Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
March 7, 2012 -- One of the most persistent questions we get at Topretirements concerns how to get started looking for a place to retire. This is hardly surprising; the world is a very big place, and when you first start out looking at retirement locations the choices can seem overwhelming. Sometimes the questions we get are quite broad, e.g.: "I am about to retire. Can you tell give me some ideas on good places", while others are amazingly specific, e.g.: "Can someone help me find a listing of Manufactured Home communities on the Gulf of Mexico side where you own the mobile as well as the land?" This article will give you a basic course on
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Published on March 7, 2012
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Category: Active adult communities
March 6, 2012 -- Residents at Harbor’s Edge in Norfolk, Virginia are cheering today, celebrating the reversal of an unpopular policy prohibiting assisted living residents from eating in dining rooms reserved for independent living. The policy change was made in the face of negative publicity supporting long term residents who, after dining for years with friends and co-residents, found they could no longer eat in the same dining rooms. The threat that the policy might have violated the Fair Housing Act and/or the Americans with Disabilities Act could have also been a factor.
Judith Schapiro was one of the affected Harbor’s Edge residents who were briefly barred from the waterfront
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Published on March 6, 2012
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Category: Health and Wellness Issues
By Billy and Akaisha Kaderli
U.S. has the best care in the world?
As an adult, I have been in the hospital overnight on five occasions for various health issues; Four times in the USA in different facilities and states, and once now in Guatemala. In three of those four times in the U.S. I had either poor results or negative outcomes. That’s 75% of my personal experiences with U.S. hospital care which have been unfavorable.
These events have ranged from little or no follow up from attending doctors once a procedure was completed, leaving me confused, concerned and on my own to figure things out, to the incorrect construction of a cast covering a broken wrist following a
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Published on February 28, 2012
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 28, 2012 -- Last week we announced the list of the 100 Most Popular Retirement Towns, our annual list of the places that our visitors and members seem the most intrigued with. This week we decided to take that idea a little further by analyzing that list against 12 important retirement criteria. The result is a top 10 that looks very different, with 4 towns from the top 20 moving up to the top 10. Here are your editor's selections for the "10 Best Places to Retire" - (the # in ( ) was its ranking on the popularity list).
The 10 Best Places to Retire - Topretirements Editor Picks
1. Sarasota, Florida (#2). Our top pick on Florida's Gulf Coast has so many things going for it. The economics are very
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Published on February 28, 2012
Comments 56
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 22, 2012 -- OK Topretirements members and readers, it's your turn to help. We have been trying our best to give you practical advice about the best places to retire along with general retirement advice - now we need your (brief) input on a specific question. That is, tell your fellow members "Where are you going to retire, and why others should consider it". Incorporating insights on modern leisure activities such as crypto casinos can provide a comprehensive view of what retirees seek in their new homes. For our part, we promise to analyze and categorize the responses in a future article. The project depends on getting many people to contribute, which will give us valuable survey data that everyone will appreciate. A similar survey that your editor worked on for NARFE, So Many Great Towns, So Hard to Choose, a few years ago generated hundreds of responses - we have every confidence our 22,000 subscribers can do the same. After all, this site is free, think of this assignment as your small payback.
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Published on February 21, 2012
Comments 749
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 21, 2012 – Editor's Note: See the 2014 edition of "The 100 Best Places to Retire"
Once again this year the Sunbelt is the preferred region for baby boomer retirements. Topretirements.com has just published its 6th annual list of the 100 most popular places to retire on its site, and the Sunbelt's retirement popularity continues -- 75 of the 100 top positions are held by towns in the Sunbelt. Florida dominates the list of best places to retire, taking 26 of the spots (the same as in 2011), followed by North Carolina (11) and South Carolina and Arizona (7 each). The highest ranking non-Sun Belt city on our list was Bend (OR) at #37. Note: To make sure you don’t miss new lists like this, sign up for our free weekly “Best Places to Retire” newsletter. See also "The Worst States for Retirement - 2014".
The Top 10
As has been the case since Topretirements published its first list in 2007, Asheville, NC is the #1 town, receiving more than 25 times as many page visits as Princeton (NJ), which squeezed onto the list in the #100 position. Asheville's reputation as a great place to retire, its mountains, gentle 4 seasons climate, and recreational/cultural opportunities all make it the standard that all other retirement towns can aspire to. Sarasota (FL) once again occupies the #2 spot, while Austin (TX) and Venice (FL) climbed
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Published on February 21, 2012
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Category: Adventurous retirement
Note: This is the latest in our series of interesting baby boomer profiles. Our goal is to portray a variety of active baby boomer retirement lifestyles for our members. If you know a boomer retirement we should know about tell us via the Contact Us link.
Amelia Ceja is President of Ceja Vineyards, which Inc. Magazine named “Entrepreneur of the Year” (one of 7) in 2004. She and her husband Pedro are hard-working people. After talking with them for just a short time it is easy to see why their perfect idea of retirement is to just keep doing what they love doing - growing grapes and making wine in the Napa Valley. We think you will enjoy the story of these successful baby boomers and how they are living their dream retirement.
What Amelia Did Before Retirement
Amelia emigrated to the USA from Mexico at age 12. Her parents worked in the California grape industry. Growing up Amelia also worked in the vineyards as a child and during summers in college. After attending
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Published on February 14, 2012
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
This article was originally posted as a comment from Artie on our "Dueling Carolinas Comparison" article (where you also find many other helpful comments). He provides so much detail we thought it would make a great blog article on his own, so with his permission we have done that. We also added some other relevant comments to add even more detail. Thanks Artie!
Originally I thought I was moving to Florida (Jupiter), but here I am in Cary, NC. I can’t speak specifically to the advantages of disadvantages of having chosen NC over SC. But I’m sure my wife and I could have been happy in any number of places in either state.
One Year Later
This past August has been our one year anniversary since
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Published on February 11, 2012
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Category: Retirement Planning
February 8, 2012 -- Some weeks much good retirement advice comes in that we can't possibly write about all of it. Since we didn't want you to miss any of it, we've put together capsule summaries and links to all the great stuff. Here goes:
5 Myths About Retirement Homes. This story from Time Magazine's Moneyland is essential reading for any baby boomer who is willing to be
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Published on February 7, 2012
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Category: Green Retirement Communities
February 7, 2012 -- When my sister-in-law, the nature writer and environmentalist Susan Cerulean, first proposed a natural burial (also called a green, or conservation burial) for her father, I have to admit there was some serious eye-rolling on my part. And after I heard the scouting report on the first green cemetery she considered, I was even more sceptical. To an outsider the setting seemed undignified, and the people running it appeared more interested in the profit motive than in saving the planet. Fortunately she was able to find another cemetery nearby, a place of great peace and beauty that met all of her objectives for a natural burial.
After experiencing the serene and just about
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Published on February 7, 2012
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