Retirement Ranger: “Hi Yo Silver-Hairs Away!”

There’s a new retirement calculator in town, and this one is proud to be wearing a brown hat. The Retirement Ranger’s motto says it all: “Hi Yo, silver-hairs, away!” (Thanks to OldNassau for that great motto).

Retirement Ranger is a Free new interactive calculator that delivers an instant, personalized list of best places to retire. Answer 11 questions and you will be emailed an instant, free report. Use your Topretirements user name and password to sign up, or create a new one if you aren’t already registered. You can retake the quiz as often as you would like - it’s free and there is no obligation.

We developed this new quiz as a quick and fun way to tap the huge amounts of data that you and our editors have accumulated in our over 400 city and town reviews.  For example, each Topretirements town has data for Jan. temperature, cost of living, housing prices, population, cultural index, type of environment (college town, mountains, lake, coastal, desert, small town, etc.), and region.  By selecting the criteria that are most important to you, the quiz uses the database to come up with your personalized list of towns and 55+ communities in or near those towns.  There is even an option to send an email to friends to tell them about Retirement Ranger.

A word of caution.  Please resist the temptation to get overly specific the first time you take it.  With only 400+ best places to retire, the more specific you get the higher the chances that will will get no or very few choices. So just pick 1 or 2 very important criteria the first time (select “No Preference” for the rest). Then, if you see too many choices, retake the quiz with fewer “No Preferences”.

To take the quiz you will need a user name and password. If you haven’t already created a user name at Topretirements, just make one up. If you don’t remember your old user name and password, go to our Help page to have them sent to you.  If you wish to create a new user name and password, you must have a different email address that what you originally signed up with.

For more information and tips about the quiz, check out “About this Quiz“.

The Best of the “Best Places to Retire” Lists

CBS Moneywatch.com has just published a thoughtful article on Best Places to Retire Lists. Thoughtful in the sense that it recognizes that there is no one best place to retire, people need different kinds of lists to match their differing objectives and preferences.

Moneywatch limited its review of the lists only to those updated since 2008. That led to its 5 top rated lists - U.S. News, Money, Smart Money, TopRetirements.com, and RetirementLiving.com.  Could we say that Topretirements was pleased to have come out as the most highly rated of the bunch - YES!!!

The Moneywatch.com writer, Richard Eisenberg, liked Topretirements because of the “Zagat-like” reviews and a “wide variety of reasonable criteria” for selecting the best places to retire on the basis of “livability”.  Topretirements was rated best for finding towns that other retirees like.

The website article goes on to review the 5 best rated lists of  “Best Places to Retire”. Topretirements got 4 stars, the lists from U.S. News and Money got 3 stars, Smart Money and Retirement Living.com got 1 star each. Best Places to Retire Lists like the popular ones developed by U.S. News were cited as useful, but often focus on very narrow criteria such as “smartest people”, best for golfers, most affordable, most parks, most Republican, etc.

Eisenberg points out, correctly in our view, that “it is possible to use the lists that are out there to narrow your choices and to discover some plausible options you might not have otherwise considered.”  Check out the website article, it’s useful.

Helpful Links
Moneywatch.com “Best Places to Retire”
Topretirements “25 Best Places to Retire”

Asheville and TR Featured in CBS News “Best Places to Retire”

Sunday, May 17. Just about everybody loves Asheville - it’s the #1 Best Place to Retire at Topretirements. It also occupies that position on many other “Best Places” lists. But after watching today’s TV segment on CBS News, even more people might be heading down to western North Carolina.

“Not Your Grandfather’s Retirement” was hosted by CBS’s Martha Teichner and seen by millions. In it she profiled several retirees who were busy enjoying fulfilling retirement lifestyles in Asheville. Some of the folks she interviewed enjoyed lived downtown, where they didn’t need a car. Several volunteered as docents at the Art Museum or the nearby Biltmore Estate. Martha went on to interview the director of Asheville’s Center for Creative Retirement, Ron Manheimer. Ron was quoted as saying “People are saying, Well maybe Florida isn’t the place to go.”  Ron has a point. At Asheville’s Center active adults can choose from an astonishing array of (low-cost) classes, most taught by fellow retirees.

