Retirees may have different tastes in culture and recreation, but there are some basic aspects of a retirement living environment that have fairly universal appeal. Getrichslowly.org ranked the 20 best cities for retirement to help you decide where to spend your golden years, coming up with a diverse list, with choices that span across the country. There are some names on the list you might expect, and some that will probably come as a big surprise.

Methodology

Getrichslowly.org took into account the following criteria when deciding where retirees may want to put down roots:

There is no shortage of retirement saving advice out there, but do you find it's hard to find advice relevant to your situation when you need it? If so, this guide should help.

Here are a couple of basic ground rules to this guide:

Most people hate to pay taxes. That's not hard to understand. What is baffling is the lengths people will go to avoid taxes - sometimes, the cost of avoiding taxes exceeds the taxes themselves.

The reason this happens is that for some people, all they have to hear is that a scheme will help them avoid taxes, and they are on board. Remember though, avoiding taxes should not be your ultimate goal. The idea is to earn the best after-tax return. That means avoiding taxes is only worthwhile if the cost and risk involved don't diminish your investment return too much.

Experience is a great teacher for investors, but it can also be a very expensive way to learn. Rather than learning by trial and error, reading up on basic investment topics is a more cost-effective way to start, because it allows you to benefit from the experience of others.

"Got any investment tips?"

It's a common question, but there is no one answer to it. The right investment decision depends on the circumstances, and circumstances change over time. For example, the right way to invest can vary depending on how much money you have available. To look at how the size of the investment should guide your approach, consider the different actions you might take with $1,000, $10,000, or $100,000 to invest.

More and more, companies are dispensing with traditional annual employee reviews. They say this is out of sensitivity to a new generation of employees who find reviews stressful. The real reason may be that dispensing with employee reviews saves companies money -- albeit at the expense of their employees.

Microsoft and Dell are among the high-profile companies that have made news recently by dumping annual employee reviews, and Silicon Valley has long turned its nose up at such traditional means of measuring performance and managing people. For many employees, the initial reaction is relief, but they would be wise to look closer. Without that annual review process, they could find that opportunities to get a raise are fewer and more difficult to obtain.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

As much as you may view a formal review as resembling an interrogation scene out of George Orwell's "1984," it should work to your benefit -- both financially and in terms of feeling more connected to your workplace.

Retirement lifestyles depend on your financial success -- but financial success is part reality and part perception. In fact, if you moderate what you perceive as financial success, you could improve the financial reality of your future.

It's particularly important to consider this as you approach retirement, but this dynamic actually starts well before you're ready to retire. It has to do with what kind of lifestyle you think you need.

People tend to raise their lifestyles as their income levels rise, but taking this too far can be destructive to both the perception and reality of your financial future. To understand why, just look at the arc household income tends to take over the years.

It might be the incessant nagging of an unpaid bill or a stomach-churning plunge in the stock market, but suddenly you don't know how to stop worrying about money. Join the club.

Even having a decent nest egg of savings and a solid financial plan is no cure for money worries because the more you know about personal finance, the more you understand how fragile any plan and any investment program can be. Still, I worry about money less than I used to, thanks to a collection of habits and attitudes that have helped cushion me from obsessing about money. That means I've come a long way, because there was a time when money was a constant worry.

A Sobering Graduation

Like most people, I am a product of my experiences; and when it comes to personal finances, the most important formative experience was graduating college during the early 1980s, a dismal period for the job market. In fact, my senior year -- the time when one is supposed to be making career plans and lining up a job -- was marked by the highest unemployment rates of the post-World War II era. So, I spent the first several months after my college graduation caulking windows and scraping paint, stocking shelves in a supermarket, and working as a busboy in a greasy spoon. All minimum wage jobs, and even then the work wasn't always steady.

The cost to file income taxes can fall anywhere between zero dollars -- as in you do your taxes yourself and file for free -- and several hundred dollars, with an average cost of $273 for using a tax preparer, less if you don't itemize ($159), according to the most recent data available from the National Society of Accountants.

To judge the value correctly, though, those costs have to be weighed against the results you get, your own comfort level with going DIY, plus what could go wrong if things don't work out.

To help you weigh the pros and cons, Get Rich Slowly has compiled this guide with detailed cost comparisons.

The most important thing to know about a money market account is that it is most similar to a savings account. Money market accounts can seem to occupy a gray area because they have a name similar to money market funds, but they are most closely related to savings accounts.

Similarities and Differences between Money Market Accounts and Savings Accounts

Because the federal government considers money market accounts a subset of savings accounts, the two investment options share many important characteristics: