Are you happy you made The Villages your retirement home?
 

It’s possible to get the impression from certain posts on TOTV that some people are less than happy and content to be living in TV. Though no community is “perfect”, The Villages is a one-of-a-kind community beyond compare in my opinion. I feel so fortunate and blessed first of all to been able to have retired early in life, and secondly to be able to reside in such a beautiful and vibrant community, with mostly highly positive residents and neighbors. For me, it only take one trip outside “the bubble” to realize how special TV is.

We're very happy to be here. Initially it was simply for the weather, but now it's a whole lot more. We love exploring in the golf cart. We love all the entertainment and social options. We love the opportunities to volunteer with the organizations we support. I love not mowing five acres anymore. Although moving onto a postage stamp sized lot was an adjustment. We love our neighbors and the true sense of friendship and community we enjoy with them.

But like you say, nowhere's perfect. Defensive driving is absolutely required like no place I have ever seen. The traffic and the crowds up around the 6's keeps getting worse.

I think people are only as happy as they want to be. I believe if you can't be happy here you pretty much won't be happy anywhere.

Super Happy
 

Love, love, love it. This is certainly our forever home. How could anyone not be happy here. There is so much to do. Let all the grumps move back to where they came from. The rest of us will keep working to make this place better and better. Great post Michael.

I love The Villages. I hate Florida. I am also not pleased with the Developers and their decisions to expand, and their choices in sub-par infrastructure, and their refusal to accept financial responsibility for failures as a result of the sub-par infrastructure.

I wish The Villages was in a different state. But it's here, and the community itself is terrific, there's tons of things to do, the development is aesthetically pleasing, and the monthly amenity fee is incredibly reasonable.

So am I happy to be in The Villages? Mostly, yes.

What he said.

Pretty much everything you said, except "hate Florida". Florida, as a geographical area, is not my favorite place on Earth. But, it will do for the time I have left. 🫠

People still drink the kool-aid.

Its fine here..lots to do. Place is clean and safe.

But its a Steford wives community…growing in leaps and bounds

Its becoming nothing more than a suburb of a big city

What about Florida don't you like? No income taxes? Low property taxes? The weather? Seriously the only thing I can think of is Hurricanes and the distance to drive to the rest of the country? I am missing something here. Can you expand on that?

As far as infrastructure, seems a LOT better to me than most places, especially Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and New Jersey (the only states I have lived in). Roads are smooth and wide, The water for irrigation is reclaimed, all electric and cable is underground and bulletproof, Energy is cheap, The place is always clean, and the drainage is so good we can get 15" of rain in 24 hours and nobody gets flooded (except the historic section). I am really missing something....
Ed

I love the fact The Villages is located in Florida for the reasons enumerated hereinabove as well as for many other reasons, the many relatively nearby beautiful beaches, fresh seafood and it being a very well run state without onerous confiscatory taxation which is rampant in so many other states. I lived in New Mexico most of my life and still operate a business there. NM is horribly run as is the city of Albuquerque. NM has the second highest poverty rate in the country. The crime in Albuquerque is terrible, the streets are overrun with homeless, parks and playgrounds are littered with needles from hard drug users, child welfare in the state is the worst in the country, K-12 is among the worst in the country, healthcare is awful. I am happy to be here in The Villages, Florida! Actually, what is not to like other than the humidity?

I’m not full time yet. But I am ecstatic that I found, visited, and bought in the Villages before I found this forum. I would likely have not even looked at visiting if I had read all the negativity here first. It’s totally different going there.

Income taxes don't affect me, I don't work and have no major investments.

I hate the weather, I hate the politics, I hate the overly-obnoxious "where woke goes to die" rhetoric of hatred, mistrust, misinformation, and ignorance. Yes, that ignorance exists in every state. But it isn't celebrated quite so brazenly as it is here in this state.

In Central Florida specifically, I hate that I can't find a decent pizza. I hate that fried whole belly clams are $35 and up, IF you can find a place that has them on the menu. I hate the lack of ethnic diversity. I hate that everyone gets cremated, and when you type "cemetery near me" or "graveyard near me" you get crematoriums and memorial gardens for results with the Baldwin Brothers at the top of the list. Where I come from, graveyards are chock full of American history, and are very peaceful places to just sit and reflect on life.

I hate that there aren't any town greens, which is arguably over specific, but I come from the home of the first Town Green in the country so I'm biased.

I hate that people think a 20-year-old home is "old." I hate the mentality behind that. Again - where I come from - an "old" home was built prior to 1925, and there are thousands of them in the New England area that function just fine, are well-insulated, have withstood dozens of nor'easters, and are beautiful. I hate the overdevelopment of what was once beautiful swampland. Development, I'm all for. Overdevelopment, see traffic jam #99972, Turnpike Exit Detour #49297, and sinkhole #2721.

