Diversions August 13, 2009

The 10 Best Places to Grow Old

Where is it trendy to retire these days? The places might be different than you think.

Reported by

Forbes.com compiled a list of the 10 best places to grow old. While Florida is on the list twice, not all of the counties involve flying south. As retirees have seen some of their living expenses dwindle, we might expect to see more of them shunning sunny spots by the beach to settle down in the suburbs.

When deciding which counties in the U.S. are best places to grow old, Forbes considered how much of the population is older than 65; economic health; and health care facilities.

More specifically, Forbes looked at the percentage of those aged 65 and older in counties with a total population of 500,000, as well as median monthly housing costs and median income of the 65 and older crowd (using the U.S. Census). Forbes also considered the economic health of the county (using unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics); and the number of hospitals, clinics, and elder care facilities per 10,000 people (using data from market research firm Onboard Informatics).

By those metrics, Forbes came up with these 10 counties as the best places to grow old:

  • Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (percent of population 65 and older: 14.9%)
  • Nassau County, New York (15%)
  • Pima County, Arizona (15.2%)
  • Palm Beach County, Florida (22.1%)
  • Honolulu County, Hawaii (15.4%)
  • Brevard County, Florida (20.5%)
  • Montgomery County, Maryland (12.5%)
  • Ocean County, New Jersey (20.9%)
  • Westchester County, New York (14.2%)
  • Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (14.7%).

More data and the full story are available here.

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Deals & People August 12, 2009

Great-West Beefs Up Wholesaler Ratios

Great-West Retirement Services has hired eight additional internal wholesalers to further enhance the support it provides its external sales force and their financial adviser and third-party administrator (TPA) distributors.

Reported by

According to a press release, with the recent additions, the external to internal wholesaler ratio has improved to 2:1 from 3:1.   

“By adding to our internal wholesaler team, we’re able to provide increased service and support to both our sales force and their distributors,” said Bill Harmon, vice president of 401(k) sales. Financial advisers and TPAs are critical to our sales success, so we work very hard to assist them.” 

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Great-West Retirement Services assigns each internal wholesaler to a regional sales director. Internal wholesalers then support their respective sales director in cultivating relationships with financial advisers and TPAs.  

The new internal wholesalers are:

  • Mike Burke – California
  • Edward Carlson – Louisiana, Texas
  • Bob Fitzpatrick – Arizona, Idaho, North Dakota, New Mexico, Montana
  • Tom Geiger –Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin
  • Trevor Millberg – Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Virginia
  • Jeremy Oaster – Alaska, Oregon, Washington
  • Gina Schimpf –Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont
  • Amy Turley – Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming   

The hiring of the internal wholesalers began this spring, bringing the current number of Great-West Retirement Services internal wholesalers to 20.  As the external sales team increases, Great-West Retirement Services says it will continue to hire internal wholesalers to maintain its 2:1 ratio.  

In addition to tapping internal talent, recent hires have come from firms such as Allianz Group, 1st Global, IKON Financial Services, The Hartford, Lincoln Financial Group and Oppenheimer.

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