Category Archives: retirement

Retirement in California and Retire USA blog

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What?  Not another shameless plug on my personal blog for our great Retire USA project?       Well, not shameless or even shameful because RETIRE USA is a great blog with over a dozen excellent writers and a post almost every day featuring topics of interest to retirees all over the nation.

Marty, one of the partners in the project, has been blogging about retirement in each state – Retirement in California is the latest series.    In those posts you’ll find a lot of links and information about retirement in general as well as Retirement in California.

Here are some excerpts from several of our latest retirement blog posts:

  • RETIRE IN CALIFORNIA – Part 5 of 5 PLACES TO RETIRE – CALIFORNIA RETIREMENT – Part 5 of 5: Costa Mesa, San Juan Capistrano, Mission Viejo, Palm Springs. COSTA MESA RETIREMENT Costa Mesa, with a population of 109,960 as of the 2010 census, is located 37 miles southeast of Los Angeles …
  • RETIRE IN CALIFORNIA – Part 4 of 5 PLACES TO RETIRE – CALIFORNIA RETIREMENT – Part 4 of 5: San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Lake Tahoe, El Centro, Newport Beach. SAN LUIS OBISPO RETIREMENT San Luis Obispo, with a population of 43,685 as of 2011, is located inland a bit from the California…
  • WHAT’S IN A PICTURE? TRAVEL AND PHOTOGRAPY – BILL FERRY- At first glance, this is a nondescript photo. Maybe it isn’t even apparent that it is a drydock. Walk closer and details begin to emerge that stand on their own. I’m guessing that you might see even more pieces that sta…
  • RETIRE IN CALIFORNIA – Part 3 of 5 PLACES TO RETIRE – CALIFORNIA RETIREMENT – Part 3 of 5: Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, Fresno, Bakersfield, and Santa Maria. SACRAMENTO RETIREMENT Sacramento, with a population of 466,488 residents as of the 2010 census, is the oldest incorporated …
  • FOLLOWING THE THREAD TO ELDER   ACTIVE RETIREMENT LIVING – MADELINE HILL & FRIENDS–by Madeline- Recently some neighbors here at Mountain Meadows (MM) hosted a screening in our Clubhouse of Dot: An Ordinary Life, an Extraordinary Person, a fine short documentary film about…

Retire USA blogging team adds National Retirement Expert Debbie Grovum

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We are really pleased to have Debbie Grovum join our amazing group of retirement bloggers over at Retire USA.
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DEBBIE GROVUM NAMED FEATURED
BLOGGER ON NATIONAL RETIREMENT WEBSITE
(SARASOTA, FL) National retirement expert and Sarasota resident Debbie Drinkard Grovum, a Board Certified Coach trained in life, career and retirement coaching and owner of Ageinista, is now a featured blogger for the national website,www.RetireUSA.net and its popular blog (http://retireusa.net/blog). Launched earlier this year, the fast-growing website and blog were created to serve the needs of 79 million baby-boomers researching retirement options and exploring ways to live a successful retirement lifestyle.
Ms. Grovum, a Faculty Counselor Emeritus with more than thirty years of experience, is owner of Ageinista, an innovative company that provides services and resources that promote a vibrant and productive second half of life. She has been trained by and is affiliated with the Purpose Project, a joint project of the University of Minnesota, Center for Spirituality and Healing and Richard Leider of the Inventure Group. A respected national, state, and local speak, Debbie conducts workshops and classes on topics related to vibrant aging, living and working with purpose, creating a beautiful life, thriving in transition and cancer survivorship. Debbie divides her time between Bemidji, MN and Sarasota, FL.
With more than 6,000 pages of retirement information and a growing team of nationally recognized bloggers, RetireUSA (www.RetireUSA.net ) is quickly becoming the go to site for retirement information. With 10,000 baby-boomers reaching retirement age daily, RetireUSA expects site traffic to reach over a million visitors by the end of its first year. It already has more Twitter followers than AARP.
“Because every retiree has their own ideas of what retirement means to them, we knew are blog would have to be wide ranging,” explains RetireUSA partner Karen Darling. “That’s why we decided to pattern our blog after Babble.com a successful site for parents that features numerous bloggers.”
Ms. Grovum is joining a national blogging team that already includes Dr. Robin Miller (Integrative Medicine), Dr. John Kalb (Winning at Aging), Andy Baxter (Senior Fitness), Julia Ruscitti (Insurance Solutions), Mei Wong and Brittany Weller (Care Options), Ellee Celler (Real Estate), Cherie Henry (Senior Housing Options), William Ferry (Photography & Travel) and Tom Smith (Travel).