Topretirements - on TV! The show also toured some high end communities and the first golf course being designed by Tiger Woods.  At about 2:20 into the program Topretirements had an ever so brief but glorious moment on national TV. When discussing “best places to retire” lists, a picture of the TR page on Asheville came on the TV as the first such list! To check out the 6 minute segment click on “Videos” above the photo - the program provides some really good insight into Asheville. Here is where you can find the Topretirements review  on what it’s like to retire in Asheville.

Visit to South Florida’s Real Estate Mess Finds Tranquil Exterior

Dateline: Fort Myers and Miami, Florida. Your Topretirements editor is spending a few days in South Florida. Realizing that the region is one of the 3 hardest hit real estate markets in the country (along with Phoenix and Las Vegas), we wondered: what would this meltdown look like in person? Since retirement in the warm climes of South Florida is the dream of many a baby boomer, here is our report on what we can see by looking out the window, jogging through the streets, talking with folks, and reading the newspapers.

The main answer is - South Florida looks pretty normal. Eerie, definitely, but in most ways the region looks like it always does. Traffic is as heavy and bottlenecked as ever. We were behind a gleaming Maserati in Fort Myers today; giant Cadillac Escalades hurtled by in Miami.There are billboards announcing new active adult and 55+ communities as always; but the difference is that low prices, sales, and special deals are today’s focus. Construction sites are still much more plentiful than you would see in the north, but now there is a difference. Some of the sites have no heavy equipment present, a sure sign that the project is on hold - either due to bankruptcy or a pause in construction. State officials report that 2008’s tourism numbers, long Florida’s economic raison d’etre, showed the first visitor decline in a long, long time. There are plenty of “For Sale” signs up, many of them on vacant lots, but that has always been the case in South Florida.

The “Fort Myers News-Press” published an interesting quote on March 1 from Dominic Pallini, a Realtor with Re/Max, who remains positive despite bad economic times. “Things will get better. Once we get through the inventory prices will start going up. Right now they’re selling houses for less than builders can build them. That can’t last.” (Terry Allen Williams/news-press.com)

The Press also reported last week that the median sales price of a Fort-Myers home has dropped below $100,000 for the first time since February 1999. In January the median price of an existing single-family home in Lee County fell to $94,900. That’s a 59 percent drop vs. year ago (statistics from the Florida Association of Realtors). Driven by foreclosures, sales are booming in Lee County: there were 758 sales in January vs. 338 the year before. Most of those sales are in Lehigh Acres (made famous by President Obama’s visit in February) and Cape Coral.

The newspapers are full of ads for sales of homes. It appears that plenty of multi-million dollar homes are on the market, and some are selling. The most obvious difference in this market is that along with many conventional ads, some “Miami Herald” real estate ads now scream “Priced to Sell”, “Bank Says Sell”, “No Money Down”, “Absolute Auction”, “Developer Close Out Prices”. Trump Luxury Miami Style, according to one ad, can now be obtained by “Rent With Option to Buy”. We thought one ad pretty well summed up what has happened in the area: “You’ll be amazed at the new listings to choose from in neighborhoods that you never dreamed would fit your budget.”

Meanwhile many active adult and 55+ communities in Fort Myers and South Florida are undergoing stress. The less stable developments are seeing foreclosures and delinquencies on Homeowner Association fees. Country clubs that cost $100,000 or more to join 3 years ago are now in trouble, trying to figure out how to avoid bankruptcy and keep their dues paying members.

Sadly, many people in South Florida are in a great deal of pain these days as their homes, cars, and dreams are taken away from them. But for visitors to the state and the majority of people who live in South Florida, life goes on as usual, albeit with plenty of worry in the air.

