Product Description: WHAT ARE YOU DOING THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
Where, and maybe more importantly, how do you want to live once you've escaped the 9-to-5?
Barbara Corcoran has built her career on knowing where people will live even before they know it themselves! Now she turns her keen eye toward predicting "the next big thing" in real estate-where and how the over 77 million baby boomers will live when they retire.
In NEXTVILLE, Corcoran identifies the top eight trends that are changing where (and how) boomers are retiring. And she helps you figure out what's most important to you in your next place-whether it's pursuing your passions, living green, finding community, living young in a city or college town, or even staying right in your old home town. Corcoran also delivers her signature "Barb's Rules" on where and how to get the most out of the next great stage of our life. Let Barbara help you make the smartest real estate choices today to ensure a secure, comfortable, and fabulously fun tomorrow.
Useful info could be contained in an article 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 The housing price info was out of date when it was printed.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.
Good basic philosphy coupled with limited information. 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.
Nextville is lightsville Fun and light reading on the topic of moving after 'retirement.' For example, the analysis of the need to discover passion and purpose and not 'just' play golf. The choices of locations is very limited in that it is almost exclusively in the U.S. Greater range and more detailed cultural offerings would be helpful.
Good, Practical Advice - In a Fun and Easy-to-Digest Format I just finished "Nextville" and really loved it. Who knew about "cohousing" for those weary of the "car-dependant mcmansion sprawl!" Cohousing sounds like a great idea to me, and I never would have known about it if I had not read this book. The information on selling a current home or choosing a good area for new home is very helpful, and it saved me hours of time of trawling for tips on the web. The layout of the book is simple to navigate, and easy to take in. It's full of good, practical advice. (Incidentally, I'm glad that someone acknowledges that New York City is the "greenest" place to live in the U.S.!)
Great Resource This is a great book for Baby Boomers approaching retirement. Author Barb Corcoran seems to have her hand of the pulse of this age group and she is very insightful into their work, spending, and living habits. It is an excellent reference if you are considering a move at this time in your life.
I'm not quite at retirement age yet, but it's really not that far away. This book has opened my mind to new possibilities for retirement--things I hadn't thought of before.
Nextville is full of practical advice and is written by a woman who seems to be the voice of experience. Besides this, the author ads a touch of humor and it is an easy read.
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