Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
June 2, 2020 -- Back in 2014 we wrote a piece (updated this March) that tries to make the point that people's stereotypes might keep them from finding their best place to retire. Will Stereotypes Keep You From Finding Your Best Place to Retire? was quite popular and generated 65 interesting Comments. Those drove home the message even better, because they were the experiences of real people as they went through the process of finding a place to retire. This article features a selection of some of the more interesting, wide ranging Member Comments from 2014 - we think you will find them still useful! (PS - we took snippets from the Comments, you can read them all in the article).
Paula on Las Vegas
There’s nothing like seeing a place in person to help either confirm or dispel stereotypes. My DH and I recently spent a week in Las Vegas, somewhere we’d never been (and had never desired to see), staying with friends who in the housing crash bought a small second home there (their first home is in Ithaca, NY, where we also live). We were very pleasantly surprised at the incredibly reasonable cost of living there — if our friends were to move there for year-round residence, they would easily save $10-15K on property taxes (less than 20% of what they are here), income taxes (none), cheaper gas and groceries, incredible senior centers and Ys and discounts for Nevada residents at museums, Vegas shows, etc.
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Published on June 2, 2020
Comments 16
Category: Retirement Planning
Nov. 6, 2020 — Due to an unfortunate error on our part earlier this year, a significant number of our most active subscribers were accidentally deleted from the rolls of our Free “Best Places to Retire” weekly newsletter. While we were able to add many of you back, there are…
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Published on May 29, 2020
Comments 2
Category: Active adult communities
May 27, 2020 -- Any time active communities come up in a discussion HOAs and their fees are always a big focus. For many retirees, avoiding those fees or finding the lowest ones can become an obsession. So, is there a central depository of the fees at the thousands of active adult and 55+ communities around the country? Alas, the simple answer is no.
But that flat response does not mean that you cannot discover what you need to know before making an important purchase like buying a home. Ongoing HOA fees and assessments are key to your decision. First, let's talk a little bit about what kind of charges you might expect if you move into a community with a Home Owners Association (HOA) or Community Association (CA).
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Published on May 26, 2020
Comments 5
Category: Retirement Planning
By Flo Williamson - Frequent contributor and Site Monitor at Topretirements
May 27, 2020 -- Who knows when this Covid-19 pandemic will end, and what life will look like in the future? Besides the tragic loss of life, lost jobs, and lost income, there is a sense of loss and questioning for many retirees or those close to it, as to what the future holds during the time we have left.
Reassessing our priorities has become unavoidable-- what we thought we wanted our retirement to Look like, has become for many, what we need our retirement to be. For those of us wishing to relocate and possibly downsize that option has become more difficult. Besides the obvious difficulties in visiting, buying, and selling, I for one, am questioning my initial relocation choice.
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Published on May 25, 2020
Comments 26
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 15, 2020 -- Since the reaction to our first "10 Great Places to Retire You Never Heard of" was so positive, here are 10 more to consider. This exercise has been fun and a great way to prove the point that there are so many interesting places to retire that never get the consideration they deserve. One of these just might be the perfect place for you to retire!
To try to spread things around, this time we have looked for best retirement towns that are geographically diverse and add towns from states not represented in the first 10. Most are fairly affordable, while some of the towns in prime locations reflect the cost of living in a very desirable community. Most of these "undiscovered" towns have fairly small populations.
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Published on May 20, 2020
Comments 5
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
May 20, 2020 — No two ways about it, the corona virus has been brutal. So many lives lost, livelihoods ruined, plans destroyed. Pain and suffering, deprivation, happiness taken away, etc. But, looking on the bright side, someday it will be behind us, thanks to a cure, a vaccine, or…
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Published on May 19, 2020
Comments 19
Category: Active adult communities
May 12, 2020 -- Not everyone wants to retire in the Sunbelt. One reason is that people who already live in the northeast, midwest, or northwest are reluctant to retire far from where they live now, and would prefer to stay close to the familiar, including their relatives and friends. To help those folks looking for an active community in the northeast or northwest, we went exploring in the Topretirements visitor files for the last six months to find the communities that seem most popular on this site.
The results are a combination of big surprises and pretty much what we expected. No big surprise, Delaware ran away with in this "most popular" sweepstakes with 6 communities in the top 20. Virginia netted 3 places, and Pennsylvania 3. The biggest surprises were a community on a lake in Canada and a Lutheran community near Fort Wayne, Indiana; the popularity for which are not clear. Almost all of these most popular, non-Sunbelt active communities were in the northeast, plus one in Idaho and another in Oregon. It was a bit of surprise not to see a better showing from communities in New Jersey, which has many large developments to choose from.
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Published on May 11, 2020
Comments 1
Category: Social Security
May 4, 2020 -- When the coronavirus pandemic first arrived on our shores one of the first thing many people added to their list of worries was its potential effect on the viability of Social Security. Those of a negative mindset were drawn to two main concerns about its funding: shortfalls caused by the vast number of newly unemployed not making FICA payments, and new distributions made to people forced to take their Social Security retirement early at 62. The effect, they hypothesized, might be that the Social Security Trust Fund would become exhausted earlier than expected, and promised payments to retirees would have to be either trimmed or subsidized by the federal budget.
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Published on May 4, 2020
Comments 15
Category: Active adult communities
April 29, 2020 -- The names used by retiree-oriented developments to describe their properties cause so much confusion. In the old days life was simpler - we had old folks homes, retirement homes, and nursing homes. We understood those terms meant, often describing warehouses for the elderly and infirm. Today those concepts have evolved and expanded - now we have communities that are 55+, active adult, retirement, independent living, assisted living, and Continuing Care Retirement Communities. Overseas there are retirement villages. Fortunately today's choices offer a much richer retirement than in days of old!
Since there is so much confusion and misunderstanding about the two categories most new retirees are interested in, 55+ and active adult communities, we will concentrate on those here.
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Published on April 28, 2020
Comments 18
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
Note: July 2020 - This deadline has been extended. April 24, 2020 - Are you kicking yourself because you took some or all this year's Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from your IRA or 401(k) earlier this year? Now that the Cares Act has eliminated RMDs for 2020, you have reason to be upset, especially because all of your distribution is taxable income. Fortunately, there might be some relief.
Act before July 15
The CARES Act just passed as part of the coronavirus relief package has a provision that eliminates all required minimum distributions (RMDs) for 2020. Unfortunately, if you took RMD in January of this year, you probably can't reverse that decision without jumping through a lot of hoops. But, if you took one on or after February 1 and May 15, 2020, you can still roll it back, if you act by July 15. The rollback option isn’t available if the plan was inherited. Issued on April 9, IRS Notice 2020-23 provides limited relief by allowing an extension of the 60-day rollover period. You cannot rollback any taxes you had withheld, although you can probably get a refund or adjustment when you pay your 2020 taxes. There is only one IRA rollback every 365 days.
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Published on April 23, 2020
Comments 1
