Category: Bucket Lists
February 9, 2015 --Like many retirees you have probably been thinking about bucket list trips as the icing on a hard fought working career. If so the idea of visiting Australia and New Zealand might be near the top. The advantages of such a trip are many. Here we will review some of the reasons for adding this to your list, along with many tips if you do go. This article is mostly about Australia, since that is where your editor recently passed 3 agreeable weeks.
Advantages
Speaking the same language. To make a parallel to what George Bernard Shaw said about Britain and the U.S., we are 2 countries separated by a common language. Travel is definitely easier when you can ask almost anyone for directions.
Rate of exchange. At one point in last few years it took over 1.10 U.S. dollar to purchase 1 Australian dollar. However in early 2015 the latter can be purchased for less than .80 U.S.
Familiar. Americans and Australians are very friendly
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Published on February 9, 2015
Comments 6
Category: Active adult communities
February 3, 2015 — If you have spent much time by now on Topretirements.com we would be surprised if you haven’t seen a lot of Member comments about Home Owners Associations (HOAs). To many, it would seem these mysterious entities are the devil incarnate. Usually without any actual experience with the demon, these folks want to avoid what they think are treacherous fees, political cabals, and mean-spirited rules at all costs. Only occasionally do we see someone sticking up in their defense. This article will try to dispel some of the misinformation about HOAs, and then let you draw your own conclusions - are they are something to be avoided or appreciated? We’ve also included links to our
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Published on February 3, 2015
Comments 39
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Editor's note: This is an unusual post from one of our Members, Harv. He originally posted it as a Comment to our "Dueling Retirements: AZ vs. FL" Blog article. But due to its length we thought it might be good to break it out as its own article. Please forgive the spelling and punctuation as this was originally meant to be a Comment, not an article, so there are some errors. It is also quite conversational. Hope you enjoy it. PS - Here in 2016 we have had quite a few comments about retiring to Arizona. So we added those Comments to the bottom of this article - not to mention the many Comments made to the original 2015 article!
January 28, 2015 -- We retired to Tucson for very specific reasons. Many people here say “I’ll never again live where I need to own a snow shovel!” I totally agree with that sentiment, and I add that “I’ll never again live where I need to own a lawn mower!” No snow shovel … no lawn mower … life in Tucson is good!
In our view, 32 degrees is a “deal-breaker” when it comes to deciding where to retire. Bad things start to happen at 32 degrees! Water freezes! So the average number of days that temps get below 32 is very important to us. It affects safety in driving and walking. Increasingly as we age, our reactions slow, so driving or walking on snow or ice is dangerous! I find I’m less able to catch myself when I slip or stumble, and it’s not going to get any better with advancing age!
Tucson averages few days below 32 degrees … and when it happens, it usually gets
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Published on January 28, 2015
Comments 77
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
January 19, 2015 -- In your search for the perfect community, how many of these statements would you agree are your priorities? Would you like to:
- Walk or bike into town instead of going by car
- Live in a real neighborhood
- Have interesting entertainment or eating options nearby
If you checked at least 2 of these statements you might be a candidate for a New Urban Community. They are also sometimes called Traditional Neighborhood Developments (TND). There are a number of these entities across the country - some are totally new, and a few have been here for centuries. These communities feature walkable access to
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Published on January 19, 2015
Comments 22
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
Editor's note: In our recent article, "Is A Money Pit Going to Ruin Your Retirement", we reported on that most baby boomers want to continue to live where they do now. To that end, many are undertaking home improvement projects to make their homes more livable. This guest article gives you some valuable input on where your home improvement priorities should be. Hope you find it useful.
By Michael Chotiner
When I look at the statistics for injuries related to bathroom falls—which is frequently, since I'm often asked to write about design strategies and building products that can prevent them—I've noticed something surprising. No, I'm not shocked by the Center for Disease Control's report that more than 235,000 Americans aged 15 and older suffer some type of injury in the bathroom that resulted in a trip to a hospital emergency room, nor that four out of five of those ER visits result from "slip-and-fall accidents."
What surprises me is that the total number of falls in bathrooms seems to increase each year. Why? Is it better reporting? The growing ranks of aged Baby Boomers? Inadequate building standards? I don't know, but I do know that there are a lot of ways to avoid being counted in the unfortunate statistics through improving the bath fixtures, accessories and flooring in your home.
