From Our Members: How to Avoid Choosing the Wrong Community (and Pick the Right One)
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
May 14, 2025 — Nobody understands the dozens of mistakes you can make when it comes to choosing a retirement community than our wonderful Members here at Topretirements. By the same token, they have developed many simple strategies for how to pick the right one. On this website they have made thousands of wonderful and wise comments, suggestions, and experiences on how to negotiate the journey to the perfect place to retire. This article will attempt to gather and organize a sampling of the best ones – space keeps us from publishing many other great ones.
Check Out These Wise Comments from Topretirements Members
We are so impressed with the collective wisdom of our Members over the years. Your real world experiences and insights are invaluable!
Chris: Making decisions and having a plan is the only sure fire way to end up in the right community. Otherwise there are just too many wrong forks in the road!
Nancy: Do a stay and play and dig, dig. The builders reputation usually easy to find construction issues are important but not as important as finding the right community. Also thoroughly research all utilities, taxes, etc. – it adds up.
Tom F: Staying in your own home can be a great idea, particularly if you live in a town or city with a lot to offer. It costs a lot to move and if you don’t plan wisely, it can’t turn out badly, and then you are looking at another move. I have met a number of folks in search of “the right community” only to end up bouncing around from place to place and never being happy.
Susan: The hardest one is how to really know a place before committing to that area. Internet research is great but you absolutely must put eyes-on before actually making a commitment. We just looked at a place while on a business trip, and while it looked fabulous online and in theory, the fact was that the nearest decent shopping was over the river and through the woods away!
Any road will get there,
Paraphrase of a conversation between Alice
if you don’t know where you are going.
and the Cheshire Cat in “Alice in Wonderland”
Sheila: Stupid us! It gets pretty hot and sticky in most parts of the country during the summer and there are mosquitoes too. BUT when you can’t enjoy the patio or backyard for MOST of the summer then that’s a big much.
Dr. Judith: Check into the political, social, and cultural aspects of affordable retirement places, as well as their economic clime. Let me stress how important it is to do a trial run on any place you are considering for a future home. A month or two renting in that area, while holding off a final decision, is really money saved when compared to a bad move.
Susan 14: Following where kids are is problematic because they have lives to live and may move themselves. I want to provide a place, and an atmosphere, where they’ll want to come see us when they can and not feel smothered or bored.
Steve: Do not ignore state taxes. We chose to live in a state that does not tax our pensions nor social security. it is important to live where you “want” to live because of family or other reasons however, you may find living in a neighboring state could save 5-7 percent of your income.
BruceB: We dodged a big liability issue in we feel by doing multiple visits and then digging in to real life questions. We loved one area outside Raleigh NC, but after talking to our Accountant we realized that our taxes would go up as we would loose a state exemption on our retirement income. We also found many many fees by the state and town that added costs. Finally, we dug into the HOA documents and found so many one sided charges and long term liabilities we took a pause. Our take away is the grass is not always as green as it seems from afar. (see Topretirements Directory of Active Adult and 55+ Communities)
HEF: Target a region of the country, where you would like to live, then do the research! Finding the Neurology Center in Maine made the final decision easy. We are also looking into a final Retirement destination here and have visited several great communities (CCRCs). Come see – spend a week, ask questions and visit these places. We did that in 2015 and liked what we saw and heard very much.
I have to add one more thing to the list. This has happened to several friends of mine – Failure to discuss it with their spouse – ahead of time! They just assumed, and it didn’t work out well.
Kate: I worked with a spreadsheet that really helped to compare possible destinations. I put in everything from taxes, insurance, churches, colleges for senior programs, distance to my favorite stores, quality of medical care, crime stats, airport for vacations, HOA fees, estate planning, etc. After awhile, places clearly started to weed themselves out. It’s important to consider contingency plans, such as whether there are senior services in the larger community or if there are any alternatives like good assisted living facilities if/when independent living is no longer viable.
Ed Lafreniere: Don’t let the marketing or sales team persuade you — go around yourself and introduce yourself and see what kind of reaction you get. You will know instantly whether this will feel like a great fit. We thought we didn’t want a 55+ community, either, but we’re so glad that we kept our minds open.
