Small towns with strong economies still exist. Along with a good economy, you can also find great schools, affordable homes, and low crime in these towns.
Here’s Money magazine’s list of America’s best small towns:This weekend, I attended a high school reunion for my class at Chelan High School in Chelan, Wash., in Central Washington state.
I wanted to visit Beebe Orchards, which is a seven-mile trip down the hill and across the Columbia River from Chelan. It’s where I grew up.
The orchard has been torn out, and is being replaced with million-dollar homes overlooking the Columbia. I wanted to see if the recession is slowing the building of the new houses.
However, I wasn’t able to get there.
An accident occurred on the Beebe Bridge on Aug. 31. A semi tractor-trailer hauling apples veered sharply to the left, and the cab crashed through the rail, plunging 100 feet into the Columbia River.
The driver, Kathleen L. Walker, 48, of Olympia, Wash., was killed.
The crash tore off a vertical hanger, one of the supports that hold up the bridge, and heavily damaged two beans, which hold the weight of the bridge structure, reports the article on The Wenatchee World.
A portion of the bridge deck is noticeably sagging at the location where the truck damaged the bridge rail and steel trusses, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.
The crash also killed Walker’s husband and co-driver, Peter Wooley, 60, whose body was found downstream five days after the accident.
So I drove to the bridge to see the damage.
I was allowed to walk onto the bridge and take photos. The bridge will be closed for about two weeks for repairs.
People who live on the Douglas County side of the river and work or go to school in Chelan are walking across the bridge and getting a ride on the other side.
It was about 95 degrees the day I was there. I saw a man and his two young children walking across the bridge. When they reached the other side, they sat in the shade of a road sign waiting for their ride.
In 1959, the department began construction of the current Beebe Bridge, which was opened in June of 1963 for a cost $1.1 million, likely less than the cost of the current repairs, reports the department.
The Beebe Bridge is named for the Beebe Orchard Company, which built the first bridge over the Columbia at Chelan Falls to carry irrigation water to their properties on the east – Douglas County – side of the river in 1919. It also incorporated a wooden deck for cars, which had to pay a toll to cross. It was a one-lane bridge.
When we lived at Beebe Orchards, we had to walk across the bridge twice a day. The wooden bridge wasn’t strong enough to hold the weight of the bus and the school children.
The students were unsupervised. Fortunately, there weren’t any accidents on the bridge.
The bridge made a clickity-clack sound when a car drove over it. It always made me worried about its safety.
These are the towers from the old bridge.
School children are walking on the Beebe Bridge again now. One of the construction workers said teachers accompany them – one leading them across and another at the end of the line.
So with the reunion and walking again on the Beebe Bridge, it was a big trip down memory lane.
After my bridge walk, I drove up the Chelan County side of the river and took photos of the new houses.
It’s certainly disappointing that Douglas County rezoned prime agricultural land and is allowing houses to be built on it.
Copyright 2009, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Today I receive a great treat. A copy of the “2009 Consumer Action Handbook” arrived in the mail.
This 169-page handbook, published annually by the Federal Citizen Information Center, provides the latest information that you need to be a savvy baby boomer consumer.
You’ll find information to help you manage and stretch your money such as preventing identify theft and filing consumer complaints.
Topics of special interest to baby boomers include:
Buyer beware
Banking
Cars
Credit
Employment
Food and Nutrition
Health care
Housing
Internet
Investing
Phones
Privacy protection and identity theft
Travel
Wills and Funerals
Information is included on how and where to file consumer complaints. You’ll also find public resources and contact information as well as a consumer assistance directory with contact information for corporate offices, consumer organizations, trade groups, and government agencies.
Get your copy of the handbook today to help you increase your consumer power. You can order it online.
Or a searchable version of the handbook is available at www.ConsumerAction.gov and in Spanish at www.Consumidor.gov.
These difficult economic times are changing retirement plans for many baby boomers.
Some boomers are delaying retirement. Others are looking at options for retirement that they hadn’t considered before, such as moving to a lower cost community or working part time.
Regardless of your situation, it’s more important than ever to set retirement goals, study options, visualize scenarios, and come up with the best workable plan that you can devise.
Here are ideas to help you with retirement planning:
Where to live
“Best Places for Baby Boomers to Thrive in U.S.” – A list of 20 towns based on criteria such as health care, dining out, low crime, cultural activities, weather, active lifestyle, average cost of living, and a range of home sizes and prices.
“How to Pick the Best Place to Retire” – Items to consider to select the best community for your retirement.
“15 Great Places to Reinvent Your Life” – A list of 15 appealing places selected by AARP for you choose from, then look for a way to earn a living there.
“The Dream of Retiring Where It’s Warm in the U.S.” – Basic steps for determining if you can afford to retire where the weather is better.
“The Dream of Retiring Where It’s Warm Abroad” – Things to consider if you want to retire overseas.
Employment
“AARP’s List of Best Employers for Workers Over 50 Offers Helpful Information for Baby Boomers” – A list of firms that may hire retired boomers.
