So...You're Not Much Into Golf But Want To Retire In La Quinta, Ca?

Funny thing about retiring as an active adult these days; everyone assumes you play golf and want to live in an active adult golf retirement community. If you do play the game, then it’s a correct assumption and no big deal. But what if you don’t? Some of us played more golf when we were about to go to college than we do as we about to plan a retirement. Some of us have been just been busy with careers and families, right? What if you still enjoy the occasional game, but it’s not your raison d’etre. Or, maybe you live with someone who’s slightly less involved with the game than you are.

Retirement is supposedly life’s next big adventure. So, in considering where to live out that adventure, it’s a good idea to think about what do with the time that you’re not out on the links. Or, for those obsessed with the game, it’s a good idea to think about what your significant other is going to do while you play golf every day.

Whether due to your own or your significant other’s obsession - If golf is associated with your retirement, an active adult community in La Quinta, CA will probably be a part of the conversation. According to the Robb Report, La Quinta is the “Best Place to Live for Golf” thanks to over 20 exceptional golf courses, including the famous PGA West and the nationally acclaimed Arnold Palmer Classic Course at SilverRock Resort. It’s a virtual smorgasbord of golf with an unparalleled reputation in the golf world; a siren’s call to the golf enthusiast.

But did you know that there’s more than golf to La Quinta? Were you aware that the city embraces art and culture? Ever hear about the La Quinta Arts Festival, live theatre by the La Quinta Playhouse, or the variety of public art pieces? The Old Town Village is enchanting, and features the very best in shopping and dining experiences.

Okura, which offers a fusion of Japanese and California cuisine, has a legendary sushi bar. Arnold Palmer’s (look, there’s no escaping the golf thing…) offers “Progressive American Cuisine served in a private club setting.”

If you’re retirement includes taking the time to cook for yourself, check out the Certified Farmers Market at Old Town. Offering live music from 9 AM to 12:30 PM, the Farmers Market is the best way to find the freshest, best tasting fresh fruits & vegetables. You can also get honey, nuts, cheese, plants and cut flowers, as well as fresh-baked breads from the local L'Artisan Bakery. Check out the Old Town website for details and other events such as the nightly live music shows.

As for where to take those fresh veggies back to cook, take a look at the retirement community Trilogy La Quinta. Nestled against the Santa Rosa Mountains in the Coral Mountain area of south La Quinta, it’s a 55+ active adult community that’s surrounded by all of the natural beauty that La Quinta has to offer. The resort-like setting is maintained with natural landscaping and seasonal flowers, and owners have the use of the Santa Rosa Club facilities, front yard landscaping service, and 24 Hour Guard-Gated Security. There’s even an on-site spa!

Golf Retirement Communities a Big Hit with Boomers

Retirement Golf Communities

According to baby-boomers-life.com, retirement community living is a popular option among baby boomers.

Many senior golf retirement communities offer a country club resort lifestyle at a very affordable price. Baby Boomers coming to age 55 are eligible to join one of these active retirement communities - one of the perks of this generation along with a few gray hairs and accumulated wisdom!

Retirement communities range from extremely luxurious to quite modest, so there are many choices. Of course there can be changes in latitudes and changes in attitudes as well. Depending on the location, a retirement living community offers a world of recreation activities including golf, tennis, swimming, boating, skiing, cycling, kayaking, spa treatments, educational opportunities, and a wonderful social life.

Active Adult Living

If the idea of driving your golf cart down the street to hit a few balls at the range sounds appealing, then a golf retirement community might be in your future!

To view, or even plan a “test drive” stay, at a retirement community that offers golf course style retirement living, visit www.TrilogyLife.com.

Trilogy retirement communities offer active adult lifestyles for baby boomers on the move!

5 Goals Every Baby Boomer Should Set

Active Adult New Homes

In a recent MSN.com article, blogger Karen Datko outlines 5 goals that every baby boomer should set. They include:

1. Get out of debt,
2. Maximize retirement savings,
3. Plan for big expenses,
4. Seek career freedom, and
5. Think about where you will retire.

Where will you retire?

Do yourself a favor and check out Trilogy New Homes and Retirement Communities where they believe in squeezing MORE HOME out of your dollar and every drop out of life.

Trilogy's superior homes are designed around how you want to live. From features that enhance comfort and healthier living to eco-friendly materials and energy-efficient systems, superior living is literally designed and built into every aspect of the community and every inch of your home. That's what makes them such a great value.

