Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Where to Retire, a Magazine for an Older Audience

Should I retire to Hot Springs or Rancho Bernardo?

Julie, our magazine desk supervisor, is always looking out for new titles to add to our periodicals collection, which I think is quiet good for a medium small library. Today, she showed me Where to Retire. I had not heard of it before, but it looks like a definite fit for our library. I looked at the January/February 2005 issue, which had full profiles of six retirement-friendly communities and numerous other useful sounding articles. The profiles included climate, cost of living, housing, tax, transportation, school, and health care information. Among the articles were articles offering advice on moving, financial planning, and buying pre-fab houses.

Anyone looking at the magazine will probably notice the numerous brightly colored advertisements for retirement communities. They all seem to show active adults out in the sunshine playing golf or tennis, swimming, or bicycling. Also, they throw in many photos of older couples dancing romantically in the moonlight. In a way these ads are humorously predictable, but the house prices, average square footage, phone numbers, and web addresses included are of interest to the targeted readers.

According to our shared catalog, only a few libraries have this title, though it seems to have been published since 1991. You can get a free trial issue from its website. We're going to add it.

Maybe I should consider Corpus Christi. How about Winter Garden? No, too humid.

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