15 Bike-Friendly Retirement Towns

Thanks in part to last year’s energy crisis, biking is hot again. At least $4/gallon gas had one side benefit, it made us aware of the joys and simplicity of our bicycles for transportation and recreation. Knowing that many retirees are looking for bike-friendly retirement towns, we recently authored an article that highlights 15 top bike-friendly cities. You can see the in-depth article in our Tips & Picks section - 15 Great Biking Towns for Retirement. The article discusses bike-friendly towns in 3 categories - those set up for bikes as the best form of transportation, those who have wonderful bike trails, and finally - towns that either have or are near the best mountain biking.

A lot of cities and towns are beginning to realize that making towns easy places to bike is good for many reasons - it adds to the quality of life, lowers pollution and traffic, and improves recreation. Some of the steps they are taking are adding bike lanes, closing traffic at some times or days to other vehicles, mandating bike racks in new facilities, incenting employers to add showers and lockers, and adding bike trails in parks and greenways.

Each town in the article has a link to a detailed profile.

Further Reference:
Miami Herald article - Miami Gets Bike Friendly
Best Retirement Towns for Gardens
Best Towns for Golf
Best Towns for Bookstores

Step Away from the Coasts - For a Low Cost Retirement

Most of the experts think that our economic mess could continue for the next few years. If you have just retired and are trying to figure out how to adjust to life with a smaller portfolio, this article might help with some perspective. That is, if you get over what was our first reaction to the crisis, wanting to just stay home and mope!

At Topretirements we spend a lot of time looking at prices and conditions in various retirement towns around the country and outside the U.S. When we do this research we are always struck by the way real estate markets differ from one area to the next. We see 2, somewhat related phenomenon going on as 2008 comes to a close:

1) Prices in some markets are being annihilated, while stability reigns in others – in spite of all the bad news broadcast every day.
2), A similar house can sell in some markets for a fraction of what it would cost in others. Which leads us to the question – is it really worth paying 2 or even 3 times more just to live in a certain area?

Speaking of price declines, the Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Miami metros are prime examples of our disaster markets. Prices in those areas in 2008’s 3rd quarter are off respectively: -28%, -35%, and -17% vs. the year ago quarter. If you compare 2008 prices to 2006, the declines are usually even higher. But compare those markets with Charlotte (-4% but ahead of 2006), Oklahoma City (+1.6% and ahead of 2006), and Austin (TX) (+1.6% and well ahead of 2006). All prices in this article are courtesy of the National Association of Realtors’ median prices of single family homes by Metro for the 3rd quarter of 2008.

When it comes to comparing how different prices for similar homes can be from market to market, we have prepared a short comparison for your review. You will see that the headline of this article is a bit of hyperbole, because in fact some bargain towns do happen to be near a coast, and a few expensive places (e.g.; Boulder) are nowhere near a coast. But in general the further inland you get in the U.S., the better the real estate bargain. Our match-up of comparison markets below is somewhat arbitrary, but we hope interesting. We are struck by the difference in the Boulder vs. Colorado Springs vs. Albuquerque comparisons – all beautiful towns in the mountains with lively infrastructure. Similarly the comparison of Miami to other Florida areas is convincing. Most people would probably not compare Honolulu to Charlotte on many aspects, but the price comparison is interesting.

Price Comparison by Markets (Prices are in $000’s)
Boston $373 vs. Austin TX $191 or Knoxville TN $152
Boulder $361 vs. Colorado Springs $208 or Albuquerque $193
Miami $287 vs. Daytona Beach $162 or Tallahassee $159
Honolulu $615 vs. Charlotte $211
Los Angeles $391 vs. Cape Coral Ft. Myers $163 or Saginaw $66
NY/White Plains $525 vs. Mobile $139
Portland/Vancouver $278 vs. Boise ID $187 or Columbus OH $144
San Jose $650 vs. Pensacola $152 or Ft. Wayne IN $96
Seattle $350 vs. Oklahoma City $132, Greenville SC $157, or Spartanburg SC $128
U.S. Average home price in 3rd Quarter 2008 was $200,500. The average price decline was 9% vs. year ago.

