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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good basic philosphy coupled with limited information., August 13, 2008
This review is from: Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life (Hardcover)
It's not Barbara Corcoran's fault that a mortgage crisis blasted us just when the real estate bubble burst. But she can be faulted for ignoring the signs that the bubble was straining to begin with. So I'll give her applause for encouraging us boomers to look deep into what we want to do next with our lives, while turning thumbs down on most of her specific advice.
I got off to a bad start with this book, she offers up a quiz that's supposed to help you get your mind around the type of retirement location or second life career that's best for you. In my case, the answers could not have been less revealing. Her assessment of an even score like mine was basically "read the whole book, as you don't have a clear path anyway." I'm exagerating with that, but that's the way my imagination reacted.
Her basic premise is good. Don't move to Florida or Arizona, park yourself in a retirement community and expect to live out your days playing golf and shuffleboard! You'll hate it! She's a big proponent of creativity and drive, and that's excellent. It's just when she gets into the specifics of where and how that she loses objectivity.
First off, Ms. Corcoran seems to have a serious fixation with taxes. Nothing wrong with that if you're of an anti-tax mindset, but please, I'm not going to move to Panama just because they don't tax Americans as much as the state of Hawaii. Perhaps you feel different, that doesn't make either of us a bad person. :-)
It does cast some of her opinions in a less than favorable light however, when she expresses an economic recommendation that was fine when she wrote the book, but falls flat within the the economic climate of only six months later.
In any case, her basic message it to find your passions and build on them. That is excellent advice that no one can afford to reject. If you're looking for basic encouragement, and you like the self-help genre this is another collection of opinions and advice that you might appreciate. But if you're serious about learning something new, you just might want to wait until you see it at the second hand book fair or garage sale.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Useful info could be contained in an article, August 23, 2008
This review is from: Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life (Hardcover)
I was disappointed in this book for several reasons:
The quiz has very little to do with how to find a good place to retire.
Author mentions issues with living in countries other than the US but omits to mention that some places do not let you actually "own" property as we do here.
It's not so much how high the taxes, but what you get for your taxes that is important--public transit that actually runs more than once an hour, being but one example. Low-tax rural areas are great, if you can still drive or can afford to have someone else drive you places. If not, supposedly low-tax areas can be higher in other costs (not just gas, but say, having to spend time getting to larger stores or accessing healthcare).
Placing retirees into categories was annoying, as was the putting down of people who chose (and still choose) to go to Florida, and those who prefer certain activities to others.
The author did make some good points about planning for your retirement, but you could easily have fit them into a magazine article. The housing price info was out of date when it was printed. Borrow this from your library.
If you are thinking of moving to a small (or not-so-small) town after retiring, a better book would be "Moving to a Small Town" by Wanda Urbanska and Frank Levering.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sparked a conversation, May 14, 2008
This review is from: Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life (Hardcover)
This book opened my mind to new possibilities for retirement--things I hadn't thought of before. I especially liked the chapter on "Living Green," and the description of the pros/cons of buying a second home or time-share. The best thing about this book for me was that it sparked a conversation with my husband about our (different) ideas for retirement. My objection to the book is the typeface: it should be printed in black ink, not gray, for the older audience that is their target; aging eyes need higher contrast, and my eyes felt strained reading it.
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