Ideal-Living Magazine Ideal Living explores where to live and how to live happy and healthy

What should you do about retirement? It’s a big decision, maybe the biggest in many years. All those plans you made have changed. The 401K isn’t worth what you had planned. The house you had hoped to sell after retiring is a drag on the market. Things might be better in a few years, but who knows? One option might ... Read More »

What could be more enjoyable than spending a cold winter evening planning and then looking forward to a spring road trip along some of the scenic highways of America? Gas prices are down, hotel prices are lower than ever, and everyone needs a break from the rigors of winter. Just pack the car and head down the road to experience ... Read More »

All you have to do is look at the advertising from condominium and home builders to see that environmentally friendly housing is the hottest thing in building today. And condominiums, by their very nature, take advantage of almost all of green housing’s possibilities. Condominiums have the advantage of population density, with a compact physical footprint which further allows builders to ... Read More »

Today, you cannot pick up a newspaper or magazine without an allusion to the myriad of environmental dangers we face. Television, radio and the Internet are equally full of doomsday scenarios. It’s easy to become paralyzed by the magnitude of issues such as global warming. Instead, let’s think about the problems that jeopardize our everyday lifestyle, and how we might ... Read More »

Even before the current economic crisis, my family and I were concerned about our financial future. We are retired and live on a modest fixed income. Expenses to maintain our lovely home were escalating daily and we had reached the tipping point, incurring a negative cash flow that dipped aggressively into our savings. Partially because of financial reasons and partly ... Read More »

One of Ideal Living magazine’s adages is “Where you live affects how you live,” and that has never been truer than it is right now. Perhaps it is a good time for each of us to sit back and assess where we are, where we are headed and where we want to be. There’s no single lifestyle that will appeal ... Read More »

Understanding the “whys” of your past can unlock some clues to what will make you happy in retirement. Read More »

Looking for a different kind of weekend trip? How about attending a fall wine festival? Almost every state in the South has a wine festival. Read More »

“Green” is a hot topic and a major sales incentive in everything from organic food to hydrogen-powered automobiles to recycling product waste. One of the areas in which going green has made the biggest splash is the construction of new homes. Read More »

The barrier islands of the Atlantic coastline are often grand, yet some are so fragile that they disappear before even being given a name. We could call these barrier islands ‘shape-shifters’ because of the organic way they yield to the pounding waves and constant wind. It is the nature of the sand on these islands to shift, to give way and move to another place for a time before coming back again. Read More »

These are trying days for Americans who count heavily on good investments for their economic stability. Unfortunately, the usual ports of call for investment dollars, such as the stock market and local real estate, are currently stressed to the point where a person’s investment must wait for a change for the better before it becomes beneficial once again. Additionally, the dollar has plunged in value and daily living costs are rising rapidly. So, where can we invest our hard-earned cash to outpace the current stagnation of the U.S. economy? Read More »

Wreck diving is one of the most desirable scuba vacations out there, and the Carolinas have an ideal combination of weather, depths and wrecks which brings hundreds of experienced divers to their shores. Read More »

Fifty has come and gone. You’ve been married or with your partner for a long time and some of the bloom has, unfortunately, left the rose. Much of your life together has become routine and, slowly but surely, the excitement and romance has dwindled. For some, this is a disaster. Others seem not to have even noticed. Read More »

The cold, the slush, the snow, the endless on-and-off of parkas, gloves and boots—it's reached a point where something must be done. There has to be another way, and, fortunately, there is. Go south, where the weather is warm, the costs are lower and the living is easy. Well, maybe it's not quite that simple—but it's certainly worth considering when the cold weather has reached too deep into your soul. Read More »

Baby boomers—just who are they? With 78 million members, the baby boomer generation is the largest, best educated, wealthiest and most studied generation in U.S. history. What trends have this research yielded? Read More »