Retirement Places Rated: What You Need to Know to Plan the Retirement You Deserve, Sixth Edition [Paperback]

David Savageau (Author)

Book Description

Series: Rated | Publication Date: August 27, 2004

Whether you're considering retirement or scouting out the best location for a second home, Retirement Places Rated is an invaluable sourcebook. For more than 20 years, people have turned to author David Savageau for help in choosing the perfect location, and now that the number of Americans who are reaching retirement age is greater than ever, this information is more valuable than ever before. Nearly 200 top retirement areas in the United States, both traditional and newly discovered, are profiled.They're ranked and compared for cost of living, climate, health care, economic factors, crime, services, cultural life, and recreation. Included are climate graphs, maps of retirement regions, comparison charts, and demographic profiles of each area. A special section on relocation resources helps you set your plans in motion once you've chosen where to live.This completely updated edition includes new locations and factors in the latest statistics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

". . . you’ll find a number of books that rate and rank places as regions or communities. However, for [retirement], the most complete is from the famous wanderer, David Savageau.--Richard Bolles and John Nelson, What Color is Your Parachute? For Retirement (2007)

"When I came across Savageau’s book, I was awed by the extraordinary amount of research that went into its creation. As a reporter who has spent his life gathering information, I could appreciate the effort involved." --Stan Hinden, How to Retire Happy (2006)

" . . . the lowdown on terrific, affordable places to spend your retirement."--Jordan Goodman, Everyone’s Money Book on Retirement Planning (2002)

"The great resource not only explains the most important retirement location considerations, but it rates big and small towns on key components. Savageau’s new book is the best in its field."--Robert J. Bruss, Tribune Media Services, August 1999

From the Back Cover

The best source for selecting an ideal location for your retirement or second home

Profiles of 203 retirement areas in more than 40 states

In this completely revised and updated edition, the top retirement areas are ranked and rated by six essential criteria to help you make the right choices for your lifestyle:

• The best places to enjoy the performing arts and the outdoors
• The most reasonably priced places to live
• The most stable and comfortable climates
• The safest and most crime-free areas
• The best in health care, public library access, continuing education, and other services
• The best opportunities for employment and affordable housing

Only in Retirement Places Rated:

• A personalized quiz to help you determine the factors that are most important to you
• Additional resources you can contact to make the most informed choices, from newspapers to tax commissions

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Frommers; Sixth edition (August 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764544381
• ISBN-13: 978-0764544385
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,149,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

226 of 230 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quantitive ratings provide good information, January 18, 1998

By 

T. Padgett "Ted Padgett" (Lilburn, GA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Retirement Places Rated (Paperback)

The beauty of the book is that Savageau's rankings are both (a) quantative, reducing the chance for the author's personal preferences to affect the ratings, and (b) pretty well explained: you know how he came up with the ratings. It's unlikely that your own list does not include several in Savageau's group. Since he explains the basis for each location's standing in each category (there are seven), the reader can make his/her own judgements if a particular factor is of less interest to that reader than it is to the author. In fact, a sort of interest quiz in the first chapter helps the reader understand which factors are more important to him/her. This armed, the reader could use the approach to his/her own list of places.

Other books of this genre tend to lean heavily on opinion and seem to get a lot of input from the chamber of commerce. That's not a problem here.

87 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Retirement Places Rated Provides Reference, August 29, 2005

By 

Radnor Duo "Mitch & Cheryl" (Small Town Ohio) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Retirement Places Rated: What You Need to Know to Plan the Retirement You Deserve, Sixth Edition (Paperback)

While I have some reservations about the relative "weights" provided to some of the information groups, this is a good reference with which to compare information among cities and regions. Contrasting the climate or economic strengths of different locations is relatively easy using this book.

Each section of this reference guide has a scoring system which eventually corresponds to a scale of 100. In this way, the author attempts to compare and contrast disparate issues, such as cost of living, services and crime. But while the detail is "good", the accumulation of scores to arrive at a final ranking of all locations lacks some merit. High cost of living cities still have very high overall ranks because of arbitrary "high" scores for subjective items such as ambience. Also crime rates tend to be of limited value because some locations under report actual crime statistics.

Overall, I would recommend this guide as a starting point for those considering relocation when retiring. While it may not answer all questions, which the author admits, it does give the reader a place to start when compiling their own list for what they are looking for in a retirement setting.

76 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the best comparision books, February 16, 2006

By 

Margaret W. Lamm "Marge" (Elkton, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Retirement Places Rated: What You Need to Know to Plan the Retirement You Deserve, Sixth Edition (Paperback)

This book is very good if you are looking to retire or locate somewhere else, plus it gives you a lot of good information on your locate area and state. Very well written, however I think in some cases the tax information is incorrect. In Maryland the piggy back tax is not calculated and this makes the state income taxes look lower. Weather information, crime, health and cost of living were very interesting, and comparing areas of states or state to state was easy.