Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 14, 2011 -- If you are like most people, affordability is a big part of the equation in finding your best place to retire. We certainly get enough requests from our members asking for help finding them. But we also know there are other aspects to choosing your retirement location - you are too discriminating to settle for some place just because it's cheap. So with that in mind we created this list of places to retire that are not only affordable, but have enough going for them that you might actually enjoy living there. This is part I from towns starting A-L. Here is a link to Part 2, Affordable Towns M-Z. We also updated this series in 2012, see "More Great Affordable Places to Retire".
The selection factors we used to develop this list:
- Affordability. Median home price in the community should be at least 25% less than the U.S. median of $171,900 (2nd quarter 2011, National Association of Realtors), or $130,000.
- Lower taxes for retirees. We did not consider any of the states on our "Worst Tax States for Retirees" list.
- High culture. To avoid you getting stuck
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Published on September 13, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 6, 2011 – It’s pretty well known that some states are definitely harder on retirees than others when it comes to taxes. So we confess that when we set out to research this article on the worst retirement states for taxes, we had some pretty strong preconceptions. Most of the worst tax states would be in the Northeast, we assumed, with perhaps California thrown in for a little geographical balance. Boy were we wrong - all but 3 of the states on our list are west of the Mississippi.
First, a few caveats about our list of worst tax states for retirement. It is easy to generalize about taxes, but that would be a huge mistake. The more we analyzed the topic, the more complicated it got. To begin with, there are many different kinds of taxes: income, sales tax, property taxes (at the state and local level), inheritance, estate, and incidental taxes like those on cigarettes and gasoline. Depending on individual situations, one type of tax will have a larger
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Published on September 6, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
By John Durfee
I've still got a decade or two before I can retire but my father, also a veteran, is about ready to. Where my family lives is very important to me, and I don’t want to leave this decision to fate. With the help of my daughter, I did some research to find the best places to retire for military in that fit my father and me as veterans. This article will share what we found out about our top 3 locations.
Our Criteria
There are a few things in particular that I am looking for in a retirement location. First and foremost...
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Published on May 18, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 10, 2011 -- Late last year our list of the "10 Worst Retirement States" caused a surprising uproar. Much excellent discussion came from it, and the experience gave us a new appreciation for the complexity of assigning factors to any "best" or "worst" list. Six months later, and with fresh data in from the Pew Center on the States, it seems like it's time for an update. This article will list the states that are in the most fiscal trouble from the Pew Center's viewpoint. In the second part of the article we will provide a recap of how these poor performing states stack up when it comes to taxes for retirees. We will not include any rating for weather/climate, as we did in last year's list. Climate is so personal and so widely understood that we don't feel the need to rate that factor for you.
The Pew Center recently published data on the unfunded liabilities of the states, The Widening Gap, for pensions and for promised future health care. The results are frightening, and carry broad implications that could affect your retirement if you live in one of these states (but more about that later). Although a few states are beginning to take action, the vast majority of states have chosen to ignore their looming pension problems. Many of them also have large deficits, which are equally as concerning. As we will see, most but not all of the states in trouble are low-tax states; some might argue that unwillingness to raise taxes has contributed to the mess some states are in. Here are some of the Pew Center's findings:
As of Fiscal Year '09 the states had a $660 billion
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Published on May 10, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 9, 2011 — We thought it would be a good idea to put the links to our recent “Best” and “Worst” states articles in one place: – The Wall Street Journal reported on our “Best States for Retirement, 2011 Edition” article today, saying it was a “…nice…
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Published on May 9, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Update Sept 19, 2017 - We updated this article. Here is a link to the new one.
May 3, 2011 -- When it comes to selecting your best place to retire the weather, climate, and exposure to natural disasters can have a major impact on your retirement enjoyment. We think these are important factors to consider, along with cost of living, taxes, culture, proximity of friends and family, and recreational opportunities.
Before we discuss some regions and cities that rank poorly for weather, let's talk about the kinds of weather and natural issues that could be detrimental to your retirement. Some of these phenomena are inconvenient, while others are deadly serious:
- Sunshine. It's true, people are generally happier when the sun shines. Rainy day after rainy day does not...
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Published on May 3, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Updated December 20, 2016 (Originally posted April 18, 2011)
Like most of our members you are probably working on finding your best place to retire. Will your retirement destination will be where you live now, in the same region, or far away - there are so many possibilities! This article is dedicated to a different idea - that your best place to retire might be 2 places. You might also be interested in this companion article for ideas on dual places to live: "Best Places to Retire: Our Ideal Snowbird Pairings".
On the Plus Side - Avoiding Compromises
Perhaps the best reason to consider retiring in 2 places is that it helps avoid compromises. Let's say you hate
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Published on April 18, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Note: See latest version of "Best States for Retirement - 2014".
March 29, 2011 -- No article we have ever written attracted more attention than our "Worst States for Retirement". Ever since the list came out last December it has been fiercely debated. In the end we think we accomplished our goal: we were able to get people to think about some of the important factors they should consider before they choose their best place to retire. This article will update the reverse of that article - the best states for retirement.
Rather than produce one ranked list of states for this article, which is always arbitrary, we will list a number of the best retirement states on the basis of economic factors: taxation, fiscal health, and cost of living. Note that in our opinion, state economic factors are not the only and are usually not the best criteria for selecting a retirement town. Other factors such as climate, physical and political environment, healthcare, and proximity to relatives and friend are normally much more critical. For the purposes of this article, however, those factors are so personal that we don't feel it is our place to rate them for you - you know what you are looking for on these preferences. Some people want to live in a warm climate, while others hate high temperatures and/or humidity. When it comes to environment, some folks want mountains, others want the ocean or a lake, and yet others prefer a city. Some seek out a liberal political and religious landscape, while others prefer the opposite. As we try to stress over and over again, your personal criteria for retirement are much more valuable than...
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Published on March 29, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Note: This is Part 1 of our "College Town Retirement" series, which has 4 different installments. See end of article for links to the rest.
Updated June, 2019 -- When a reporter asked for our opinion about college town retirements we thought, what a great idea. Her questions concerned the pros and cons, reasons why retire there, best towns, etc. This article will help you try to assess if a college town retirement makes sense for you, as well as provide some recommendations and resources for finding the right college town.
Advantages
- Return to the scene of your youth. Most people who went to college have very warm feelings about the town where they came of age. Particularly if they have kept up some contact over the years, there is a strong pull back to that locale.
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Published on March 21, 2011
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 28, 2011 -- We'll confess, one of the things we are most curious about is the answer to this question - where do our Topretirements members move to when they finally reach their decision? Our hope is that by the time they have read our newsletter articles, studied the reviews of the many towns and active communities on the site, visited their top candidates - they ultimately make what turns out to be a happy decision. Note: We reported on this same subject with earlier member responses in 2010.
We don't have perfect knowledge of what actually happens when a member moves, because we only hear from a tiny fraction of our membership base. Surprisingly, a lot of people email to tell us they have made a decision - but for one reason or another they don't
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Published on February 27, 2011
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