My husband and I have been thumbing through some magazines about retirement. They all make retirement look so good, we can't decide which place and state look best for our golden years. But they are simply 100-page promotional brochures disguised as newsmagazines. Don't be fooled either by the newsmagazine-like layout or by your own whimsy.
Retirement is too serious a subject for study in an advertising brochure.
You need more balance in your research. You will get it by subscribing to a local newspaper and reading about property taxes, housing costs, growth and development and the quality of local health care. Often, you can find a Web site for local newspapers on the Internet and sometimes buy old articles for a couple of bucks. Search in the archives of newspapers in the towns and states you are considering for words like flood and heat wave, crime and fraud, hospital and state Medicaid, senior citizens and eldercare. Then, if the cold, hard facts are good, go visit the place to see the scenery and get lectured by the locals.