Category: General Retirement Issues
June 7, 2011 -- Feeling nervous about your retirement? You wouldn't be normal if you weren't. The good news is that if you take time now to start preparing, most of your anxiety will melt away as you realize your are indeed prepared for your well-deserved retirement.
This article, which was inspired by one in the Wall Street Journal, "Ready to Retire: 5 Year Countdown", assumes that you have been working for a few years and are at least in your forties. We've set up the countdown into various periods, with particular emphasis on your last 5 working years.
R Minus 20. With 20 or more years before retirement you are lucky to...
more...
Published on June 7, 2011
Comments 8
Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
June 1, 2011 -- NPR is running a call-in show today asking listeners what TV show they would bring back if they were in charge of the universe. It's a contest anyone old enough to be a baby boomer might enjoy. Through the miracle of Netflix your editor just spent a few happy sessions on the exercise bike watching the 1st 3 shows in the "Have Gun Will Travel" series, which first aired in 1957. The show, as you probably remember, features Paladin, a gun for hire. One of the beauties of having lost so many brain cells...
more...
Published on June 1, 2011
Comments 25
Category: Retirement Real Estate
June 1, 2011 -- The U.S. real estate market took a severe pummeling after the long holiday weekend with the release of the latest housing figures. The widely watched S & P/Case-Shiller Index reported that national housing prices index fell 4.2% in 2011's first quarter, on top of a 3.6% decline in the 4th quarter of 2010. Prices across the country have hit new lows since the housing crash, and represent, according to economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics on the PBS Newshour, the most "unprecedented"...
more...
Published on June 1, 2011
Comments 35
Category: Active adult communities
May 27, 2011 -- Millions of baby boomers, the oldest of whom turn 65 this year, have had their retirement plans turned upside down. They are waiting longer to retire, don't have as much money to live on as they thought, and are turning to different living options. This turmoil has had a profound effect on active adult communities, whose target audience are these baby boomers. To help you understand the top 2011 trends in active adult communities we asked Topretirements advertisers and members to answer several questions about this market. Their responses were amazingly insightful - we hope you agree!
Questions we asked
These were the questions we posed to our advertisers and members:
1. Home sizes and prices. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported recently that active adults are buying...
more...
Published on May 27, 2011
Comments 14
Category: General Retirement Issues
May 24, 2011 -- Not so long ago many institutions were bracing for a wave of baby boomer retirements that were going to leave them with a major talent shortfall. But up until 2011 the opposite has been true, we pesky boomers seem to have been delaying retirement, and in fact we have clogged up the talent path for newer job seekers.
Multiple reports in the press have detailed the "just say no to retirement" phenomenon. The reasons for it are well known - just about everyone's retirement fund took a hit a few years ago, while millions of boomers have neither...
more...
Published on May 24, 2011
Comments 7
Category: Adventurous retirement
May 23, 2011 --
Note: This is the first in our series of retiree 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 use the Contact Us link to let us know about it.
Kelly and Demaris Edwards wake up to a dream retirement every day. Picture a historic country inn perched high above the shores of Lake Erie. The sounds of the lake are the first things they hear. The 13 room inn they own and manage provides them with the majority of their livelihood plus a great deal of personal satisfaction. This outgoing couple enjoys running the inn for many reasons, but their favorite is the chance it gives them to meet new people. Over the years many of their guests have become repeat patrons and personal friends.
Their unique lifestyle also frees them to become snowbirds every winter. In January when Lake Erie freezes and the lake-effect snows begin to pile up, the Edwards climb aboard their 30’ RV and head on down the road to Key West, Florida. There they stay in a U.S. military RV park where they relax, read, and exercise in the warm Florida sunshine. This article will help explain why their son Jim...
more...
Published on May 23, 2011
Comments 8
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
By John Durfee
I've still got a decade or two before I can retire but my father, also a veteran, is about ready to. Where my family lives is very important to me, and I don’t want to leave this decision to fate. With the help of my daughter, I did some research to find the best places to retire for military in that fit my father and me as veterans. This article will share what we found out about our top 3 locations.
Our Criteria
There are a few things in particular that I am looking for in a retirement location. First and foremost...
more...
Published on May 18, 2011
Comments 5
Category: International Retirement
May 17, 2011 -- Maybe you've been wondering about the best places to retire in the world. Perhaps for you that means buying retirement property on a beautiful tropical beach in the Caribbean, or maybe a small European village. The attractions of retiring abroad are many - the low cost of living, the charm and high standard of living, interesting cultural opportunities, and warm climate. Tens of thousands of Americans decide to retire overseas, and maybe you will be one of them. Retiring abroad can be exciting, cost-effective, and totally enjoyable. But before you decide to retire south (or some other direction) of the border, you had better think about these ....
more...
Published on May 17, 2011
Comments 8
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 10, 2011 -- Late last year our list of the "10 Worst Retirement States" caused a surprising uproar. Much excellent discussion came from it, and the experience gave us a new appreciation for the complexity of assigning factors to any "best" or "worst" list. Six months later, and with fresh data in from the Pew Center on the States, it seems like it's time for an update. This article will list the states that are in the most fiscal trouble from the Pew Center's viewpoint. In the second part of the article we will provide a recap of how these poor performing states stack up when it comes to taxes for retirees. We will not include any rating for weather/climate, as we did in last year's list. Climate is so personal and so widely understood that we don't feel the need to rate that factor for you.
The Pew Center recently published data on the unfunded liabilities of the states, The Widening Gap, for pensions and for promised future health care. The results are frightening, and carry broad implications that could affect your retirement if you live in one of these states (but more about that later). Although a few states are beginning to take action, the vast majority of states have chosen to ignore their looming pension problems. Many of them also have large deficits, which are equally as concerning. As we will see, most but not all of the states in trouble are low-tax states; some might argue that unwillingness to raise taxes has contributed to the mess some states are in. Here are some of the Pew Center's findings:
As of Fiscal Year '09 the states had a $660 billion
more...
Published on May 10, 2011
Comments 13
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 9, 2011 — We thought it would be a good idea to put the links to our recent “Best” and “Worst” states articles in one place: – The Wall Street Journal reported on our “Best States for Retirement, 2011 Edition” article today, saying it was a “…nice…
more...
Published on May 9, 2011
Comments 0
