5 Pros and Cons of Living in a Retirement Community

My wife and I recently moved into a retirement community. We came from the usual suburban lifestyle of a lot noise, any number of children running around the neighborhood and a higher crime rate. When we moved into the village we now call home it was such a culture shock. Gone was the noise, the children and for the most part the crime.

Life in my new village was definitely going to come with an adjustment period. In has been some months since moving in I have discovered a great many things about life here. This article contains several of the pros and cons I’ve learned so far.

I have come up with a list of five pros to living in my new retirement community. Most of these are self evident so I won't go into details.

• Lower home maintenance fees because the village takes care of certain repairs to the structure.
• The village takes care of all grass cutting and snow removal
• Lower property taxes because the village owns the land.
• The neighborhoods are a lot quieter.
• There is a certain level of low cost entertainment. Both a pro and con.

These are the five pros. Next we'll look a little deeper at the five cons.

After almost a year of retirement village living I've also come up with a list of what I believe to be fives cons.

• Age difference
• The challenge of driving
• Level of entertainment
• People staying indoors
• Early bedtime

Lets look a little closer at the five cons.

I discovered rather quickly my wife and I were some of the youngest people in the village. The vast majority of the people in the village are 10 to 15 years older than us. While this creates some interesting conversations, most of them to do with why a couple so young is here in the first place, it does not create many opportunities to get to know people our age.

Many of the people in my retirement community still drive though they should't be driving at all. Those who drive are reluctant to give it up because they fear they will loose their independence. I sympathize with them because I know someday I'll be there also, but there is a point where you must realize you're just to old to drive.

Until the day when many of the residents hang up their keys for good the roads in the village and neighboring will remain interesting to traverse. A good many of the older drivers still on the road seem to ignore road signs and traffic lights. They drive slow in the fast lane and are a nightmare in parking lots.

The activities in the village consist mostly of a movie night once a month, a daily half hour of walking around the auditorium and bingo once a week. While bingo can be fun and also frustrating all at the same time the activities are mostly geared towards the much older members of the retirement village. I'm still not sure how many younger people live here. Younger is defined as those 55 to years of age.

The village I live in has over 1000 homes or unit in it but you very rarely see many people out and about. There is the occasional dog walker, or people who are able go out walking but nobody seems to sit outside or even inside their garage with the door open.

One final con I want to bring up is the fact that the closing time for the retirement community and the area around it seems to be about 8 o'clock PM or when the sun goes down. At this time of day all the curtains go closed, the lights go out, well at least I think they do. I can't tell because the curtains are closed.

The main problem with this is that when family comes to visit in warm weather you have to be careful about sitting outside and making noise.

Life for me in the retirement community has just begun. I know in the future I’ll have more to say about what goes on here. I’ll have more to write about and more advise to give. For now I'll enjoy all the pros of living here and deal with all the cons the best I can.