Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 9, 2020 -- Although the pandemic has been horrendous for activities like dining out or social gatherings, others are experiencing a gold rush. One of those is biking (cycling to our British brethren). Walk into a bike shop now and say you need a bike - get ready for a 3 month wait. Want a used bike... sorry. The same goes for bike parts and repairs. As people avoid mass transit and have more time on their hands, biking has never been more popular.
While it is a great activity, it is a lot more enjoyable when you live in a place where the infrastructure is set up for it. When bikers and cars are kept separate it is a lot safer and more fun. Bike lanes, special traffic signals, concrete barriers, and under/overpasses make all the difference. No one wants to bike along a narrow berm next to speeding cars, or face daunting intersections with multiple lanes to cross.
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Published on September 9, 2020
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Category: Home and Garden
September 2, 2020 -- Spending more time walking, cooking, taking the dog out, exercising, or gardening during the pandemic? One great way to get double the pleasure out of these activities is to listen to a good book while you are doing them. All you need is your phone and a set of headphones, preferably Bluetooth connected.
Your editor has enjoyed some wonderful books lately. American Dirt, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Half Broke all have female protagonists with strong storylines that will carry you away as you take on your various chores and activities. Educated is an inspiring memoir of a young girl's struggle to escape her crazy survivalist family in Idaho. Biographies like "Shoe Dog", the story of how Phil Knight created Nike, is a fascinating listen. The Doll House by Ann Patchett, narrated by Tom Hanks, is great too.
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Published on September 2, 2020
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 2, 2020 -- There are are tens of millions of baby boomers, and just about every one of us has a slightly different retirement dream. Some might have one requirement in common, but the two or three other things on their lists make them unique. In this new series we are will explore different retirement quests, along with examples of retirement towns that match. As other articles in the series are written, we will link to them here.
A Topretirements Member asked last week about great places to retire for foodies. Secondarily, she is also looking for good healthcare, nice weather, and middle of the road cost of living. If those preference describe what you are looking for, this article will provide a few places for you to consider.Knowing what you are looking for - great!
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Published on September 1, 2020
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Category: Family and Retirement
August 26, 2020 - Do you know someone completed devoted to Walt Disney characters or Disneyland/Disneyworld? MagicalPassings can arrange for loved ones to say goodbye with the help of Disney characters and themes. According to their website, the company "specializes in customized and themed end of life experiences for you and your loved ones... (with) Disney funerals." You can have character visits, a kiss goodbye from Mickey, listen to favorite melodies, or even have Captain Jack send them off to Davy Jones Locker.
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Published on August 26, 2020
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 26, 2020 -- You are probably only going to have one retirement, so you might as well make the most of it. At least, that's the way we think about it. So why settle for a "nice" place to retire, when you have actually have the option to go for the gold - a town that is interesting, charming, bustling - one you never tire of. Here are 10 possibilities for you to consider, chosen by region, and along with the criteria we used to select them.
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Published on August 25, 2020
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Category: Family and Retirement
August 19, 2020 -- If you are like a lot of the people we know, the pandemic might have led you into thinking about adding a pet to the family. Across the country and maybe the world, animal shelters and rescue operations have slimmer pickings, and breeders are not returning phone calls. So this seems like as good a time as any to revisit "Pets and Retirement". Topretirements has two very popular articles on this topic, "Are Pets and Retirement a Good Mix?", and "Pets, the X Factor in Retirement". Between the two they generated almost 100 reader comments, so we know this is a topic that resonates among retirees, who have different needs and lifestyles than working families. If you are tempted to add some type of pet to your family, these articles are a good place to help organize your thoughts and plans.
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Published on August 18, 2020
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Category: Active adult communities
August 18, 2020 -- The results are in!
Many, many thanks to the generous 300+ Topretirements Members who took the the time to fill out our survey on retirement community preferences. Your input confirms much of our past research and offers fresh perspective on others. Once again your favorite amenity was walking trails. You also wrote in almost 200 illuminating comments - we just wish we had room to highlight every one - because they all offer a unique perspective.
HighlightsEveryone has their own unique take on retirement, that much is obvious from these results. That is particularly true if you look at the 134 comments made to Question 10, "Please describe your ideal retirement community". Here are some of the top takeaways from the survey:
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Published on August 17, 2020
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Category: Retirement Planning
August 11, 2020 — Retirement lifestyles and preferences keep evolving, and we are eager to see where our esteemed Members stand on a number of key issues. Now that we are in a pandemic preferences might even be more fluid. Please take this quick, 10 question survey on the size…
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Published on August 11, 2020
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Category: Travel
August 11, 2020 - Someday this whole wretched Covid experience is going to be behind us. Just when - nobody knows - dependent on when we start to take it seriously, get an effective vaccine, a cure, or heaven help us, herd immunity. So when that happy day comes, we want to know - where are you going to go on your first trip!
Perhaps it will be family related. Your editor is going to get on a plane and visit his grandchildren in California. After that, it might be somewhere far away that is high on our bucket list. New Zealand, Scandinavia, Ireland - they are all possibilities. A cruise - probably not right away.
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Published on August 10, 2020
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 4, 2020 -- Not everybody's retirement dream is to pack up and move to the Carolinas, Florida, or Arizona. In fact most retirees never move far from they lived when they stopped working. The Mid-Atlantic states have a big advantage for people who live in that region or the Northeast, and who are not looking for a big change. For those who prefer to be within easy driving distance of friends and family, proximity to where they live now is a big plus (even bigger in this time of Covid!). In this article we have come up with a list of the 14 most popular retirement towns in the Mid-Atlantic states, based on site visits at Topretirements.
The Mid-Atlantic states are generally considered to be Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Virginia, which borders most of those states, is close enough that we are considering it here.
With 5 winners, Virginia had the most towns on this list, followed by Delaware and Pennsylvania with 3. All of them are great places to retire, no duds here. Most are near the coast, while others are in the mountains. Here is the list, along with a few of the active adult communities in the region that also got a lot of site visits here. The towns are presented in order of popularity.
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Published on August 4, 2020
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