December 29, 2021 — This year has been mighty interesting. As 2021 winds down and we look with hope for a happier, less chaotic 2022, it is always enlightening to peer backwards. Which topics and articles resonated the most with our Members, and which ones were duds – knowing that can help us serve you better next year.
In this article, we will identify out the most popular of the 100 blogs we published last year, measured by which ones were read the most times. Some were predictable (retirement on a lake), and others we didn’t see coming, like our mini-retirement guide to Scotland, which had more page views that any other country or state guide! Our review includes other categories of viewer interest at Topretirements – the most popular cities, states, and active communities. There were several big surprises there too. Here goes:
Most Popular Blogs in 2021- no matter when written
The most popular blogs on Topretirements during 2021 were actually written in previous years. Readers keep coming back to check them out, usually because they discovered them on a Google search (retiring on a lake must be a very common dream). All have been updated to keep them current. Here are the 3 blogs that were read the most times during 2021:
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 Oct 2 emails were delayed or didn’t go out at all. Then the system tried to catch up and sent all 3 on Sunday.
We think we have found the problem and apologize for the delays and occasional multiple copies.
April 1, 2021 — Almost every week we get a request from a visitor or Member: “How do I find something or other on Topretirements?” Like many sites, Topretirements is a big one with a lot of different kinds of information. Even if you have visited here many times it can be tricky to track something down. This short article will provide an orientation and quick guide to help you get to what you want, quickly.
The best clue to finding what you want to know is to ask, “What kind of information is it I want”:
Find Out About a City. There are 2 main ways to read one of our over 1,200 City reviews (and it will differ somewhat depending if you are on a computer vs. a phone or Ipad). On a computer use the orange pulldown menu at top right to select a State. On a phone, use the 3 horizontal lines to open up this and other choices. Then scroll down the page until you see the City you want, then click on it. A second way to find them is to click on the “Best Places” link at the top of all pages. When you get there use the pulldown to select State, or click on the State you want on the map.
You can also add your Comments about a City or Community by going to the bottom of a Review and looking for “What People Are Saying About (name of city)”.
About a 55+ or Active Adult Community. To find one of our over 4,500 community reviews use the same two methods as above. But when you get to the Directory page listing all of the cities in that State, you will see a list of all communities in or around that city.
January 6, 2021 – The coronavirus and the election might have been the two big national stories in 2020, but Topretirements Members and visitors had some other issues on their minds as well. We published almost 100 Blog stories last year, and it turns out that once again, features that highlight great places to retire almost always come out on top. Here are the most popular articles on Topretirements last year, 2020. As always, we appreciate any future story ideas you might have too.
20 Great Places to Retire on a Lake. This article picked the top 20 communities from the 122 lake towns reviewed on Topretirements. We focused on places where it is possible to live on or near the lake, with some kind of nearby town for entertainment and the necessities of life. This story from January was the runaway favorite of the year.
10 Best of the Best Places to Retire for 2020 In this “Best of the Best” review, we picked 10 towns from lists of our 60 Best Retirement Towns in three major U.S. retirement regions. Asheville (NC), a frequent winner, came out of top.
December 15, 2020 — We are pleased to announce the winners for the “Best Retirement Planning Articles” of 2020. The criteria for this first ever award are that the writing is thoughtful, timely, interesting, and helpful to retirees and prospective retirees. We tried to concentrate on more practical topics and avoided Top 10 lists, as they are ubiquitous and sometimes a little silly. Our hope is that you will enjoy and learn from these great examples of writing about retirement planning.
To come up with the winners we reviewed retirement-related articles on the main websites that we use for collecting retirement ideas. Those include: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, NextAvenue, Squared Away Blog, AARP, Robert Powell at TheStreet.com, The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, etc. We also looked through Topretirements.com for 2020 articles that were inspired by reporting at other media outlets. We tried to choose from a variety of these sources to spread the glory around. As few of these sites are behind a pay wall, so we have tried to provide permalinks. In some cases, however, you might not be able to read the article unless you subscribe. Real, honest journalism is under siege from sources that will make up anything outrageous to get readers, so please support organizations like these that rely on the facts and honest data.