For locations of Trilogy communities and the exciting amenities they offer (award-winning golf courses, restaurants, club houses, fitness programs and more) visit http://www.trilogylife.com/.

Karen Datko is a veteran journalist in small-town Montana and a lead blogger for Smart Spending. Smart Spending combines the best money-saving tips from MSN Money and the rest of the Web. More information about the 5 Goals can be found on MSN.com.

Retirement Communities Suited to Your Active Living Style

No matter what your taste, retirement communities for active adults are built just for you...

Imagine enjoying your retirement years...

...minutes outside of Seattle among towering pines that bring a breath of fresh air that allows you to choose or pace of life, or

...enjoying views of California's central coast while sipping a glass of local wine and knowing that you are only a few hours drive from a trip to San Francisco or Los Angeles, or

...soaking in year-round sunshine, beautiful mountain vistas and taking your best swing on PGA quality golf courses, or

...working on your Florida tan while taking in the sights of Orlando...

Ready to enjoy a new home in a community suited to your active living style?

To explore active adult retirement communities in these areas and more, visit www.trilogylife.com.

Swimming Good Exercise for Baby Boomers

Active Adult Living Retirement Communities

There are an increasing number of people that are starting to want to improve there health and baby boomers are no exception. Swimming appears to be one of the most popular forms of exercise among the baby boomers. Swimming provides a full body workout without the danger of overdoing it because it is one of the least stressful forms of exercise that you can do.

Most people do not realize all of the benefits that can be obtained from swimming. Swimming and water exercise is the second best form of exercise that has the lowest rate for injuries. Walking is still the leader in that aspect for low injury rates. There is a great deal of doctors that will recommend that you do water exercises so that you can strengthen your muscles without harming your recovery. Swimming is great physical therapy for people of all ages no matter what their current physical condition is.

Baby boomers like swimming as it allows them to utilize almost all of their major muscle groups at the same time, so that they can get a complete total body workout with minimal strain. The water works as a great form of resistance so that you can use it as strength training and even for aerobic exercises. The baby boomers like water fitness as it can work well for people of all fitness levels. It can help people strengthen their muscles and build up their endurance as well as making them much more flexible.

Many people are not aware that swimming actually provides almost all of the same effects as running does. The difference between running and swimming is that you are not putting a strain on your connective tissues as you do when you are running or doing weight training. Many baby boomers find that swimming allows them to easily maintain the fitness lever or to improve on it as well. You can also do exercise in water more often then you could if you were doing them out of water because the amount of injuries is so low. When you are in water, your body weight is reduced my nearly 90% your movements are 12 times greater then just doing them in the air, therefore you can do much more while in the water.

You will want to look into swimming for your recreational activities if you are from the baby boomer era and want to maintain an active adult lifestyle. Not only will swimming help to fill your need for exercise but it is safe as well. This low impact form of exercise can help to increase the amount of range of motion that you have as well. You will want to talk to your doctor to make sure that you are doing the right thing as with any new exercise program that you begin. To ensure you are not over doing it your doctor will be able to suggest some water exercises to suit your actual fitness level.

Swimming as exercise for baby boomers is a popular pastime as more and more baby boomers near and enter the retirement phase of their lives.

If you are looking for retirement communities that cater to active adult lifestyles, visit http://www.trilogylife.com/.

Article provided by Juliette Crane of Women's Health.

Active Adult Resort Living - Retirement Communities

At Trilogy, we simply don't believe in cookie-cutter homes. Instead, each community offers a variety of floor plans that honor the local design style, from desert contemporary in Arizona to bungalow influences in coastal California.

All of our homes are finished with flexible living space you can tailor to fit the way you want to live -- including options from a separate casita for visiting guests to an office studio to your own cigar and wine tasting rooms.

At Trilogy, it's about combining the ease and value of a production home with the advantages of custom; it means you get a home that's uniquely yours without all the hassle (or expense!).

Click to learn about our Retirement Communities today!

US Census Reports 78 Million Baby Boomers: New Homes Cater to Active Adult Living

In its first report on Baby Boomers in 13 years, a new US Census Bureau analysis of 2006 data released in November 2009, found that California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania are the five US states with the largest numbers of Baby Boomers. In 2006, Baby Boomers age 42 to 60 totaled an estimated 78.0 million and comprised 26.1% of the total U.S. population.

