Surprising New Survey Finds Many Retirees Plan on Moving in Retirement

June 29, 2010. How closely do you match the profile of your fellow visitors at Topretirements? We just finished a new research study which looked at the questions asked by the almost 5000 people who have taken our Retirement Ranger Quiz. The results from that study have helped us learn more about baby boomer retirement hopes, dreams, and preferences. One of the most interesting things we’ve learned is that the people who have taken our quiz are much more ready to relocate than the average population – the vast majority of Ranger takers plan on moving in retirement. Another finding is that they are very open about the kind of environment they want to live in. We found out that most of our visitors are either already retired – or will do so soon. Taxes, cost of living, and region are all important considerations for (more…)

When Bad Things Happen to Good Communities – Fairfield Harbor

June 25, 2010 – There are oh so many ways for even the best run active communities to run into trouble. Some of the scenarios are so far out that if you were writing fiction, no one would believe it. But the real truth is that you just can’t make stuff like this up. This article will outline the travails of Fairfield Harbour, an outstanding active community in New Bern, North Carolina with a lot on its plate at the moment.
Full disclosure: Last week Topretirements featured Fairfield Harbour in the weekend edition of our newsletter as an example of a desirable active community in eastern North Carolina. Immediately after sending out the newsletter we were alerted by several readers, who either owned property there or who had recently visited the community, that all was not well in Fairfield Harbor. They brought to our attention that one of the two golf courses had closed, and the other looked (more…)

What is Your Number?

We get a kick out of the ING TV commercial, the one where one baby boomer asks another, “What’s your number”? The response, “a Gazillion”, always gets a laugh. But more importantly, the company makes a solid point – most people don’t have any idea how much they are going to need in retirement. It is a very important issue, because starting the day you retire, your life changes. You no longer have a salary that will pay the bills. Now you are on your own – you have to know if what you have saved and will receive from other sources will be enough to live on. If the “number” you have accumulated is too small, you might outlive your money. This article will try to help you get a better idea of how to calculate your number.

What is the Magic “Number (more…)

New Website Aims to Help Baby Boomers: Businesses & Jobs

Did you know that over half of all new U.S. businesses are started by baby boomers? Are you one of them – a baby boomer struggling to start a new business as a second or third career? Fortunately there is a new website that is out there trying to help – myboomer2boomer.com. This site puts together information and resources designed to help Baby Boomers support other Boomers. One way they do that is by listing Boomer Entrepreneurs and other businesses that provide Boomer Friendly products and/or services.

Boomer Entrepreneurs have an additional burden. If their business fails they have less time to recover financially. They also have far fewer opportunities for employment – and that is the second goal of myboomer2boomer.com. Too many Boomers find employment precarious today. Those who are unemployed often find it very difficult to get a job to replace what they have lost. This new site seeks to bring Boomers information about employers who actively recruit and seek to hire older workers for their skills, their experience, and their work ethic.

myboomer2boomer.com seeks to celebrate and advertise Boomer Friendly employers, Boomer Entrepreneurs, and other Boomer Friendly Businesses to the nearly 78 million U.S. Baby Boomers (and the 300 million Boomers worldwide). The site’s tag line is “Boomer hires are Boomer buyers”. The site’s creator, Sheila Dentice, believes Boomers are well served when they support those who support Boomers. As she says, “After all, the job we save or create may someday be our own. The largest generation can help drive our economy back to health, but only if they are employed or successful in their business ventures.”

Check it out
Visit www.myboomer2boomer.com to find or to list Boomer Friendly Businesses and to find those who support boomers. The site is new and is building so visit often, please be patient, send them your ideas, and support their efforts by sharing the site with others.

11 Affordable Places to Retire on the Waterfront

June 15, 2010 — What’s not to like about retiring to a place on or near the water – except maybe the price that usually comes with that lifestyle. Until the polar icecaps melt some more, no one is making any more ocean front property, which means that as a rule only wealthy people can afford to pay for the privilege of watching the sun come up and down over the water from their front porches. Fortunately for the careful shopper though, there are different kinds of waterfront, so there (more…)

Where to Go for the Best Retirement Lifestyles

June 8 — A few baby boomers know exactly what they want to do when they retire. These folks are lucky in many ways, because they have probably been busy planning where and when they are going to achieve all of their plans. But far more boomers probably only have a loose idea, at best, for how they are going to spend their lives, once they don’t have a regular job that gets them out of bed and to a workplace 5 days a week. In this article we will explore some of the best and more common retirement lifestyles. Of course many people never intend to retire, which includes those who continue to do their old jobs as well as many who change careers.

Possible Retirement Lifestyles
To our way of thinking just about every kind of non-working retirement fits under (more…)

Falling Dominoes: More Condo Owners Threatened by Neighbors’ Defaults

June 1 – Conducting your due diligence before you bought into a development used to be a lot simpler. Not that it was always easy, but at least the basics were fairly straightforward:
- Research the reputation and track record of the developer
- Check to see if reserve (sinking) funds are adequate
- Examine Home Owners (Community) Association rules and finances to see if (more…)