Top Ten Retirement States? Well, eleven actually… plus my personal favorite, Oregon!

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Retire USA keeps on growing, mostly thanks to some great posts by our many retirement bloggers and guests at the website.  Our goal is to become one of the top online sources of retirement information for the USA.

We now have excellent city profiles on about 225 US cities with a focus on the information you’ll need to plan a retirement in those states/cities.  There are over a dozen great bloggers writing articles for the Retire USA Retirement Blog, and over four thousand  individual retirement records, sorted by cities and into four key retirement categories:  Health Care, Financial Services, Retirement Communities, and Real Estate.

Thanks to the magic of Google’s custom search we have a Retire USA  “retirement search” (see top of page) that will allow you to search our site and the greater online universe for more retirement related information.   |

At the very least you should be following RetireUSA on Twitter for Retirement information so you’ll be alerted to the new blog posts as they appear online:   Twitter Retirement Information

So, what are the TOP TEN RETIREMENT STATES?     This is a *personal view* by yours truly Joe Duck based on limited research, but I think this is probably close in terms of the states to which most people retire among those who are *changing their home state*.   Obviously most people stay put for retirement, so simply asking “where do most people retire” is the same as asking “where do most people live”?      If you are searching for a new home our site is a great place to start, and here are the states I think you are most likely to be searching for.

If you think this is  NOT a good list, please let me know in the comments why!    Some day when I’m not as lazy as right now I’ll research this topic, though it’s often hard to find good data since most states are all trying to promote their virtues – I’m guessing there will be many “self serving” studies by economic development or travel groups to “show” that their state is THE place to retire.    I think the best test is probably to find the states that get the most people to *change their residence*, as this is a very good sign that you are doing something right … retirement wise.

California Retirement | Colorado Retirement  | Florida Retirement | New York Retirement | Nevada Retirement | North Carolina Retirement | Oregon Retirement | South Carolina Retirement | Texas Retirement | Utah Retirement |  Virginia Retirement  | Arkansas Retirement

Retirement Blogs

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In addition to our own Retirement blog at Retire USA, here’s a list of some other retirement oriented blogs you can find online:

My Retirement Blog
http://www.myretirementblog.com/

Boomers Retirement
http://boomersretirement.blogspot.com/

Early Retirement Extreme
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

Early Retirement Blog
http://earlyretirementblog.com/

GRACEful Retirement
http://gracefulretirement.blogspot.com/
Adventures in Retirement
http://myretirementadventures.blogspot.com/

Retirement: A Full Time Job
http://retiredsyd.typepad.com/

Mature Not Senile
http://jude8753.com/

JR’s Retirement
http://jrsretirement.blogspot.com/

Early Retirement the Middle Way
http://earlyretirementmiddleway.blogspot.com/

A Satisfying Retirement Lifestyle
http://satisfyingretirement.blogspot.com/

Retired texas teacher blog
http://www.myretiredteacherblog.blogspot.com/

Retired In Thailand and Loving It
http://malcolmandciejay.blogspot.com/

Joyfully Retired
http://joyfullyretired.com/

Retired and Crazy
http://www.retiredandcrazy.com/

The Retirement Chronicles
http://myretirementchronicles.blogspot.com/

Retirement Information at Retire USA

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Retire USA is growing as a helpful source of retirement information for the USA.    As always the challenges of creating and maintaining a large website were underestimated, but I think the final product is starting to come together nicely thanks to excellent city profiles on over 200 US cities, some great bloggers at our excellent Retirement Blog, and many thousands of individual retirement records in city by city categories of Health Care, Financial Services, Retirement Communities, and Real Estate.

