Topretirements Quoted in Herald Tribune on Arizona Retirement

Our friend and colleague Michael Pollick has been writing a fascinating series about baby boomer retirements in the Sarasota Herald Tribune. And we are very pleased to have one of our quotes featured in the headline of this week’s article: “Arizona, a Fresher Florida?“.

Michael has spent a lot of time researching where boomers are retiring and which states are doing the most to attract them. He has found that his own state, Florida, is starting to lose retirement share to upstart states like Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, etc.; which have active marketing campaigns to attract retirees (such as certified retirement community programs).

The quote from Topretirements came in the section where Michael discussed the different attractions of Florida and Arizona and why people tend to choose one state over the other: “Arizona seems fresher,” says Tom Brady [Editor’s note: people are always confusing me (John) with the dashing NFL QB for the Patriots and escort of Gisele, the beautiful German model], who fields hundreds of e-mails each month from potential retirees as founder of TopRetirements.com. “If you look at Florida, to some extent it has the same problem the Northeast has — an aging infrastructure that is hard to support.”
That makes Arizona attractive to “people who are looking for something newer,” Brady says.”

We should add that we continue to believe that 2 of the other major reasons why folks choose Florida vs. Arizona are 1) climate preferences (water vs desert or mountain), and 2) proximity. Regarding the latter, people who live in the west and near the Mississippi naturally gravitate towards Arizona vs. folks in the northeast tend to go for Florida retirements.

To read the entire article go to the Sarasota Herald Tribune. If you search for Michael Pollick on that site you will find his other baby boomer retirement stories. Of course if you have comments please post below.