasonably foreclose on innocent homeowners, causing catastrophic damage. In particular, the authors cite the Inlet House Condo complex in Fort Pierce, Florida. The community has fallen on hard times, with units that sold a few years ago for $76,000 now going for as little as $3,000. Rats had infested vacant units and sewage was seeping into lower level units. Huff Post took issue with the HOA's assessments and subsequent foreclosure of condo owners who failed to pay those assessments or other fees. Hundreds of angry people apparently agree, as they vented with Comments laden with examples of diabolical HOAs, vowing never to conform to these power grabbing boards
We respectfully disagree with both the major thrust of the Huffington Post piece and their angry
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Published on July 19, 2011
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
June 19, 2011 -- Imagine for a moment that you just purchased an annuity at age 62 and a half. If you decide to start taking payments on it today, you can. But if are willing to wait 7 and 1/2 years, you could increase your monthly payments by at least 75%, maybe more. Which option would you take?
From our headline you have probably guessed we are talking about social security, which at its most basic is an annuity - a guaranteed payment for as long as you and/or your spouse lives. It is clearly one of the best annuities available. You and your employer paid for it. And the money is virtually guaranteed (unless
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Published on July 19, 2011
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
July 15, 2011 -- Note: This is Part II in our series from Sandy, who has spent years researching how to find the perfect - and affordable - retirement spot. "Part I: What Sandy Learned in 8 Years of Visiting Dozens of Active Adult Communities" has attracted 49 comments so far.
For me and my husband the best way to a ‘perfect’ retirement is to enjoy wonderful Northern springs, summers and falls - and spend winters somewhere warm. In spite of what a lot of people think, it is possible for almost anyone, even those on a very small budget, to experience this dream. This article will tell about a successful strategy we used to get there.
A few years ago I was searching the Internet for a way to stay longer in Florida without the high cost of the Destin
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Published on July 15, 2011
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Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
July 13, 2011 -- When you were in college or just out of school, did your parents seem old to you? Mine were in their mid 50's then, and they seemed a little bit old. Funny how mid-50's feels awfully young these days. According to a new Associated Press-LifeGoesStrong.com poll, a lot of baby boomers feel the same way - the median age cited as starting to get old is 70, with a quarter going a lot higher, about 80. Younger adults, however, seem to think 60 represents the start of old age. The results among baby boomers make sense to us!
Other conclusions from the survey are interesting
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Published on July 13, 2011
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