As always any criticism or comments are very welcome.    One of the challenges is the sheer size of this topic – there are thousands of cities of interest and tens of thousands of potentially relevant listings so we are struggling a bit to decide whether to filter all that content or try to be very comprehensive and find ways to include everything we can find.    Thankfully, our Google “retirement search” (see top of page) allows folks to search both our site and the greater Google universe of content for more information.      We also have one of the most followed Twitter Account for Retirement information:   Twitter Retirement

We’ve got some good city by city coverage of all states now, so check it out and let me know what you think!

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Retirement
Colorado Retirement  Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Retirement Information
Florida Retirement Georgia Hawaii Idaho Indiana Illinois Iowa Retirement
Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Mississippi Retirement
Missouri  Minnesota  Montana Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico Retirement
New York Retirement Nevada North Carolina
North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Retirement

Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota
Tennessee TexasUtah Vermont Virginia Retirement
 Washington  West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Retirement

Retirement Information at Retire USA

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Wow, I’d forgotten how hard it is to build and troubleshoot a huge website, but things are finally coming together at Retire USA, a project I’ve got going with three other partners.  The plan is to showcase retirement options across all the states in the USA.

Although comments about this are welcome, you’ll find things still a bit rough and there’s lots of data (thousands of individual records) yet to be linked up to state and city pages, though some of this can be found via the Google custom search engine which will seek out Retirement information at our site, combine it with ads, and post the results.

By tonight all the state pages will be active, most with links out to city pages.   Much more to come … soon!

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida GeorgiaHawaii Idaho Indiana Illinois Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan MississippiMissouri Minnesota Montana Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York Nevada North CarolinaNorth Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee TexasUtah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Google Custom Seach Engine = Brilliant! CSE Troubleshooting Tips

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The Google Custom Search allows a simple addition of code to your site that creates a customized search engine run by Google.   This is often added via your adsense account (under ads / search) and it is a brilliant way to add search to you site that helps monetize your peeps with google advertising placed next to a list of your web pages.

HOWEVER I just spent a bit too much time fixing a simple problem so I thought I’d start a list of Google Custom Search Troubleshooting tips:

ONE:  It’ll only show indexed content so be sure to create a sitemap for Google. Also a good idea to place some links to your pages from other sites  so Google can find them more easily.

TWO:

be sure to add  *.*  to the specific URLs you want to custom search.     For our RetireUSA retirement custom search I needed to add this to the URLs box to make sure it picked up all of our indexed content:

http://www.retireusa.net/*.*

http://blog.retireusa.net/*.*

Check out our Retirement Search tomorrow at RetireUSA.net

You’ll probably want to ignore this post unless you are … Googlebot! Or Retired. Or a Retired Googlebot?

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Retirement | Poudre Property Services | Cadence Bank |   UT Medical Group | Eskaton | Palm Springs Family Care Center

OK, so this is kind of clever and kind of pathetic all at the same time.    Google can take too long to index new content, but Joe Duck has good “authority” with Google (ie Google knows the blog is legitimate, regularly updated, and thus sort of assumes it’s actually read by real people who are breathing real globally warmed earthly air).   Links from this blog are therefore often “indexed” by Google, which again reasonably assumes those links are not spammy junk.    Often Googlebot will “follow” the links at those links in an effort to fully index and rank new content as it pours online.

We have a great new project launching any minute now called “RetireUSA.net”   The idea is a database of Retirement related information, organized by about 250 popular retirement city / regions across the United States.