JoanneC: I’ve thought of living abroad also, but I’ve been in countries highly touted by IL and Retirement Living, and once there find a very different scenario. My solution (so far) is to 1) find my landing spot here and then 2) spend 3-6 months, or even a year, in places like Baja, Berlin, Lisbon, Costa Rica, until I can no longer travel.
Barbara: We retired to Lewes from DC. We enjoy the four seasons with mild winters. The beaches are world class. There’s a wonderful small town feel but with plenty to do if you wish. Great hospitals. Very, very low taxes. No Soc. Sec. tax. No sales tax. Property tax a fifth of what we paid for in DC. Cost of housing is 50% less than DC. Traffic compared to DC is non-existent.
HEF: Try watching House Hunters and/or House Hunters International on HGTV (or even on YouTube). The husband has his priorities and the wife has hers. Conflict builds with each making comments about the properties and about the other’s unrealistic/selfish needs as they view 3 homes. At the end, a property is selected.
So, this is what you and your spouse can do. Watch the show(s) and during the show make your own comments about the properties and each of the buyers’ expectations. Bottom line, this can be a great tool for couples to get better educated about their own wants/desires/needs and their spouse’s. (You may even discover that after all these years that you really don’t have anything in common and may need to split before you make a mistake of buying a new home together.) Another added bonus of watching these types of shows on network TV or YouTube, you might even discover a new place to explore that is not mentioned in this forum.
Chris: Moving to be close to the children is a very common mistake for many (and not for others!) Sometimes you can be too close to the children, particularly if the relationship becomes strained or you feel you are being taken advantage of. The kids might have to move, leaving you stuck. Or, moving to an area that has appeal to the kids but just isn’t what you were looking for.
Jean lac: Don’t put off hobbies and travel until you retire. you dont know if retirement will bring you all the things you havent been able to do. Size down on your house, travel, put work second. Plan family vacations, even if its camping. They are most important.
Sandy: Creating a:
Yearly expense list compared to yearly revenue list. (you really will spend the same amount, because you will do ‘fun’ things, but living in a lower cost of living helps reduce living expenses.)
BUCKET LIST – all the things we wanted to do
Options of how we would live – 2 homes, wintering only in warm climate, RV, etc
What is important to where we live
Then we asked these questions:
Do we want to move again
De we want/can afford 2 homes
What will we need in the future – even in the worst situation.
Bottom line:
Thanks to everyone for these fantastic comments. Your wisdom is amazing! Sorry we don’t have room for all of them.
More Ideas!
Our past articles on retirement mistakes and successes have generated hundreds of Comments over the year. Your collective wisdom is amazing. Check out these articles and the Comments at the bottom..
Avoid These 6 Retirement Wrecking Mistakes
The Biggest Retirement Mistakes to Avoid
Hi There: Thank you for visiting Topretirements.com. We love it that people find it useful!I
Unfortunately, it does cost money to delivering the content you enjoy, we need to pay our web team and others. If you can, we ask you to subscribe to our paid account (for $5/month – less than a cup of coffee!) below.
If you are so kind as to purchase a paid subscription, please know you’re supporting not only our publication, but all of our Members who find out content, tips, and shared community so useful
(NOTE: If you already a subscriber to our Best Places newsletter, you don’t have to do anything, you will continue to get it. But if you upgrade, you will get Special Reports and More!)
Comments on "From Our Members: How to Avoid Choosing the Wrong Community (and Pick the Right One)"
Chris says:
In the new Netflix series reprise of "The Four Seasons", the character played by Tina Fey says something that definitely applies to the search for the perfect place to retire. It goes something like this: "Do you think in the whole wide world that there is only one person out there who was meant to be your perfect life partner?" I think there are many places to retire that would be great for me, I just haven't found out about all of them, and there are too many to choose from.
guy restivo says:
great articles
Jan Cullinane, author says:
Once you know what you want in terms of weather, cost of living, taxes, transportation, health care, etc., find a new/developing community. It's much easier meeting new people and developing friendships when everyone is new/fairly new to a community.
Patrick says:
I love these types of posts. Great ideas on how to approach complex decisions. I laughed at HEF's recommendation about watching House Hunters shows. We enjoy watching those shows but we hadn't really thought of using them in that manner.