Category: Active adult communities
February 8, 2017 -- This article is the 3rd in a series written by Jay Michaels on his pursuit of the perfect retirement community. Now, five years after the second installment, he and his wife Jane have gone a long way (and then again not so far). Here is their update (links to Parts 1 and 2, both highly recommended for their site visit and decision process details, are below).
Jay Michael’s tour bus ran out of gas
Several years ago I wrote about our travels to find a new place to live after my retirement, and these were published on the Top Retirements blog. My wife and I had travelled thousands of miles and visited over 60 communities intermittently over a two year period from 2011-2013. We finally made a decision in 2013 on where to retire, and enough time has passed for me to now summarize our decision and how it has worked out for us.
Where did we end up?
My brother gets a laugh from people when he tells them I travelled for two years investigating the best place to retire and picked Cleveland, Ohio, as my destination. As you will read below, however, Cleveland has some really big and nice surprises, and I feel its reputation is not accurate or justified in many ways.
The place we picked is a golf community in Avon Lake, Ohio which is about
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Published on February 7, 2017
Comments 10
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
February 7, 2017 -- If you will celebrate your 62nd birthday in 2017 or later, the age in which you are eligible for full Social Security benefits is on its way to 67. The full retirement age (FRA) will steadily increase in two-month increments from age 66 over the next six years, eventually reaching age 67 for those born in 1960 or later. This is not a new development, however. It has always been part of changes made the last time the Social Security program was overhauled, which was 1983.
The bad news is that your Social Security benefits are also taking a hair cut compared to your fellow boomers who were born prior to 1955. When your FRA becomes age 67, your
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Published on February 6, 2017
Comments 24
Category: Active adult communities
January 31, 2017 -- We think a lot of people looking for a place to retire get intimidated when they start to visit active adult and 55+ communities, particularly if they roll up to a gated entrance and face a guard with a clipboard. They might think, "Gosh, maybe we don't belong here", or, "I don't want to go into the sales office because they are going to give me a hard sell". So we asked some of the professionals we know, advertisers at Topretirements all, how they would advise baby boomers who want to visit and find out more about a community. While we were at it, we tacked on a few other questions about what makes their communities unique, desired amenities, and how they see the current market and the future. We hope you enjoy it.
The questions
The format here is that we will print out each question, and then give the answers from each of our 4 active adult community executives. Thanks to them for taking the time to share their
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Published on January 31, 2017
Comments 17
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
January 28, 2017 -- Dear Members. On our "Are You Ready for Retirement" thread MaryNB started an interesting thread about cost of living and coping with various expenses. That generated a raft of suggestions, so many that we have decided to move them all here to a new post just on that subject. Below are the Comments moved over from the original. Feel free to add your own!
---This may be off topic, but part of the calculations about cost of living. The references
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Published on January 28, 2017
Comments 114
Category: Eldercare
January 24, 2017 -- Earlier this month we wrote about "The Retirement Wrecker You Never Considered", which turned out to be about adult children that fail to fledge. Today we will tackle the other half of the sandwich that often squeezes baby boomers; what happens when elderly parents and relatives need help that interferes with your retirement plans. We are certainly not saying that having elderly parents is a "problem", it is a blessing if you get to enjoy your parents and relatives as they age. Unfortunately for some adult children, they experience challenges with their parents that can turn into a problem for their retirement plans. We know many of you have had experience dealing with this sometimes difficult issue, and hope you will contribute your knowledge and experience in the Comments section below.
To get started we have 11 tips to offer when it looks like your elders need more help but don't seem to want to get it. After that we have re-posted some comments on this same topic from the past. Obviously there is a range of
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Published on January 24, 2017
Comments 21
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
January 22, 2017 -- The AARP is a solid defender of Medicare and Social Security, as you might imagine. In their most recent Special Report the organization highlights some of the issues and dangers that Medicare faces as the Trump administration and Republican controlled Congress take over. We recommend reading the entire AARP Special Medicare Report - it raises important issues that every retiree, and every American, needs to be informed on. We certainly know the issue resonates with Topretirements members, who from our surveys say they like Medicare.
Conflict between the new President and conservative Republicans - and surprising potential allies
Trump promised on the campaign trail in New Hampshire that he would protect Medicare: "Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security. They want to do it on Medicare. They want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. It’s not fair to the people who have been paying in for years.”
With the inauguration behind us the battle lines are a bit murkier. Speaker of the House Ryan has proposed that Medicare as we know it would be replaced by fixed payments with which beneficiaries would be able to buy
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Published on January 21, 2017
Comments 79
Category: Retirement Planning
January 15, 2017 -- Not everybody wants to retire, even if that is the popular expectation. Many more people, even though they are old enough, aren't ready to retire yet. This article will help you determine if retirement is right for you, and if this is a good time to do it.
Retirement is a big step and one that is hard to reverse.
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Published on January 14, 2017
Comments 16
Category: Retirement Real Estate
January 13, 2017 -- The average size of newly built homes decreased in 2016 - a sign that builders are preparing for the coming wave of first-time buyers as Millennials begin to dip their toes into the market. At least that is the conclusion reached by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
In 2015, the typical new home had 2,689 square feet. In 2016, it dropped to 2,634, according to figures supplied by the U.S. Census Bureau. That's the first drop in size since 2009, said Rose Quint, NAHB assistant vice president for survey research.
"The data on new home characteristics show a pattern," she said. "2016 marked the end of an era that began in 2009 when homes got bigger and bigger with more amenities. I expect the size of homes to continue to decline as
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Published on January 12, 2017
Comments 42
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
January 11, 2017 — Over the years our Members have told us how important it is for them to find great places to retire that are also affordable. So at this point we have quite a collection of articles with specifics on at least 50 such towns. This article has…
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Published on January 10, 2017
Comments 23
Category: Retirement Planning
Editor's note: Over a period of years we watched our friends Jeff and Paulette get ready for retirement. They thought about it a lot, made field trips, and discussed it thoroughly. Not without a little trepidation, their careful plans to retire to Greenville, SC came to pass this last summer. We are very pleased that Jeff was willing to contribute his account of how a Minnesota boy came to be retired in the heart of the South.
By Jeff Alden:
January 6, 2017 -- I first started coming to the Upstate of South Carolina in the seventies to visit my future wife's family on holidays. She was a young professor at the University of Minnesota, where I was in graduate school. I grew up in St. Paul and never questioned that I'd spend the rest of my days up North, in the country I knew so well. But every Christmas or Thanksgiving, we'd travel down to Greenville to spend time with her folks
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Published on January 5, 2017
Comments 14