So Googlebot, please start indexing our thousands of records at Retire USA!   Thanks Google!     Any humans reading NOTE that these records will be changed and improved over the co ming weeks as I complete the templates for this project.    The  index or “home page” will soon have a clickable map of states from which Retirement folks can drill down to cities of interest and from there to categories of interest.   We’re also enlisting quite a few folks to help with the blog portion which will feature writing about retirement issues from experts all over the country.

If you are interested in writing about Retirement issues such as travel, retirement communities, real estate, or travel please send me an email at jhunkins@gmail.com.  These are NOT paid positions but fame may await you if we succeed … and you are patient …

We’ve faced many challenges

Those poor folks in the 99% who only have 8 million to their name.

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After some time looking I finally found the number I’ve been after, which is the cutoff point in terms of the wealth of those elusive and mysterious  “1% people” everybody is talking about.  Here’s the excellent research document:

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf

We learn that the cutoff for moving from the impoverished 99% to those nasty ONE PERCENTERS is …. wait for it …. a  Net worth of $8,232,000 or more..

WoW.

So here’s the problem if you are an anti occupation person – those one percenters SURE have a LOT of money!    In fact as you go into the category of the super duper rich – the top tenth of a percent, you get wealth so great it’s hard for most of us to even imagine – hundreds of millions of dollars.

HOWEVER if you are a “pro occupation” person I think you have even a bigger problem, and that’s the thing most  would not even call a “problem” at all, it’s the fact that we are SO prosperous here in America that millions and millions of people who are well below the “one percent” mark are incredibly well off .   Somebody with 7 million in the bank won’t make the 1% cut, but clearly they are very rich.

How moved should we be by a movement that considers millionaires to be among the disadvantaged in America?  

Of course the 99% folks don’t mean it literally, rather they are concerned that a small number of elite rich folks control the whole show.   It’s an important topic, yet it seems to me the concept of exploitation of the poor by the rich weakens as you examine closely the actual data as well as the procedures and power structures as well as how things work in the country’s business and political circles.  Lots of redistribution is already taking place, though tax critics will reasonably note that taxes go mostly to entitlements for the middle class and the defense department.   Higher taxes are not necessarily a path to “greater fairness”.

Certainly we want more even distribution of America’s massive wealth, but it’s also important to keep the production levels high so we have something to redistribute.  This balance is not easy.  Not easy at all.

Oregon Coast … Mobile

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Good time to review a few projects I’m associated with or working on now, and thank folks (esp. FoolsGold) for the many excellent suggestions provided over the years to improve the websites.

Over at the Online Highways empire we’re working on a mobile application for travel along the Oregon Coast that will be located at OHWY.mobi  and will feature a very simple mobile optimized architecture that branches out to Coastal Cites, Coastal Lodging, Coastal Attractions, and more.     I’m still not convinced that .mobi websites will take off as much as many believe they will because I think smartphones will get better fast and we’ll see a lot more optimization on the fly for regular websites, but it’s a good base to cover.     I’ll be trying out the dot mobi “mobi translation” routine soon which will allow me to create some .mobi sites from my Airports and Airlines information at QuickAid.com Airport Directory and and the Airport City Codes site.

Meanwhile, after failing for a very long time to find a good and inexpensive Drupal developer to finish  Retire USA, a Retirement Information Database, website, blog, and  more including the most followed Retirement related account on Twitter. I’m taking it on myself as an HTML project.    I’ll be extracting the Drupal data to a regular database we can enhance over time, and then use HTML templates and a merge routine to get a site that will look a lot like the Drupal site we had planned.     I could be wrong but I think I’ll have a simpler and faster site with almost the same functionality as Drupal.

MedicalTraveling.net is another new blog that will have a database of high quality hospitals around the world that do procedures, operations, exams, etc for lower costs than here in the great old USA.      Medical Travel and Medical Tourism articles and news will also be featured.

But wait…… there’s MORE!