About Us
This site is devoted to finding and exploring affordable, even cheap, retirement places in warm climates. This includes Gulf Coast states in the U.S., especially Florida, and overseas locations such as Mexico and Central America, including Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, and other countries. Caribbean islands, with their lush tropical climates, are among the desired locations.
Dave and Linda are your hosts. We are a couple in our early 60s who look forward to retiring someplace warm. Recently, we have watched the market eat up our investments and have seen the value of our home decline. Now we wonder if we will be able to afford to retire in the warm, snow-free climate of our dreams. We know there are others like us out there, and because we need to do this research for ourselves, we thought others could benefit from it too. Now retirement age is clearly in sight and we all have to do the best we can with what is left of our savings.
This site investigates retirement communities that are reasonable, affordable, or just plain cheap. You won't find luxury mansions of the rich and famous on this site! We look at all the elements it takes to provide a comfortable retirement lifestyle: location, housing density, urban/suburban/rural, nearby shopping, safety, medical facilities, public transportation, neighborhood amenities, and other facets of life. We review a variety of retirement housing options, from single-family homes to condos to manufactured homes to apartments. You are invited to come along on our journey as we explore the best places to retire.
We'd like you to know more about us. Dave has been actively involved with the Internet for years, nearly since its inception. He is mostly self-taught and his day-to-day job is search marketing. As a result, he has become highly skilled in online marketing strategies. His skill is exceeded only by his thirst for discovering what is "out there" and finding the best place to retire.
Linda is an Internet novice, having become acquainted with it only a few years ago. She has a background in education and worked at a university for several years before retiring to start her own academic editing business on the Internet. Her organizational skills, as well as her research and editing skills, are an asset to our endeavor. Linda writes blog entries for the website, for example, healthy retirement tips and retire on the cheap tips. She has been recognized as a Platinum Level Expert Author by EzineArticles.com website, where she also posts the articles.
Neither Dave nor Linda began life in a tropical setting. Dave was born in the Northeast US, spent time in Southeast Asia serving in the military, and moved to Michigan when he returned stateside. After enduring 13 winters in the frigid Northland, Dave moved to Florida, where he spent the next 8 years. Family matters brought him to the Midwest, where he has lived ever since. But he misses Florida, with its warm sunshine and ocean breezes. He continues to dream about retirement in a warm place, and now the time has come to begin planning for retirement. This Web site was a natural result of his research and desire to share with the Internet community.
Linda was born and raised in the Midwest and has lived there all her life. Although she has hated cold weather seemingly forever, her epiphany came during a goal-setting exercise at her employment. She wanted to vacation somewhere warm, and because she was traveling alone, a cruise sounded safe. She could see several Caribbean islands and unpack only once. The experience changed her life. The sunny tropical skies, warm tropical climate, and especially the lush, green, rainforest vegetation, had her hooked. She thought she would be a "cruiser" during retirment, living in the temperamental Midwest weather and escaping only a few times each year to her personal paradise. About that time, she met Dave.
Nearing 60, he had still never married, and he had searched Internet dating sites from time to time for someone to share life with. Linda had been married many years, divorced, and had been single over 10 years. A friend urged her to try Internet personals. Alarm bells went off! Weren't those places full of weirdoes? But slowly and cautiously, she began to look. She found Dave's picture — he was wearing a tropical shirt and Diamondhead was in the background; she was smitten. They met and "clicked" immediately. A couple of years later they were married in a simple ceremony many couples only dream of: on an island beach in Florida, surrounded by palm trees and ocean.
Together now, they are searching for the best place to retire, a location with warm sunny days and no snow, ever!