Category: Retirement Real Estate
October 18, 2010 -- If you have been considering snapping up a great home at a bargain price through a short or foreclosure sale - don't! The past few weeks have been filled with stories about banks who have stopped foreclosing on properties because of sloppy or incomplete paperwork. Bank of America has stopped foreclosure actions in all 50 states, and JP Morgan has stopped such actions in 41 states.The government is up in arms, bank stocks are being hammered, and many financial experts are worried that no one really understands the depth of the problem or how long it will take to solve. No one seems to have a solid grip on understanding the potential repercussions to buyers, sellers, and lending institutions.
The problem has gained so much attention that there is a growing groundswell to implement a national ban on foreclosures. Consider some recent headlines such as
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Published on October 18, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
October 11, 2010 -- A reporter from Fox News (FNCImag.com) interviewed us today on the 10 best places to retire. She also had some related questions on how to find the best place to retire. The results of the interview, 2 separate articles, came out today on FoxNews.com
The first article, "Where You Will Retire", is the more interesting of the 2. Noelle Watters asked some thought-provoking questions that gave us the platform to offer some friendly advice on a few questions every retiree should be informed about. Her questions included: "What makes a place a popular retirement locale (lots of different factors), "Does weather play
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Published on October 12, 2010
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Category: Active adult communities
Last weekend's newsletter was all about trying to find communities that could be considered competitors to The Villages - the huge and very popular active adult community south of Ocala, FL. We had so many interesting emails with comments about that article we decided to publish them here - and give you the chance to respond in the Comments section below.
In the first installment of the series we provided a sample of east coast competition, a future installment will cover the west coast. Our apologies to the many fine communities we couldn't
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Published on October 12, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Updated March 28, 2016 (Original article was October 5 – 2010)–This is the second in our extensive series comparing various states and regions as retirement destinations. You can find links to all of the comparison articles under “Further Reading” at the end of this article. Our approach in this series…
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Published on October 5, 2010
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
You don't have to look hard to find either great optimism and depressing pessimism about the retirement prospects of American baby boomers. For example you could read "Find a Retirement Career" from Fidelity and feel pretty good. Or, you could spend some time with these articles from the Wall Street, "Another Threat to the Economy:Boomers Cutting Back" or USA Today, "Boomers Wanting to Work Past Retirement Age Find Limited Options", and get very depressed.
All of these articles have their strong points
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Published on September 29, 2010
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
Here’s a really good deal – at least for the developer of your new active adult community. A new fee being inserted deep into some convenants has this feature – when you sell your home someday, the developer will get 1% of the price. But wait – it gets better!…
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Published on September 29, 2010
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
There were no big surprises in the 2010 Trustees Report for the Social Security system that finally emerged in early August. Once again and for the 3rd year running, the report was not signed by any public trustees. The report finds that a social security deficit is looming out there in the future, as payments to retiring baby boomers outmatch contributions from younger workers. And most important for the millions of retirees who are already collecting social security, it appears that for the second year in a row it is very unlikely that there will be any cost of living increase (COLA) paid for 2011. According to the way the COLA's are calculated, the cost
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Published on September 16, 2010
Comments 36
Category: General Retirement Issues
By Roberta Isleib, Ph.D
Neither my husband (Mr. Topretirements) nor I are likely to forget the days after he retired from his regular job and moved home to start his website. I am a psychologist/writer who had grown accustomed to lots of space—and peace. On that first day, he clattered up from the garage with boxes of papers and junk from his previous office, which he proceeded to unload in the dining room. I caught him spreading his computer and piles of other miscellany out on the dining room table, plainly visible to every visitor to our home.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said. “You can’t set up your office there!”
“It has to be somewhere,” he said. “And don’t think I’m going to be eating lunch with you everyday, either.”
After some heated discussion, we agreed that he might enjoy
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Published on September 16, 2010
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Category: Green Retirement Communities
By Cynthia Booth
If you have ever dreamed of living your retirement in a dream home that is friendly to the planet, this article is for you.
Denis Carpenter recently acquired a small vacant lot and, to achieve his concern for the planet, planned a residence that was environmentally friendly and easy to maintain. Denis hired designers and Jersey City citizens Richard Garber, assistant professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design in Newark, and Nicole Robertson of GRO Architects in New York City to design and oversee the construction of his single-family house. The result is genuine proof of both innovative design and eco-friendly technologies.
What's so special about this home?
- Inside the home, on the ground level, radiant heating beneath the exposed cement floor warms the bath room and bed rooms.
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- In the loft-like second level, sleek aluminum and stainless steel railings accent the bamboo stairway to the mezzanine, lounge room and an artfully designed kitchen outfitted with salvaged devices and cabinetry.
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Published on September 14, 2010
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 13, 2010 -- Consider us sentimental, but we feel kind of bad for the towns that don't quite make our various "best places" lists. After all, how would you feel if you were #101 on a list of 100 best places to retire? It's not like the quality of the experience is that different among the top tier places to live in retirement. And, given that everyone has their own individual tastes and requirements, #115 might just be a lot better fit for you than say, #2 on the list.
So to indulge that feeling, and more importantly to help expand our members' knowledge, here is our list of the "next best places to retire" - from #101 to 125. Oh yes, we will tell
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Published on September 13, 2010
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