Conclusion
The happiest situation for a new retiree who wants to make a move is to sell in a high cost market (New York or Boston) and buy in a low cost one. For example you could move from Boston to a similar house in Charlotte and theoretically pocket $162,000 for your retirement funds. Moving from Beantown to Mobile or Pensacola would not only provide you with a lot warmer winter, but would give you $234,000 or $221,000 additional (and you could afford to watch the Sox on satellite TV). Not to mention other cost of living improvements such as lower heating costs, fewer taxes, and possible better recreational opportunities. While you might have to trade moving away from family members and living in an unfamiliar area for this extra cash, it could make the difference between a comfortable retirement and a life of scrimping.

25 Best Retirement Towns at Topretirements

Top 10 Tax-Friendly Towns

Every so often US News & World Reports goes through its database and comes up with another “Top 10″ List. This time their efforts have produced one dear to all tax-fearing hearts, the 10 most tax-friendly towns in America. After all, you can’t do anything about federal taxes, but you can vote with your feet and move to a low tax town or city.

The US News list is an interesting one, will almost all of the towns in the west. Most made the list because there is no state income tax or some other tax absence.

* Billings Montana
* Cheyenne, WY
* Doral, FL
* Henderson, NV
* Juneau, AK
* Manchester, NH
* Nashville, TN
* Sioux Falls, SD
* Spokane, WA
* Stafford, Texas

Tennessee and New Hampshire only tax dividends on interest and dividend incomes, which is partially why Nashville and Manchester made the list. Stafford, Texas has the unusual distinction of having abolished its property tax, in addition to not having an income tax. Nashville is an example of a city with a good property tax relief program for seniors (it freezes them at a base level), along with the entire state of Florida.

Any town in a state that doesn’t have an income tax or a sales tax is going to be tax-friendly. There are 7 states that don’t charge an income tax, and 5 with no sales tax. Only 1 state has neither tax, and that one is Alaska (a state that actually pays residents to live there, thanks to its enormous natural resources). Cities sometimes impose one of these taxes even if the state does not have it. Property tax is the other tax that really whacks retirees, since this one is not related to income in any direct way. Some states offer significant freeze programs and other types of tax relief for seniors - they can be extremely valuable.

Of course being tax-friendly is not the entire picture. If you have to move far away from friends and family just to save some money, it might not be worth it. For many folks, watching their grandchildren grow up is worth the extra expense. For another, other expenses can more than make up for taxes. Juneau Alaska is very expensive (as is everyplace in Alaska), although the cost of living comes out to about average when you factor in paying no taxes and actually getting a tax payment.

Topretirements Announces 25 Best Places to Retire List for 2008

When baby boomers prepare for the next phase of their lives - retirement - many of them start by looking for the best places to retire at Topretirements.com. Every year we keep track of the most popular retirement towns - our 2008 list has just been compiled.

Asheville, North Carolina remains the run away favorite dream retirement town. Asheville has 50% more web visits than the next most visited town on this site (Sarasota, Florida).

There were some new additions in 2008 within the top 10 places to retire on this list. Those include San Diego, California at #8; Austin, Texas at #9; and Phoenix, Arizona at #10.

Sunbelt states dominated with the most towns in the top 25 list. Connecticut (Old Saybrook), Canada (Halifax), and Ohio (oxford) were the only towns to make the list from north of the Mason-Dixon line. Arizona dominated with 6 “best” towns, followed by Florida (4), North Carolina (3), California (2), Texas (2), and Tennessee(2). Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut, Ohio, and Canada each had 1 town on the list.

