When you start planning your retirement you will have to decide if you want to move to a senior retirement living community or non-senoir neighborhood. This article brings some of the points one should think about before making this decision.

Lifestyle in Active Adult Retirement Communities.

There is a bit of a stigma attached to the idea of being "put in a home" when you have reached what are supposed to be the Golden years of your life. What if that home happens to be on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in Honolulu, Hawaii? What if your retirement was being spent playing golf in a 36 hole course in Arizona on the outskirts of Tucson? What if "a home" means escaping the cold bite of winter and laying around the beach or taking your boat on a cruise along the Intercoastal waterway near Merrit Island, Florida? None of that sounds all that bad.

As the baby boomer generation reaches retirement age, the Active Adult Community has become a growth industry. Active adult communities are competing with each other to provide a higher standard of living to those seeking to spend their retirement in a group home type of setting. Also called active adult retirement communities, these homes feature two basic forms of living. They are called independent living and assisted living.

Independent living is for people who need no special care or medical attention. They are free to come and go as they please, and usually the home provides a wide variety of social and recreational activities to keep the resident busy and happy. Some independent living plans will not even include dining facilities, but will provide kitchens in each living unit. These homes differ from regular apartment living only in the fact that the other residents are also senior citizens.

Active adult retirement communities also offer assisted living. This means that the resident has a medical condition that requires attention. The condition can be minor, or it can be very severe, but in either case, medical attention is available at the home. Aides that assist in normal life functions like cleaning and food preparation are also available. The idea of most of the retirement communities is to provide as active a social life to the residents as their condition will allow and to do so for as long as possible. Recreational, social, and culture activities are scheduled and assistance is provided to insure that all residents have access to participate in them.

Regardless of if they are for Independent living or assisted living, the idea behind the active adult community is best expressed in the word active. The retirement years should be among the best years of a person's life, and are seen as a reward for coping with the duties and responsibilities of a lifetime of work. They are the Golden years of your life, and the active adult community can help insure that they are everything you dreamed.

By: Natalie Aranda

Natalie Aranda writes about money and finance.