With 78 million people nearing retirement age, it is not surprising that retirement, or “Active Adult Living”, communities catering to the needs and interests of the Baby Boomer generation are increasing in popularity.

Some new home builders even offer a resort-like lifestyle in the form of forward-thinking, master-planned communities complete with diverse amenities like world-class resort clubs, tons of recreation choices, restaurants, scenery, and spa services.

WOW....Who wouldn’t want the live that way….EVERY day?!!!

If you are in the market for a new home in an active adult living community look into the amazing, eco-friendly, energy efficient new home communities located in California, Texas, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania by Trilogy of Shea Homes.

For more information on the November 2009 census on Baby Boomers visit www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/age/2006%20Baby%20Boomers.pdf

Baby Boomer retirees and your active adult development

The market for retirement housing is fundamentally different from that of traditional housing. Unlike working adults, retirees can choose where they live without the restrictions of a job. Thus, a potential retired active adult home buyer can live almost anywhere. With an estimated 74 million people headed for retirement over the next 20 years, the scope of the potential active adult housing market is tremendous. If, as expected, about 20 percent of the retiring Baby Boomers relocate to another state, that will result in about 15 million interstate migrant retirees over the next 20 years. In contrast, only about 4 million Silent Generation retirees (the Baby Boomers' parents) moved to a new state after they retired.

Retirement Communities

Because the scope of the potential active adult home buyer market is so large, it also indicates that the cost of marketing a housing development may be quite high. This cost, however, can be mitigated by marketing only to those potential migrant retirees who are most likely to relocate to the community where the active adult development is located. This targeted marketing strategy involves determining what will attract Baby Boomer retirees to the active adult development.

Using data about the retirement behavior of those Baby Boomers who have already retired and the retirement behavior of the War Babies (those born between 1941 and 1946), we believe that future Baby Boomer retirees will be amenity migrants, not sun migrants. Unlike their parents (the Silent Generation), retiring Baby Boomers are looking for more than a warm place to relax. For Baby Boomers, retirement is the beginning of the second half of their lives. They are looking forward to pursuing personal interests and goals which they had to postpone because of jobs or children. In short, they are selecting their retirement destination because of a lifestyle they desire.

Resort Retirement Communities

For these amenity migrants, it will be the lifestyle of the community where an active adult development is located that will first attract retirees, not the development itself. In marketing such a development, it is essential to place an emphasis on marketing the lifestyle of the community. The first step in developing a targeted marketing plan for an active adult development is to identify the lifestyle of the community where your development is located. Points to keep in mind when doing a lifestyle assessment include:

Don't try to be everything to everybody.

Identify your competition by assessing your community's amenity strengths and weaknesses.

Identify amenities that enhance the lifestyle desired by your potential Baby Boomer retirees.

Recognize that Baby Boomer retirees want to live among people with similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

Green is growing. For many Baby Boomers, the environment is king.

Once you have completed a lifestyle assessment, you are ready to undertake a targeted marketing campaign. Key points of this campaign include:

Focus advertising on people who want the kind of lifestyle that your community offers.

Cooperation is key. If you want to attract Baby Boomer retirees, make it easy.

Marketing your active adult development requires more than simply placing advertisements.

Once interest has been indicated by a response to your advertising, develop and use online resources and tools to keep potential homebuyers appraised of developments.

Use ambassador groups of existing retirees.

Develop and use a customer relations management system.

Currently, the average person retires at age 63. This indicates that some of the War Babies and Baby Boomers have already retired. However, not as many people as expected have retired during the last several years. which shows that an increasing number of Baby Boomers are postponing their retirement and are waiting for an economic recovery before making their decision. This is analogous to water building up behind a dam. If the dam were to break, a flood would ensue. Similarly, when sufficient confidence in an economic recovery occurs, many of those Baby Boomers who have postponed retirement will decide to retire, and the active adult housing market will experience a flood of relocating Baby Boomer retirees.

When this will happen? That date is subject to speculation, but most experts agree it will occur by 2011. Because of the time required to collect the market research for producing and implementing a successful targeted lifestyle marketing campaign, developers that prepare now for the inevitable flood of Baby Boomer retirees will have the best chance of attracting them. Now is the time to plan a lifestyle marketing campaign for your active adult development.