“Boomers Looking for Jobs With Meaning in Retirement Years” – Encore jobs combine income and an opportunity to make a difference.
“Baby Boomer Women Looking for Options in Retirement” – How boomer women can have periods of work and leisure in retirement.
“Five Things Baby Boomers Need to Do Before Starting an Internet Business” – Tips to think about before you take the plunge and become an Internet entrepreneur.
“Boomers Head for Exotic Locations to Work Instead of Retire” – A job overseas offers a way to travel and earn money.
“Job Hunting Tips for Boomers” – A list of articles and Web sites to help boomers find jobs.
Housing
“What Are the Housing Needs of Baby Boomers as They Grow Older” – Different types of housing that will help boomers age in place.
“Plan to Age in Place, But Consider Backup Options, Too” – The benefits of being able to stay in your own home as you grow older and the importance of thinking through other options.
Retirement planning
“10 Top Retirement Tips for Boomers” – Important items to think through in preparing for retirement.
“Familiar Retirement Planning Techniques Fit This Financial Crisis, Analyst Says” – Steps to take to help prepare for retirement.
“New Retirement Ideas Shake Old Beliefs” – A new way look at retirement because people are living longer and are healthier and more vigorous in old age.
“Baby Boomers Putting Their Retirement at Risk by Helping Adult Children” – Why it’s important to take a look how much you’re helping your family financially.
“Life Coaches Are Helping Baby Boomers Create Better Lives” – How a life coach can help you figure out what you want to do in retirement or improve your retirement living.
Health
“How’s Your Health? Study Says Boomer Health Worse Than Previous Generation at Same Age” – Why taking care of your health is important to the quality of your retirement.
“Optimizing Your Retirement: Health, Financial Tips for Boomers” – What boomers can to do about their health and finances to have a better retirement.
These are the retirement topics I’ve been writing about since January 2008. Are your boomer consumer retirement challenges covered here?
If not, let me know what retirement information you’d find helpful.
Alex Steffen, executive editor and cofounder of Worldchanging.com, is a big, green idea guy.
Steffen tracks what’s going on in green innovations and writes essays on the possibilities for the future. The popular book he edited, “Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century,” is a 600-page tome of writings from more than 60 leaders around the world.
Tall, dressed in jeans and a dark blazer with his white shirt untucked, he addressed his audience at the Seattle Green Festival and flung ideas out at them – one after the other.
Steffen sees the possibility of the world becoming choked with people, with the demographic tilting to the old and young.
Four billion people in poverty have seen the American lifestyle on television, and they want to climb up into the middle class. The most watched TV program in the world is “Bay Watch,” and the world’s poor are saying, “I’ll take my version of that.”
Educational opportunities need to be extended to women throughout the world, he said, because when women have choices they have fewer children. If education is provided to every woman, population could see peak this century.
While the poor are “getting rich,” our job is to reinvent what “rich” means, Steffen said. Americans need to consume less of the world’s resources, reduce their impact on the earth, and develop a restorative economy.
“We can do that,” he said, adding “It’s not going to be easy.”
Changes are needed in how:
Some things that are working:
Things that are operational but need to be improved:
Ideas for the future:
Steffen said the economy of the future is a high quality of life at a low ecological impact.
“We can do it,” he said, adding a better place can be created than what’s happening now with the destruction of the planet.
“We’re all in this together,” Steffen said. People in balance with the planet will make a life everyone can enjoy.
The Seattle Green Festival is sponsored by the Global Exchange and Green America, formerly Co-op America.
How will global warming affect baby boomers?
I thought about it a lot in the last 24 hours as I watched the snow pile up as I blogged in the library, scraped three to four inches off my car, and slogged my way to the food co-op.
Last year, when it snowed in late March, unusual for the Pacific Northwest, I wrote “Late Spring Snow Storms a Surprise.”
I wondered in the post if global warming could be causing the strange weather. It’s possible, I learned.
I found a report from the Washington State Department of Ecology that indicated recent climate modeling results indicate that “extreme” weather events may become more common. Rising average temperatures produce a more variable climate system, the report said.
For boomers, what does global warming mean?
Say, for the sake of simplicity, that boomers will live to be age 90. That means they’ll be exiting the planet between 2036 and 2054.
What changes will boomers see in that time frame?
Baby Boomer Magazine.com makes this prediction in the article “Baby Boomers Concerned About Global Warming”:
Here are some ideas on how boomers could be impacted by global warming: Boomers:
That’s a hefty list, but something to think about as the innovative Boomer Nation, who've changed every decade they've lived in, approaches the future.
One of the best consumer resources available for baby boomers is Checkbook magazine. It provides ratings of local businesses in seven areas of the country: Boston, Chicago, Delaware Valley, Puget Sound, San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, Twin Cities, and Washington, D.C.
The new Winter/Spring 2009 issue covers these topics:
Other topics include ratings of upholsterers, window washers, and shoe repair shops.
Checkbook magazine is available for $10 at Barnes & Noble and Borders. Or become a subscriber at www.checkbook.org/ for $30 for two years.
Copyright 2009, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
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