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Florida ranks at the top of the best states for retirement.
Trying to plan ahead for where you'll spend your golden years? WalletHub has done a good portion of the legwork for you, looking closely at three categories—affordability, health care, and overall quality of life—in all 50 states to see which ones offer the best retirement options.
Nice plug for WalletHub and Florida. I hope they paid you well.
It is a great place to retire unless a hurricane is headed your way and the nursing home you are living in does not really care what happens to you.
I would pick a state where natural disasters are not the norm. Because as you get older and if you are fortunate enough to live up into your 80's or 90's you don't want to live in a place where mandatory evacuations or large earthquakes or tornadoes are possible. Same thing for cold snaps like the ones this year might leave you without power. You might be living in a facility where the staff is just making a paycheck and you are not the priority.
Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, far southern Utah and parts of far west Texas would probably be the only ones that would work for me.
Articles like that also don't reflect differences within a state. Tennessee is rated 35th. Affordability is rated #5, but Quality of Life and Health Care are rated very low: 45th and 44th. Those factors vary tremendously depending on where in the state you live. Memphis, Nashville and Cookeville (for example) have outstanding medical centers. Really rural areas maybe not so much. Same for quality of life - depending on what qualities you enjoy. Some want the peace and isolation of a rural area. Some want close access to entertainment, shopping and restaurants.
Florida is not a place. It is pretty much "water word" where a giant bulldozer has piled up some sand and let the water form a "lake" (more expensive lots!).....and then they build a fake world on that sand that reminds you of the commercial hell you may have lived in for other times in your life.
1/2 or more of the people - from doctors to contractors - are looking to rip you off. Consider yourself lucky if you only pay double and you find no valuable missing from the house.
Then there is the violence and drugs. Florida was largely built up on drug money - much from other countries. The Russians recently discovered it (the 9/11 hijackers trained there) and, in the end, it represents the American Dream (or nightmare) - that being "everything is for sale and if you don't have resources...here is a bus ticket" (no kidding).
Florida is not a place. It is pretty much "water word" where a giant bulldozer has piled up some sand and let the water form a "lake" (more expensive lots!).....and then they build a fake world on that sand that reminds you of the commercial hell you may have lived in for other times in your life.
1/2 or more of the people - from doctors to contractors - are looking to rip you off. Consider yourself lucky if you only pay double and you find no valuable missing from the house.
Then there is the violence and drugs. Florida was largely built up on drug money - much from other countries. The Russians recently discovered it (the 9/11 hijackers trained there) and, in the end, it represents the American Dream (or nightmare) - that being "everything is for sale and if you don't have resources...here is a bus ticket" (no kidding).
No idea what part of FLA you are referring to. Perhaps the trailer parks. Our area is NOTHING like what you refer to! But that is OK, you stay in your hell and we will stay in ours with our pet alligators and palmetto bugs.
Florida is not a place. It is pretty much "water word" where a giant bulldozer has piled up some sand and let the water form a "lake" (more expensive lots!).....and then they build a fake world on that sand that reminds you of the commercial hell you may have lived in for other times in your life.
1/2 or more of the people - from doctors to contractors - are looking to rip you off. Consider yourself lucky if you only pay double and you find no valuable missing from the house.
Then there is the violence and drugs. Florida was largely built up on drug money - much from other countries. The Russians recently discovered it (the 9/11 hijackers trained there) and, in the end, it represents the American Dream (or nightmare) - that being "everything is for sale and if you don't have resources...here is a bus ticket" (no kidding).
I'm not sure what you are talking about with this rant. I lived in Florida for over 50 years and never experienced what you are upset about. I admit that there are areas that probably fit some of your description. But Florida is such a diverse state from the rural panhandle to the touristy Keys that it is kind of hard to slap such a description to the whole state.
We decided to leave after retirement as we wanted a different climate. But if we ever decided to leave Tennessee and go back further south, I could very well be content with going back to Vero Beach on the east coast where we lived for over ten years.
With a handful of exceptions along the East Coast, most states are so large that trying to paint an entire state with a big brush isn't valid.
I live and work in Tennessee. Retirees supposedly love it. Sure, if you're living in wealthy Brentwood or Franklin, or some pristine mountain environment, and are not dependent upon the local economy, I suppose it's nice. But that's not the Tennessee I deal with every day.
This is the Tennessee I deal with. I work in a town with a lot of pollution and crime. I don't really see the mountains that people move for during the week. I don't get to see any pretty lakes or rivers on a regular basis, but I do see plenty of smokestacks, homeless in the downtown area, and run-down buildings.
But if you had a fancy home on South Holston Lake or similar, didn't need to work, and were fine with the isolated setting, you can have picturesque views about half an hour from where I took that first picture yesterday. I boat from this marina a couple times a year and it's a totally different world than where I work.
It's really all about context and what one's own day to day is like.
I would pick a state where natural disasters are not the norm.
As I've stated previously, Florida is not a small town and the weather (among other things) is not the same for all areas throughout the state; the probability of you experiencing a hurricane depends upon where you live in the state. Tampa has had one direct hit in about 100 years. If "norm" to you means once a century, then you're correct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jackwinkelman
Same thing for cold snaps like the ones this year might leave you without power.
Umm, a cold snap in South Florida is when the temps go into the 50s, or heaven forbid on rare occasions, the high 40s. Exactly how would we lose power because of that? (See, since you illogically consider Florida to be all one place with the same conditions, I can tear your examples apart by choosing any area within the state to show how ridiculous your statement can be.).
Quote:
Originally Posted by whateverblahblah
I've seen the ones with a dark tan, laying on the beach. Absorbing UV radiation all day, waiting to get skin cancer, really isn't my thing.
What else do the retired people in Florida do? Play bridge? Sounds like a pretty boring life to me.
Of all the uninformed and ridiculous comments about Florida in this thread, this tops them all. Yep, nothing to do in Florida. That's why people from all over the world come to South Florida to vacation and to live.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
Florida is not a place. It is pretty much "water word" where a giant bulldozer has piled up some sand and let the water form a "lake" (more expensive lots!).....and then they build a fake world on that sand that reminds you of the commercial hell you may have lived in for other times in your life.
1/2 or more of the people - from doctors to contractors - are looking to rip you off. Consider yourself lucky if you only pay double and you find no valuable missing from the house....
I remember when I was much, much younger and before the internet really caught on for the general public that my mom had a stack of large, soft-cover books on retirement places.
In each chapter, they "rated" cities based on some parameter, such as number of grocery chain stores or how many sunny days the city experienced per year. In the books were some worksheets where you could assign a personal weight factor to any specific parameter. So, if access to health care was not very important to you, you could give is a lesser weighting. Then, you total up all the weighted factors can came up with a personalized list of cities with what is important to you in a retirement location. I found the exercise quite interesting and useful, (even though at that time I rarely thought about retirement).
It amazes me that in this age of computers, nobody has written a program to do the same thing.
My understanding is that to raise more revenue next year the state of Florida will require all palmetto bugs to have license plates.
In the end, the final three surviving creatures will be palmetto bugs, cockroaches, and Keith Richards.
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