The Best of 2015 at Topretirements: From Best Places to Funky Towns

December 30, 2015 — As 2015 begins to float away in the eddy of the busy holidays, it is interesting to see which articles grabbed the attention of the Topretirements.com community during the year. There are always at least a few surprise articles that generate more readership and Comments than we expected. Here is our annual review of the best of Topretirements for 2015.

We Do Appreciate
Before we list the best articles, we need to mention some other bests here. For one, we appreciate the loyal advertisers who make this site possible. Many have been with us almost since our beginnings in 2007 – thank you for your support. Our members are tops too; we love your insightful and thought-provoking comments and suggestions (please keep both coming!) It is fun to produce this site for such an engaged group of people.

Most Read Articles of 2015
The first few articles are no strangers to this list – our
annual 100 Best lists for Places to Retire” and Actives Communities always lead the parade. Here are those and the other best read features for 2015:

1. Florida Towns Top Our 2015 Best Places to Retire list This annual feature once again had Asheville, NC in the #1 spot. It not only generated high readership, but it also generated 164 (mostly pretty interesting) comments. Of the 100 cities and towns on this year’s list, 77 were in the Sunbelt.

2. 36 New Communities Make Our 2015 List of Most Popular Active Adult Communities. This annually updated list gives a good idea of what active communities spark the most interest among our members. Big surprise: Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill, NC, beat out perennial favorite The Villages.

3. Dueling Carolinas: NC vs. SC. We updated this older article in April 2015, and many members seemed to find our comparisons interesting.

4. How to find a Great Snowbird Rental for the Winter. The brutal winters of the past few years have made a lot of northerners itching to go south for a snowbird rental. This article has some good ideas on how to do it.

5. 10 Affordable Places to Retire Where You Actually Might Might Want to Live. In response to the many folks who have asked for affordable places to retire, here is our 7th article on the topic (with 11 more places to consider!) See also: An Affordable Places to Retire Reading List

Most Commented Upon
We like to think we’ve done our job when an article sparks a lot of comments. Your comments add so much more dimension and detail to what we start out with! So here are the articles that generated the most comments in 2015 (most of those on the “Most Read” list above also had many Comments too).

1. 99 Comments. Is a Money Pit Going to Ruin Your Retirement?. Our advice: don’t let that big house in the suburbs wreck the fun.

2. 90 Comments. Is an Active Community Right for You? Here we went through the advantages and disadvantages to help you sort out this question yourself.

3. With 86 Comments, this article on “Where Singles Plan to Retire” provided some nice retirement ideas for the singles who frequent Topretirements.

4. 80 Comments. Finding That Goldilocks Place to Retire – Part 3

5. 61 Comments. In a rare burst of activity Congress actually passed some bills. This one, meant to improve the health of Social Security, upended a popular strategy employed by many boomers. Current House Bill Upends Popular File and Suspend Strategy.

6. The 58 Comments made here underscore how important Medicare is to our Members. Don’t Make These 5 Medicare Mistakes.

7. Our Members Speak: A Blue Ridge Mountains Retirement. This article highlights Comments members have made over the years about different places to retire in the blue Ridge Mountains. It came out late in the year, and Comments are still being added.

Best Member Generated Articles
Every year we are delighted by at least a couple of reader generated articles or ideas for articles. This year there were 2 that were just great:

1. Why We Retired to Tucson. Harv originally posted this as a Comment to our “Dueling Retirements: AZ vs. FL” Blog article. Due to its wonderful detail, however, we decided to break it out as its own article. We guess that was a good idea, as 51 comments were made about it.

2. Cecil cautioned us that our site was telling people where to retire without mentioning any considerations about how climate change or the weather might impact those decisions. So that ended up producing: Climate Change and Where You Retire – What You Should Know, with its 38 comments.

Editor’s Picks
Maybe they didn’t end up with the readership we thought they deserved, but we still think these are fun, interesting articles to help liven things up:

10 Funky Florida Towns for Retirement

Are You Ready to Join the Tiny House Movement

For further reading:
Best Articles of 2015

Comments. Do you a personal favorite article that you enjoyed or found particularly useful? If so, please let us all know in the Comments section below. And please, if you have an idea for an topic we should cover in 2016 – please let use this section to let us know.