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Create Your Personal List of The Best Retirement States |
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To Have a Residence in Florida, That is the Question |
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Create Your Personal List of The Best Retirement States
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By Maria Norton
Determining the best retirement states is not always an easy task. With all of the choices of places that you could move, how can you choose where to go? Is there one list of the best retirement states, or an absolute top 10 states for retirement?
The fact is that the best state to retire is the one that are best for you. There are some criteria that retirees seem to want in general, but in the end your own list of the top 10 states for retirement might be different from mine or anyone else’s.
For example, if you know that you want to live within a few hours of your children and grandchildren, you would be limiting your list of the best retirement states to those that are found in a radius of about 100 miles around their location. Or if you know that you want to live in a state with mild winters, you’ll obviously be creating your list of the best retirement states from those that have the type of climate you want.
If you need some other ideas on how to choose your best retirement states, then there are tools to help you. Topretirements.com has guides for every state that are designed to provide retirees with all the information they need. The site also has articles on a variety of topics and links to other information that retirees would find interesting.
US News and World Report has created a search tool that lets you create a fully customized list of the best retirement states. You determine what criteria are important to you in choosing a retirement location. Their search engine compares the criteria you choose to information on more than 2,000 towns to give you some recommendations. Criteria include things such as climate, the cost of living, recreation opportunities, and others.
If you don’t make a selection on a criterion, it will not be used in generating your list. When you’re done making your choices, you can click ‘Rank Results’ to get a customized list of locations that match your criteria. Click on the individual cities for more information, or you can browse through the results by state. You can explore the search tool at:
http://www.usnews.com/directories/retirement
US News and World Report also has a list of the top-ten places to retire that they came up with after evaluating towns on a number of different aspects that their readers rated as being important. These specific towns can be explored more on their website:
• Bozeman, Montana
• Concord, New Hampshire
• Fayetteville, Arkansas
• Hillsboro, Oregon
• Lawrence, Kansas
• Peachtree City, Georgia
• Prescott, Arizona
• San Francisco, California
• Smyrna, Tennessee
• Venice, Florida
AARP has created their own list of the top 15 towns to retire, using a very thorough set of 10 different criteria, though they also state that their intention was partly to highlight towns you may not have heard of before. The criteria they used were:
• How many jobs there are available
• How affordable housing is
• The range of culture and entertainment available
• The range of outdoor recreation available
• Safety – both for your person and your property
• Presence of colleges or universities
• Sense of a central, downtown, pedestrian-friendly area
• Distance to good, comprehensive medical care
• Presence of good public high schools, since many retirees may still have teenagers
• Quality of public transportation
Two cities were found in each of the states of Florida, North Carolina, and Washington, with the remaining nine cities found in different states around the country. You can read a summary description of each town and the main benefits each one offers on the AARP website at:
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/travel/Articles/a2003-03-27-mag-bestplaces.html/page=1
You’ll likely want to limit your top ten list down to a couple of locations, and then visit them in person, if possible. You can also start investigating the town online, and even join some online chat or discussion groups. You might even make a friend or two before you move there!
Maria Norton is the Broker/Owner of Norton Real Estate, LLC and the creator of http://www.florida-retirement.net, a website designed for those who are considering retiring to Florida or buying second homes there. She provides comprehensive, personalized & free, Florida relocation services. She has published 4 eBooks: A Guide to Establishing Florida Residency, The Florida Beach Book, How to Create the Perfect Retirement & How to Buy a Second/Vacation Home in Florida. Call her at 239-676-9466 or visit her website at http://www.florida-retirement.net .
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