Breaking out the stats, we learn that:
- Two-thirds of emergency-room visits result from falls in or near
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Published on January 17, 2015
Comments 6
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
January 11, 2015 -- We baby boomers are conflicted about retirement in so many ways. For example we spend a lot of time planning to find a place where we can pursue our dreams, yet fail to consider how those dreams might change in 20 years. We worry about our ability to have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, but overlook how much we are spending on the home we live in now. We recently came across a pair of articles that explored the latter phenomenon in depth: one from the Demand Institute (Baby Boomers and Their Homes), and MarketWatch (In Retirement, A Big House Can Lead to the Poor House). See end for links to these articles.
A Big Nut to Cover
The MarketWatch article by Jonathan Clements lays out in dramatic fashion just how
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Published on January 11, 2015
Comments 99
Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
January 10, 2015 -- A lot of people have big plans for the exciting things they are going to do when they retire. Undoubtedly many of these will be memorable experiences and a source of pleasure. Now a new study puts a different perspective on that pursuit. The study looks at the kinds of experiences - ordinary vs. extraordinary - that create the most long term happiness. The biggest finding was this - as we age we tend to get just as much satisfaction from ordinary experiences as we do those extraordinary ones.
The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research, "Happiness from Ordinary and Extraordinary Experiences". Using analysis from Facebook posts, the authors of the study found some some surprising answers. It also mentioned earlier research that shows that experiences provide people with much more happiness than material possessions.
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Published on January 9, 2015
Comments 13
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Updated June 2019 -- (Originally published January , 2015) -- Finding that "Goldilocks" place to retire is a goal for many people. A town which has just the right weather year round, offers great value for your hard earned dollars, and has everything you need for great year round enjoyment. Although it is not always easy to find one place that is great 12 months a year, if you can find one it avoids the problems that come with a snowbird retirement - one where you live in 2 or more places. Those issues include having to pay for and maintain 2 households, move back and forth twice each year, and juggle 2 sets of friends, churches, and volunteer work, etc.
This is part 3 of our series with more great choices for year round living. Part 1 identified 5 great towns where we think the year round living is sweet. Part 2 gave our top picks for year round living in 5 more categories, such as
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Published on January 5, 2015
Comments 80
Category: General Retirement Issues
December 29, 2014 -- It's always fun to see which of our Blog articles grab the attention of our dear Members and Visitors. Sometimes it is the unexpected ones that generate the most comments and/or readership, while usually any article that includes "Best Place to Retire" in the title does pretty well. Here is our annual review of the best of what we've come up with for 2014.
But first the stats
Thanks to our members, Topretirements had its highest readership ever in 2014. Over the last 12 months we had over 1.5 million unique visitors and 7 million page views. We can't prove it, but we are pretty sure that no other website in the retirement sphere gets this kind of traffic or engagement. This site wouldn't exist without the valued contributions of so many people who share their experiences and expertise - thank you! We also greatly appreciate our loyal advertisers, many of which have been with us for 5 or more years, who make all of this possible.
Most Read Articles of 2014
The first few articles are no strangers to this list. We write annual editions of the "Worst (and Best) States to Retire in" and these are always list toppers. Likewise our annual list of the "Most Popular Active Communities" attracts a lot of attention. But many others on our Top 10 were one -offs - and we are so glad you liked them! Interestingly enough, more than half of the most read articles in 2014 were originally
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Published on December 29, 2014
Comments 11
Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
December 21, 2014 -- Welcome back to the 50's! Your editor had the good fortune to visit Cuba this November, only a few weeks before news of the normalization of relations was announced by the President. We found Cuba to be a fascinating country of many contradictions. Our visit was educational (we went with the Florida TREE Institute) and extremely interesting.
One of the definite highlights of the trip was the chance to be surrounded by, and even ride in, countless cars of our baby boomer youth. We'd like to share this nostalgia through some musings and photos. As an interactive exercise, we'd like to enlist your help in identifying some cars that defy our cataloging skills. At the end of this article we will share a few brief observations about Cuba, if you care to read on.
Those glorious American cars of the 50s
This might be a guy thing, but when your editor was growing up in the 1950s cars were a significant
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Published on December 25, 2014
Comments 9
