Category: Health and Wellness Issues
October 1, 2021 -- No one wants to wear a hearing aid. They can be unsightly, embarrassing, and usually don't work well in noisy situations. They are also very expensive ($2,000 to $12,000 a pair), and generally not covered by any kind of insurance, including Medicare. Unfortunately, if your hearing is bad enough, not wearing one leads to being shut out of the conversation and social isolation. Fortunately there might be less expensive, and more effective ones coming on the market.
Jane Brody recently wrote an article in the NY Times that promises some hope: "Will Hearing Aids Ever Be Hip". While two thirds of people over 70 suffer from hearing loss, only 20% of adults who could benefit from a hearing aid use one. Clearly there is a demand for a better product.
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Published on October 1, 2021
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Category: General Retirement Issues
October 3, 2021 — Subscribers to our Daily Alert were probably confused on Sunday, Oct. 3 when they received 3 copies of the same email. We are sorry about that. Probably as a result of our server being bombarded by someone try to index our content, the Oct 1 and…
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Published on October 3, 2021
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Category: Retirement Planning
October 6, 2021 — The results of last week’s survey on snowbirds are in. Many thanks to the community spirited folks that filled it out! While we can all speculate about snowbird behavior, it is satisfying and interesting to find out what people like you do in the real world.
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Published on October 5, 2021
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
October 11, 2021 — Moving to a new state when you retire is not a decision to be made lightly. Only a tiny percentage of retirees make a move that significant, but when they do they usually do it for important reasons. Often they trade in a valuable home in…
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Published on October 11, 2021
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Category: Health and Wellness Issues
October 13, 2021 – The Open Enrollment Period for Medicare starts this week on October 15 and ends December. 7. It is an important event for eligible people not currently enrolled in the plan, or who want to change plans or some component of their current plan. During…
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Published on October 12, 2021
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
October 13, 2021 — Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries will receive a record 5.9 percent Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for 2022. It is the largest COLA since 1982. The increase is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI-W) from the third quarter of 2020 through the…
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Published on October 13, 2021
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
October 18, 2021 – Editors Note: This is part of our series comparing various states as places to retire, such as “Dueling Carolinas: NC vs. SC for Retirement“. There is a list of all of “Dueling” comparisons at the end of this article. We welcome ideas for future ones.
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Published on October 17, 2021
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Category: Health and Wellness Issues
October 20, 2021 – As we pointed out last week we are now in the Medicare Open Enrollment Period, which ends December 7. This is the time to re-evaluate your plan and change it if your circumstances have evolved, or you are unhappy with the plan you have. To help…
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Published on October 19, 2021
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Category: Life Care or CCRC
Updated Sept. 2025 with updates from several people we know who have gone through this process. This article was originally published in 2021.
For most people, the answer to the question when is the right time to move to a Life Care community is, "when I get older". It pretty much doesn't matter how old the person is at the time; some undefined date in the future is always the answer. True, a minority make the decision when they are in their 60s or early 70s, but they are the outliers, often with a good reason for doing so.
Topretirements has some good friends who have wrestled with this decision for years. Their current situation, unfortunately, illustrates the problem so many people will face. He is in his mid 90s and she in her early 80s. She has wanted for some time to move from their town home into a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC, often known as a Life Care Community). He, however, is never quite ready. This opened a discussion about making irreversible decisions too late—how delaying action in both finance and health often leads to stress and diminished options. Fortunately, they did put a deposit down at a Connecticut CCRC, but used a decision to wait for one of the larger units as a way to delay the move. He just had a serious medical incident requiring an extended hospital stay with an uncertain future, so now he is ready to take any unit that comes up. Although it looks like their deposit has secured them a place, they are about to have a very rough patch ahead. Two elderly people with mobility problems are not going to have an easy time moving, let alone dealing with culling down a jam-packed town home's contents to fit into a much smaller apartment.
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Published on October 26, 2021
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
October 27, 2021 – When it comes to naming the best places to be a snowbird many familiar towns come to mind. Most are in Florida, Arizona, California, Texas, and South Carolina for the obvious reasons, as they are the warmest contiguous states in winter. But this year a list…
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Published on October 27, 2021
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