Sharon Lee Metz is President of Lifestyle Marketing and Sales Group, LLC. She is in the process of relocating to Lexington from North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Retirement Communities

Retirement Communities are not what they were in the past and in many cases - there is a clear line which defines a quality retirement community based on the lifestyle of the buyer.  The baby boomer 55+ new homes buyers are far more active and looking to retire to a resort with amenities which provide a wonderful and active lifestyle.  These new "active adults" have helped create a new type of retirement community - those which feature world class resort amenities available as part of your daily routine.

Here is a look at Trilogy Life by Shea Homes

Living at Trilogy is like like visiting a resort...without that looming check-out date. From delicious restaurants to PGA Tour-quality golf courses to championship tennis courts to Resort Clubs with full-service spas that inspire awe, Trilogy is your home to the best amenities in the business.

To learn more about some of our amazing resort-like amenities, navigate the items below or select a community from our "Locations" button above. Better yet, schedule a visit so you can experience what we have to offer in person.

Retirement Communities and Retirement?

Someone recently asked me what I planned to do when I retired. "Retire?" I asked. "I'm not planning to retire!" I can't think of anything much worse. What would I do if I weren't pursuing my passion? Yes, my work is my passion and I hope to be pursuing it for many more years.

Sure, I like to travel, just not for long periods of time. I don't play golf. I do mess around in my garden, but this only takes a few hours of my week. I love to read, but I couldn't read all day, every day. I want to continue writing books and articles and speaking to groups about my favorite topics. But, I want to do all of this when I want to do it!

Learn More about Retirement Communities

Does this sound familiar? As a Baby Boomer, what is in your future? Do you have a vision of your life ten, twenty, even thirty years down the road? What does your next chapter look like? If you are like most Boomers, you may be searching for a new career. You may have a desire for personal reinvention. If you need some help, I highly recommend Ellen Freudenheim's book, Looking Forward, An Optimist's Guide to Retirement. Ellen offers a wealth of information and ideas on this very subject.

Been there, done that…

We Boomers have always been anti-authoritarian, idealistic, self-empowered, and willing to embrace change. Is it any wonder the world is sitting on the edge of its seat waiting to see what we're going to do next?

We've paid our dues: went to college, got married, had kids. But now it's time to leave our comfort zones behind. It's time to get involved again. In fact, a recent study found that 25 million Boomers already do volunteer work.

What is in your future? Have you planned for it? Are you prepared for it? Believe me, this isn't just about money. It's about life your life!

What brings you pleasure? What have you always wanted to try but kept putting off? Would you enjoy volunteering your time to work with kids, build a house, rescue animals? Would you like to go back to school to finally get that elusive degree, or just study something that you've always wanted to learn?

The reason why

The reason I'm asking these questions is this. Do you know that a lot of people, in both the public and private sectors, are spending a lot of time visioning, planning, and developing programs for us post-retirement Boomers? Yes someone is making decisions about your future! Has anyone asked you what YOU want? Haven't you always resisted and resented anyone telling you what to do? In his book, Prime Time, Marc Freedman says, "Transforming the aging of America will require new ideas and new policies and a new constituency for change…"

If we don't want to be part of the herd being driven into those boxes, what are we going to do about it? Isn't it time we begin speaking up? I don't know about you, but I don't want to be told where I'm going to live when I'm 80. I don't want to be told how much money I can make without incurring a penalty. We may have to revert to the stand up, sit in, drop out, protest-anything-resembling-authority people we were in the sixties and seventies. I want to drive the ideas that go into creating those new policies, don't you?

Come on Boomers! We've changed every decade we've lived in thus far. Is that really going to change as we turn sixty...seventy...eighty? We must leave apathy in the rocking chair: step up, speak out, and create programs and opportunities that will work for our unique generation. Don't wait for someone else to do it for you.

Once again, Boomers, it's up to us to make a difference!

Click to Learn more about Resort Retirement Communities

Linda Thompson is the author of Every Generation Needs a New Revolution, How Six Generations Across Nine Decades can Find Harmony and Peaceful Coexistence, Planning for Tomorrow, Your Passport to a Confident Future, a common sense approach to life planning; and A Caregiver’s Journey, You Are Not Alone, a survival guide for working caregivers. To find out more about Linda’s presentations, workshops and publications, visit LifePathSolutions.biz.