Retirement living, Where?

I moved to a very large retirment community called The Villages. Just Google it and watch their video. They have 29 golf courses, many pools and over 2,000 activities/clubs for anything you can think of. It covers three counties and everything we need is withing our borders. Very convenient and great elder care since all the doctors deal only with seniors. It is quiet and immaculately clean. All buildings, except houses, have a façade to match the area. This place has been called the Adult Disney World and is a tourist and vacation spot. People are friendly and best of all, in your age group. Houses can be had at under $200,000 up to 8 million.

The only downside is it is very tightly controlled as to what you can do to your house, colors or display on your lawn. For those used to doing whatever they want on their property or like to play loud music at night, this is not the place for you. It is mostly republican and white (98%). As a former New Yorker I miss the ethnic diversity and do not belong to any political party. It is the largest of its kind in the world and fasted growing. You travel by golf cart if you like since there are separate lanes for them and even bridges and tunnels to cross over major roads. We love it here even though we do not golf or are active seniors. For us it is how clean and beautiful everything is and the convenience to whatever you want like 129 restaurants and lots of other things too. We call it the Bubble as we are isolated from the outside world. We have not had to leave our community for the last 4 years since even city and state services have offices located here.

Worth a look. It is in central Florida so by the time a hurricane reaches us it is pretty weak. Irma did not cause us any damage at all. Just a lot of wind and our homes are built to withstand a full category 3 hurricane.
 

For our retirement, we are going to leave northeastern Florida, aka Jacksonville, and moving back to an area we do miss, but definitely gets a winter.........northern Colorado or southeastern Wyoming. We love the rodeo action there, freshwater boating/fishing and other things that Florida just doesn't have. Many people here think we are nuts, but.

Have been living here since 2009, but don't enjoy it here anymore. Having gone thru a couple of tropical storms and hurricanes, humidity that makes a person sweat, way to much crime, lots of people/traffic and so on and so on. We lived south of Denver for 5 1/2 years and I worked in Senior Healthcare in downtown Denver for 4 1/2 years and was pretty amazed at how many Seniors live in the Denver area. But, when we move, we won't be any part of the Denver area (thank God).

Have lived in both apartments and had a house in Colorado. Even though we did love our house, the cost of maintenance/upkeep (for a 2-story house) got to be way to much for us. Since leaving Colorado, we have rented apartments twice (2-bedrooms). No landscaping work, any repairs are done by maintenance and really, really like the "bungalow"/1-story apartment we have that is attached at the end of the apartment building we live in. Have nobody above us! Our apartment is more like a lake cottage than an apartment...….small, but big enough for us. Of course, when we move, will say "bye" to this nice apartment.

Financially, we just don't have the money to buy another house and "physically" couldn't take care of it either.
 
Our house is paid for, our only child lives nearby, my grandkids are here, the winters are mild. Why would I go anywhere else? Life is good.
 


Back
Top