“You can retire sooner or with less savings if you are willing to significantly cut your expenses. One way to quickly lower your retirement costs is to move to a place with a low cost of living.

Reducing your housing costs can add to your retirement savings and make your ongoing bills more affordable. “Downsizing to a less expensive, more manageable house has numerous benefits,” says Paul Staib, a certified financial planner for Staib Financial Planning in Aurora, Colorado. “You could use the proceeds from the sale of your current home to add to your retirement savings, thereby providing a bigger source of retirement income, while significantly potentially cutting other housing-related costs, including property taxes, insurance, utilities and ongoing maintenance and management costs.”

Read more at Yahoo! Finance.

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“Durham is the ninth best U.S. city for Millennial entrepreneurs, according to a new report by marketing and hiring website Thumbtack.

The report is based on responses from 18,000 small business owners across the U.S. to Thumbtack’s Small Business Friendliness Survey. Questions covered such areas as friendliness of local tax laws, licensing rules, the regulatory environment and opportunities for training and networking.”

Read more in Triangle Business Journal.

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“Durham ranks 10th among the “Best Minor League Baseball Towns,” according to a new report from SmartAsset.

The rankings are based on multiple metrics on quality of life – including unemployment rate, income, crime rates, dining and entertainment venues per 10,000 residents – and game-day experience. For game-day experience – including team wins, attendance and stadium amenities – Durham is No. 3.”

Read more in Triangle Business Journal.

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“Five months after he announced Silicon Valley giant Netsuite (NYSE: N) would be acquiring his company for $200 million, Bronto Software CEO Joe Colopy says it’s “business as usual” – and that means job openings.

The company, at 288 employees, up from 255 when the deal was announced in April, is “hiring and growing like crazy,” says Colopy.”

Red more in Triangle Business Journal.

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“A year and a half after his Durham company was acquired by TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) for $135 million, Digitalsmiths co-founder and president Matt Berry says the unit still feels like a startup.

“We still have that traditional American Tobacco Campus-type culture,” he says.  ut now it has a heftier wallet and an international rolodex.”

Read more in Triangle Business Journal.

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On a recent Sunday, chatter from people waiting on the sidewalk for tables at Dame’s Chicken and Waffles wafted on a fall breeze across a tree-lined plaza where several people sat, read and sipped coffee. Across the street, a group celebrating their friends’ anniversary wandered into the barroom of Pizzeria Toro to drink cocktails and eat Neapolitan-style slices.

In the past decade or so, downtown Durham has become a destination for diners, carousers and art lovers after years as a business district that was mostly lifeless on nights and weekends. The influx of trendy establishments has helped Durham shed its former image as the grittier sibling to North Carolina’s capital city Raleigh or the bucolic college town Chapel Hill in a tri-city region known as the Triangle.

Red more in the Bowling Green Daily News.

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