I hate that homes sit on cement slabs, with no basements. One thing in particular, which to me is just really WEIRD: I hate that all these developments - not just The Villages - feature their garages as the most prominent visual when you are looking at houses. The garages are all out in front of the house, not behind or beside it. That is just - really really weird to me.

Yes

We are here just over 4 years and love this place. Never had as active a social life as we have here.

Is it perfect? Of course not but the good greatly outweighs the bad

Yes.
20 years and counting.
Would do it over again tomorrow.
Love the state of FL for all the positives that attract people here.

I was here when TV was 25,000 people. Without the growth there is a lot in TV that would not be here.

I enjoyed my life before we came to FL.......I enjoy FL and do not compare yesterday to today or where I came from.....

We have friends who constantly berate TV, FL, the developer, the growth, the heat, et al.......but never a comment on why they are still here.

To each his own.

I agree with some points, disagree with others. I won't argue or agree on politics as we don't do that in this forum. But we definitely do have "Florida Man" stories where no other state seems to have the equivalent.

I don't know what a "Town Green" is or how it campares with out squares, so I can't comment on that. Just the name sounds nice though.

Everybody from out of state has a pizza they miss. I miss Jets Pizza, a Michigan-based company that I didn't discover until I'd moved to North Carolina. I can get them here, but I wish they were closer to The Villages than Altamonte.

I'm not big into whole-belly clams, but the best clam strips I've ever had are at either of two restaurants up in Cedar Key, a couple of hours from The Villages. I believe the do have whole-belly as well as one having clam chowder that is pretty famous. It's a pleasant little town to visit and may be what you're looking for for clams.

I grew up in a tiny town where the ethnic diversity amounted to one family where the father was Latino and the mother was African-American. We thought we had a "twofer" in regards diversity. I then moved to the Detroit area and started living near and working with a huge variety of people of various races, ethnicities, religions and more. Moving to North Carolina exposed me to folks from around the world. I really like talking with folks whose background is vastly different than my own. When I moved to The Villages, I looked around and saw that it looks like a Ku Klux Klan Konclave most of the time. I've learned that there are small numbers of every kind of minority you can think of here, but they are too invisible and I'm not about to run up to people and ask, "Will you be my [insert group here] friend?" But I've talked to a lot of my old friends and realized two things. First, it was easier when I grew up for white folks, especially guys, to get into college and get decent jobs and so it was easier to have careers that allowed us to save up enough to be able to afford a retirement like this. Is that proper? Of course not. But it's the way it was and at least it's slowly getting better. Second, the whole concept of moving away from your family and friends to an active retirement community seems to be kind of a white thing. It's catching on with other folks, but most of my non-white friends (and the majority of my white friends as well) seem to view the idea as kind of crazy. When I need my fix of different world views, I just go back to Detroit or North Carolina and visit my old work friends. In a pinch, I can run down to the IHOP on 44 the other side of I-75 and listen to the Indian accents (which I find delightful) of the workers there.

My mother came from a huge family, most older than her, so I grew up going to funerals and burials in cemetaries that rarely got visited. I swore I'd never have either. I long thought I'd be buried in a cardboard box and have an apple tree planted on me so I could fee what for so many years fed me. Now I believe that the tree would probably get bulldozed down to make room for more of us retirees, so that is out. After having a few friends here die and get cremated by Baldwin Brothers and have "celebration of life" services in the rec centers, my wife and I have decided that that is the route for us.

I don't miss basements as I've had too many of them flood. I lost a very nice record album collection to a flood and still am not over it. I grew up in Michigan, where everyone had a basement or at least a crawlspace. I moved to North Carolina, where the leche clay soil is so hard you can't begin to dig a basement. Then I moved here where you can't dig a basement because the water table is so close to the surface that you'll hit it if you dig deep enough in your pockets. So I've gotten used to "no basements".

As far as 20-year-old houses being "old", I hear you. But given that nobody builds great houses like they did 100 years ago (at least, for those that could afford it), even expensive houses of today age far more quickly than they should. We are in a throw-away world, sadly. And the garages-out-front look is definitely weird. I would certainly never put a picture of the houses here (or any any other planned community) on a Christmas card. But houses are packed so closely together that side garages can't be made. My mother-in-law had a rear garage accessed from an alley in her house in Sun City West. That made her house look nicer though much smaller. And it was kind of awkward to go down to the end of the block and back to get at the garage when coming back from town. Everything has an advantage and a disadvantage.

Is this place perfect? Of course not. No place is. Is it horrible? Not by a long stretch. We've been here 7 years and I'm still tickled pink to wake up here every day. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.