Here is the list of Best 25 Places to Retire at Topretirements.com:

1. Asheville, NC
2. Sarasota, FL
3. Prescott, AZ
4. Paris, TN
5. Winston-Salem, NC
6. Athens, GA
7. Green Valley, AZ
8. San Diego, CA
9. Austin, TX
10. Phoenix, AZ
11. Halifax, Nova Scotia (CAN)
12. Charlottesville, VA
13. Fort Myers, FL
14. Venice, FL
15. Oxford, OH
16. Sedona, AZ
17. Gainesville, FL
18. Flagstaff, AZ
19. San Luis Obispo, CA
20. Old Saybrook, CT
21. San Antonio, TX
22. Mount Airy, NC
23. Beaufort, SC
24. Tucson, AZ
25. Crossville, TN

Methodology: This 2009 best places to retire list is comprised of the 25 towns with the most online visits at Topretirements.com from March through October 2008. It is a reflection of what baby boomers think are the best retirement towns, as well the referrals generated by the people viewing those pages.

Want a Free Report of Your Best Retirement Towns ? Take our Free Retirement Ranger. It’s a retirement calculator that’s fun, free, and takes about 3 minutes to complete. Answer 11 questions and presto - you’ll get a customized report of your best towns instantly by email. Take the Quiz now!

All 100 Best Retirement Towns
Click here to order our detailed eBook with the “Top 100 Retirement Towns” at Topretirements

See PR Web Press Release on this story at 25 best places to retire

Biloxi Emerges from Katrina with Help from Habitat

If you are the kind of person who likes gambling, Biloxi Mississippi might be the town for you - for many reasons. First, it is a gambling paradise. Starting with the Hard Rock Hotel Casino and the Beau Rivage, there are at least 7 major casinos in Biloxi. It is the gambling capital of the southeast.

On other levels Biloxi (pronounced Ba lux’ ee) is also for gamblers. Complacency after Hurricane Camille convinced many people to build in low areas. When hurricanes came, many ignored evacuation orders. Unfortunately devastation in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was truly horrible, with almost all homes and businesses damaged or destroyed. The flood surge went miles inland in this pancake-flat area.

If you really want to gamble Biloxi could be a real estate opportunity. The infrastructure is coming back in this town of 50,000. Housing is relatively inexpensive (average home price in 2007 was $150,000, higher than the Mississippi average) and so are taxes and living expenses. There are huge waterfront properties available - for those willing to build in this hurricane-prone area. There are terrific amenities beyond the casinos, such as Beavoir, the post-war estate of Jefferson Davis, or the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum that is designed by expressionist postmodern architect Frank Gehry. There are miles and miles of beaches, and the local waters team with seafood.

Your Topretirements editor has been down here for a week with Habitat for Humanity. Habitat is helping the thousands of residents who lost their homes as a result of Katrina. Volunteers from all over America have been coming here year round since 2005 to help. Our team of 10 from Connecticut has been working on framing a 1300 square foot, 4 bedroom, 2 bath home. We started with a concrete slab - this picture shows what we have accomplished after 3 days of hot, sweaty, and joyous work.

I recommend the experience - the need is still great, the companionship outstanding, and the sense of accomplishment superb. Habitat is a first class organization with wonderful staff and purpose. Mississippi Gulf Coast Habitat for Humanity or Habitat

Retiring in an RV - Always an Interesting Option

We are always on the lookout for interesting retirements. So when a mutual friend told us about Betty Fitterman (http:adventuresinthebettybus.blogspot.com), we got pretty excited. Betty and her husband shucked off their expensive home and 3 of their 4 cars, and bought a 4 year old luxury RV. It’s the kind you see rolling down the Interstates wishing you were on board, making a sandwich or taking a nap. Really nice.

Best of all Betty agreed to write an exclusive series for Topretirements about what is like to live 365 days a year in your luxury RV, on the road and without a mortgage or grass to cut. As a former top ad agency creative, it’s no wonder Betty is such an interesting writer. Check out all 5 articles in the series in our Tips and Picks section, starting with “Living the Mobile Lifestyle in Retirement.