Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Updated January 20, 2021 - Originally published August, 2014
Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research published a study of U.S. Unhappy Cities. The study also listed the cities that have the happiest people. While it is relatively easy to guess the unhappiest places, the cities with the happiest folks tend to be surprising. The study was not specifically about retirement, but we certainly think it is relevant.
But first - happy places...
Clyde, a long time Member and frequent contributor, brought this article back to our attention in connection with a fascinating piece he read in The New Yorker: "Find the Place You Love... Then Move There". In it Arthur. C. Brooks talks about the notion that most people have a place they think of as home, no matter how many times they might move in their life. He says that although moving is a horrible and painful process, sometimes it is worth it if it brings you happiness. We couldn't agree more when it comes to retirement. If where you are living doesn't make you happy, find someplace that does and move there!
Happy PlacesThese are the top 6 metros with the happiest people according to the study. Kudos to the State of Louisiana, which has 2 out of the 6. Note that although 5 out of the 6 metros are in or close to the Sunbelt - what is going on in Rochester, Minn. to make folks so happy? (If the name appears in blue that link will take you to our city review).- Charlottesville, Virginia- Rochester, Minnesota
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Published on August 18, 2014
Comments 9
Category: Uncategorized
August 13, 2014. Some of our members might have noticed that we are experimenting with a new format for our Blog articles. The purpose is to make our pages more readable and user-friendly on ipads and smart phones (but not impact regular computers), which more of our members are using…
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Published on August 12, 2014
Comments 26
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 13, 2014 -- (Note: This is Part 3 in a series of under-appreciated places to retire. Find the links to Parts 1 and 2 at the end).
We get a little tired of seeing the same towns and cities get picked for "Best" this or that for retirement. Seems like everyone doing the selecting is drinking at the same water trough. So when our friend Bob Powell at MarketWatch asked for input on some under-appreciated places to retire, he got our attention (his article, "Five Lesser Known Places to Retire", was published last Sunday in USA Today).
Our goal in coming up with 5 less discovered towns
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Published on August 12, 2014
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Category: Work and Volunteering
August 12, 2014 -- OK, it's a little bit of an oxymoron to put jobs and retirement in the same sentence. But we are not talking about full-time employment, we mean part-time or flex-time jobs. We also don't mean for this article to be a one way stream of information - our hope is that our members will contribute their ideas on dream retirement jobs - both the positions themselves and the criteria that make for a great gig. We also recommend our Blog series on Adventurous Baby Boomer Retirements, where we've posted multiple profiles of fascinating, and off-beat retirements.
Criteria for dream jobs
Here are some criteria that we associate with dream jobs:
- Flexible schedule. You are retired, so who
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Published on August 11, 2014
Comments 16
Category: Retirement Planning
August 5, 2014 - Note, this is the 3rd article in our series on how to avoid wrecking your retirement. The first 2 articles can be found in "Further Reading" below.
Retirement is hard enough without making a self-inflicted, hard to recover from mistake. To help you avoid that trauma we have searched through comments to our previous retirement surveys and the general literature for the
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Published on August 4, 2014
Comments 69
Category: Travel
Take a Hike!
By Jan Cullinane.
Editor's Note: Frequent contributor Jan Cullinane submitted this piece on her recent road trip to Utah and many of its National Parks. We thought it makes a nice "how-to" companion to our recent article: "Best Road Trips for Baby Boomers".
August 2, 2014 -- I live in a state with swaying palm trees, the second longest coastline (after Alaska), no state income tax, and a place that made the expression “hanging chads” popular. Yup, you guessed it - Florida. My husband and I love the warmth, glittering sea, and verdant greenery of the Sunshine State, but the mighty West, with its desert beauty and incredible rock formations beckoned. So, off we went in late June/early July on a ten-day trip to tour the “Big 5” national parks of Utah: Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, and Bryce Canyon. In addition, we visited Dead
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Published on August 2, 2014
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Category: Retirement Planning
July 28, 2014 -- Rich got our attention when he contacted us to suggest a city review for Ocean Shores, Washington. For one, we had never heard of this town. But more intriguing to us, he happened to mention that he had a 7 page analysis of how it stacks up to the criteria he found on Topretirements.com. That sounded pretty thorough to us. One thing led to another, and subsequently we had the pleasure of interviewing Rich about that analysis.
A Search for the Perfect Retirement Town
Rich and his wife, Jan, had lived in Washington State for 26 years early in their careers (1969 - 1995). Then they moved to Texas, where Rich
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Published on July 29, 2014
Comments 27
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
July 28, 2014 -- Every year the 6 Trustees of the Medicare and Social Security trust funds issue a Report on the state of these 2 popular programs. This year the big news is favorable for the Medicare program - the year in which its Trust Funds are exhausted has been pushed back 4 years - to 2030. The good news is attributed to lower than expected inpatient hospital utilization, among other reasons, and represents a big change since last year's report.
Over in the world of Social Security the news is the same as last year - the combined Trust Fund for retirement and Disability depletion date
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Published on July 28, 2014
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
July 22, 2014. Note: This is Part 2 of a series. Part 1 on retiring at the lake was published in 2011. This installment lists more great lake towns for retirement. We hope you will add your ideas for the best lake retirement spots in the Comments section.
In our recent survey on "where to live" preferences, living on the beach was the third most popular choice. Although we wished we had also provided a "lake" option, we guess that being near the beach and living on a lake are close to being interchangeable, although not exactly the same. If we had listed the lake
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Published on July 22, 2014
Comments 5
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
Update Nov. 15, 2015: The Budget Bill signed into law in late 2015 dramatically changes the popular "File and Suspend" strategy discussed here. People who can take advantage of it by April 1, 2016 are grandfathered, but depending on your birth date, the strategy has gone away for other folks. See our article "How the New Social Security Claiming Rules Affect You" for more.
July 16, 2014 -- A recent story in MarketWatch by Robert Klein highlights a little known but interesting wrinkle to the "file and suspend" strategy for maximizing Social Security benefits. The wrinkle can result in a significant windfall of cash, which might be particularly useful if you contract a life-threatening illness before age 70.
For background, the file and suspend strategy is mainly taken to allow one spouse to collect the spousal benefit while the other spouse continues to accrue benefits past Full Retirement Age (age 66 to 67 for baby boomers). In this strategy one spouse
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Published on July 16, 2014
Comments 16
