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Try It NOWCategory: Health and Wellness Issues
May 17, 2016 — We have just updated Part I of our “So You Are Turning 65: Medicare and You 101” article. The revisions include up to date premium and deductible numbers for 2016, among other improvements. There had been a flurry of recent Comments made to this article…
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Category: Adventurous retirement
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
Lao Tzu, philosopher.
By Peter and Sally
Our friends Peter and Sally have a zest for life that is evidenced in the choices they have made over their adult life and into retirement. They also seem to move a lot. We appreciate that they were kind enough to share that history with Topretirements. They have ended up (so far!) in a very cool, extremely tiny incorporated city below Palm Beach. Our hope is that you will find their saga interesting as well as instructive.
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May 15, 2016 -- We have many friends who have spent their entire married life in one home. It didn’t turn out that way for us. It’s not like we planned it or anything, it was just that the grass always looked greener somewhere up or down or across the road. Circumstances also change. Here is our tale of where we lived from newly married to several iterations of retirement.
1978, Hartford Connecticut – A cool condo! One of the first in the city. Historic rehab, 3 levels, exposed brick. Walk to work with all the other hip, young professionals. Perfect.
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But … shlepping groceries
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
May 11, 2016 -- Is your real estate experience something you are pleased with, or a subject best left untouched? A new interactive tool published in the Washington Post will confirm that for you in just a few seconds. Enter your zip code or town, and voila!, it will show you how much the value of your home has changed since 2004.
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 9, 2016 -- The nation’s 77 million baby boomers face a life-changing decision - finding a place to live once they retire. Making a good choice involves many considerations, but the most critical is to select a place that helps them fit in and feel welcome quickly. After all, moving is never easy, and neither is making friends and social contacts from scratch. Fortunately this new list, “10 Friendliest Places to Retire”, can help.
The ten towns on this “Friendliest” list that made the final cut have one major thing in common: they are in fast growing areas that attract
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Category: Travel
Travels with Lucy, John, Yoda, and Tonka
May 2, 2016 -- The heart of this article was originally posted on JungleRedWriters.com by Lucy Burdette, who you might recognize as the better-half of Topretirements. We have appended an additional section at the end on the traveling issues that snowbirders have, with pets or not.
Lucy Burdette: John and I have always been a little smug about
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
April 29, 2016 -- One of the biggest considerations most Americans face is determining if, and when, it makes sense to buy a home. In retirement, however, the question becomes a different one: “Should I remain a homeowner?” For all Americans, one recent study by Trulia.com found it is more cost effective to buy than rent. But what about for retirees? Trulia found that it is 41.8% cheaper for retirees to buy than rent in all major US metros. The issue is not quite that simple though, as there are emotional and practical considerations as well as financial ones.
We were very pleased that Trulia reached out to Topretirements for this article, providing us with custom data for our Top 10 Most Popular Places to Retire. This data, presented
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Category: Home and Garden
April 19, 2017 -- Just about everybody has an iPhone, smart phone, or at least a vintage flip phone. If you own one of the former two devices, you have made a significant investment, one that would hurt if you lost it. Unfortunately you could experience that pain all too easily if you lose it (done that several times!), take it swimming (that too), or have it stolen. This article will focus on what to do if you lose your phone, and why you have pretty good odds of finding it again, if you take the right steps.
Although Apple claims in advertising that the iPhone 6 starts at $200, higher performance models can easily go to $400 (plus a $450 subsidy from your carrier). But by the time you attach it to a 2 year plan, your total cost will probably not be less than $500 and could go over $1000 (See ZDNet article on costs). Models from other manufacturers are also expensive.
Ouch
So when your editor lost his
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
April 11, 2016 -- We love hearing stories from real people about their adventures in finding the perfect place to retire. So we were very fortunate recently to get an in depth interview from 2 old friends, Sandy and Ann, who shared their retirement search adventures. We hope you will find it interesting and instructive. (Don't miss the Further Reading section at the end - over the years we have interviewed a whole lot of people about their retirement search experiences - and the links to those stories are all there!)
Prior to retirement the pair lived in a comfortable New York suburb, from which they commuted to successful careers in the Big Apple. Their enviable lifestyle included frequent ski trips to Vermont in winter and a busy social life at a country club the rest of the year. But when it came time for retirement, both were interested in a change of scenery. They agreed on two main motivations: to have easier access to outdoor recreation opportunities like hiking, biking, and skiing; and to escape New York's expensive cost of living and real estate taxes.
Looking down south
Like so many others, they were faced with a big
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
April 6, 2016 -- Are any of the Best States to Retire" lists you see so frequently worth the few minutes it takes you to read them? That is a pretty good question, since A: there are so many to read, and B: they seem to contradict themselves more than they agree. This article will illustrate the many ways that 2 recent lists differ from one another, along with the few ways they coincide. We will also see how these lists best and worst selections compare with the last 2 editions of Topretirements "Best (and Worst) States" lists. All of which has us shaking our heads at the general lack of agreement!
Every time we publish one of these types of lists we can count on a few readers taking a shot at why we picked this or that place, or why we didn't include yet another. That is understandable, as even when objective criteria are used to make the
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Category: Adventurous retirement
Editor’s Note: This announcement of her 7th Key West food critic mystery is from Lucy Burdette, aka Mrs. Topretirements.com April 5, 2016 — Killer Takeout by Lucy Burdette takes place during Fantasy Fest, a zany ten-day festival beginning with the unofficial zombie bike ride, and ending with an enormous,…
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