March 31, 2018 — Coming of age movies like The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, 2001: Space Odyssey, etc. became cultural icons for us baby boomers, back in the day. Producers of these blockbusters found huge audiences among our generation. Hollywood is still making movies for us today. Many aspects of the plots and characters are the same (love and loneliness, finding yourself), everybody is just a lot older! Special thanks to our traveling companion Deb (a tremendous fan of movies) for helping spark this idea.
Here are our top 10 movies (including 1 TV series) for baby boomers that touch on the topic of retirement. We hope that you will add your favorites too. We start our list with more recent movies, then go on to some oldies but goodies. Most are classics, definitely worth watching again.
The Leisure Seeker. (2018) Academy Award winner Helen Mirren (more…)
January 3, 2018 — It is always a good exercise to review our most read articles of the year. It tells us what our Members are looking for, and it has the side benefit of alerting new readers to articles that struck home for others. So here goes:
Site recap
Thanks so much to our many members and visitors. We enjoy your feedback, and most of all the 1000s of incredible Comments we get to our articles each year. Your input is valued by us and your fellow members. In 2017 Topretirements.com had over 2 million site visitors and 5 million page views. It is gratifying to know that we are being useful in some fashion to people interested in retirement. (more…)
December 27, 2016 — In many ways 2016 was one of the craziest years we can remember. Fortunately Topretirements’ 10th year was interesting, but not full of upheaval. As an annual tradition we like to see which articles grabbed the attention of the Topretirements.com community during the year. As always, there are at least a few surprise articles that generate more readership and Comments than we expected. Here is our annual review of the best of Topretirements for 2016.
We Do Appreciate
This seems to be a great time to note our appreciation to the Topretirements community. So many of you read our articles, take the time to post Comments to Blog articles, suggest new topics to cover – thank you. Special thanks to our loyal advertisers who make this site possible. Many have been with us almost since our beginnings in 2007 – thank you for your support of this vibrant online community.
Overall
So far in 2016 Topretirements had over 1.8 million visitors (more…)
December 12, 2016 — Baby boomers have finally got to the age where senior centers actually are meant for us… oh perish the thought! Sadly it is true, the oldest of us baby boomers turned 70 this year and tens of millions are in our 60s.
Which brings us to one of favorite pet peeves. In our Connecticut town there was a proposal to build a new “Senior” Center. The old one was a mess and not big enough for the number of people that wanted to use it. We lobbied, unsuccessfully, to build a “Community”, rather than a “Senior” Center. The Community Center would have had all the facilities and resources that aging boomers want and need. But in our view, freeing it from the “Senior” stigma would have boosted attendance and been a resource that the entire community could enjoy. Happily, a beautiful and (more…)
August 16, 2018 – 10 years ago this month Topretirements.com came out of the ether and appeared on the world wide web. It didn’t look like much, but there was some pretty good (if limited) information. Since that time we’ve had several redesigns and make overs, and the new content keeps coming. As of 2016, there are reviews of over 1000 towns and 3200 active and 55+ communities. Plus thousands of Blog articles and 10s of thousands of Comments. Based on the feedback we get, it looks like we have helped a lot of people along the way with their retirements. That makes us feel good! This was our first logo.
Today there is a profile and Q & A about Topretirements.com over at JungleRedWriters.com, the website for a group of women authors. If you are interested, it will tell you how we got started with the idea and some of the challenges and successes along the way. Here is the link to the article “Lunch with Mr. Topretirements.com:
Do you have ideas for our 10th Anniversary Edition?
Before the year ends we would like to mark the anniversary with a celebratory issue. Do you have ideas on the kinds of things we might include? We were thinking along the lines of “Best of”, “Worst of”, “Funniest of”, but would love to hear your ideas. Also, any feedback you have would be great to include – thinks that helped, didn’t help, things you wished for we don’t have. Please add your thoughts in the Comments below!
The image below is what the current “Best Places” tab looked like in the first year.
This was our first logo.
