Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 23, 2010 -- Your editor was pleased to be chosen by NARFE, the National Association of Retired Federal Employees, to write the feature article, So Many Great Retirement Towns, So Hard to Choose", for the September issue of their magazine. In June NARFE asked its readers to write in with a short, Twitter length (140 characters) recommendation for why their community would make a great place for other federal workers to retire. The project was amazing because of the number and quality of responses. Hundreds of towns from all over the world were recommended, with 30 or more communities getting multiple mentions. These retired federal workers also gave dozens of fascinating reasons for selecting a community, along with strong opinions on why they wish they had not chosen certain towns (mostly
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Published on August 23, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Updated February 7, 2021 (originally published August 2010) -- Note: We added a similar article in early 2017: See "Which State Is Better for Retirement: Arizona vs. Florida".
When it comes to comparing retirement destinations, how do various states stack up against each other? There are some natural rivalries such as: the biggies (AZ vs. FL), north vs south (as in North Carolina vs. South Carolina), the Pacific Northwest (Oregon vs. Washington), the Mid-Atlantic (VA vs. DE vs. NJ), and so on. To help you decide which might be better places for you to retire, we present the first in our series of articles comparing retirement states. We welcome ideas for future comparisons (see all in the series at bottom).
Our approach in this article will be to evaluate various factors for each state, letting our readers draw their own conclusions from the facts. As always, reader input is extremely important. We encourage you to use the Comments section below to tell your stories and express your
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Published on August 23, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Editor's Note: We heard back from an unhappy visitor a while back who was disappointed after taking a lengthy detour to visit Maryville, Tn. She wondered how we could have ever recommended such a place, which she and her husband found ordinary and worse. After we explained that her comments would be very helpful in keeping our reviews more balanced, "Ela" graciously wrote back with a very informative note explaining what she and her husband are looking for in a retirement town. It was so good that we asked and she granted permission to reprint it
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Published on August 9, 2010
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Category: International Retirement
August 9, 2010 -- Perhaps you have been thinking about an expatriate retirement outside of the U.S. or Canada. Or maybe you already live in Europe or South America. If that describes you, this article will attempt to answer 2 interesting questions for you: where do people from other countries hope to retire to, and where are the best non-U.S. places to retire.
Our curiosity about the places people from other countries retire to was recently rewarded by a survey conducted in Europe by Aon, the human
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Published on August 9, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 3, 2010. You can probably imagine the questions that come up when your editor meets someone and they find out about our association with Topretirements.com. The #1 question is almost always, "Where is the best place to retire". They mean it as a serious question, so before we respond we have to pause and try not to be too overbearing. That's because the answer we always give - "That depends on you" -could seem a bit snide. (Here is the link to our list of the "100 Best Retirement Towns for 2010").
Sure, we know that Asheville (NC), Sarasota (FL), and Prescott (AZ) are the 3 most popular retirement towns at Topretirements. But does that make them the best?
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Published on August 3, 2010
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
Millions of baby boomers are going to be looking for an affordable retirement in the next few years. In most cases they haven't save enough for retirement, although sometimes bad luck or some type of emergency might keep them from having enough money to maintain the standard of living they have become accustomed to. Whatever your situation, retirement age will come. The options are to get creative and make the best of it, or to accept a reduced lifestyle and blame someone else for it. Assuming Topretirements readers are positive people, this article will provide some ideas on how you can overcome your lack of funds and achieve an affordable, but quality retirement lifestyle. We will also list some places where you can live in style and on a budget.
With some good planning and dose of creativity it is very possible to find a retirement lifestyle that is exciting, fulfilling - and affordable. The best way to find that lifestyle is to start
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Published on July 27, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
July 20, 2010. You've heard of the most affordable places to retire. The most tax-friendly places. The best retirement towns for the arts, or for bicycling, golf, libraries, bookstores... etc. In fact, Topretirements has reported on all of those elsewhere on this site. But there is another sub-category of best places to retire that you might never considered - livability.
Livability means many things to different people. We just read an article at New York Magazine, "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York", where the author devised his personal livability formula. In it he identified the factors that
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Published on July 20, 2010
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Category: Active adult communities
July 20, 2010 — There was one very big surprise on the annual list of the best active adult and 55+ communities which was just published by Topretirements.com. It wasn’t that Arizona, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, California, or South Carolina had plenty of representation on the list. The big surprise…
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Published on July 20, 2010
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Category: Active adult communities
July 13, 2010 -- It's no secret that many Home Owner Associations (HOA's - also known as Community Associations) are seriously concerned about the rise in their members who are in arrears on their association dues. Now some HOA's are fighting back, often with the gloves off.
As background, arrears on community dues come in several forms. Many developments have some units that have been abandoned or foreclosed upon, so dues are usually not paid on those units. In many other cases the owners have just decided for one reason or another to stop paying. Both situations put the associations at risk, as fewer and fewer members are available to pay the community expenses. In some communities well over 50% of the homes are behind in their dues. If the situation becomes dire enough it can lead to the association itself going into default on its loans or bills, resulting in foreclosure and
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Published on July 12, 2010
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Category: Active adult communities
Editors Note: One of our Topretirements members was kind enough to write this travelogue of his and his wife's recent "Stay and Play" or "Discovery" Package experience. We thought it was so interesting that it would make a good article. Wes and Ida used a weekend getaway package to explore Deaton Creek in Hoschton, Georgia (a small town northwest of Atlanta along I 85). Please note that we are not endorsing Deaton Creek, we are just passing along their experience. We applaud Wes and Ida's decision to check out a community in this way; there is no better way to get an opinion about a community than to live in it for a few days. Most active adult communities offer various Discovery packages. You can use the Advanced Search at Topretirements to find many of them. But if you don't see one, ask!
We enjoyed a wonderful weekend getaway at Del Webb's Village at Deaton Creek (DC)
this 4th of July
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Published on July 12, 2010
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