[Help-bash] How to keep associative array order

[Jerry]

I am sure that this has probably been asked before; however, I cannot
find an answer for it.

I want to keep an index of an associative array. I found a few methods
on this site:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29161323/how-to-keep-associative-array-order

I was just wondering if there is a better method. I have bash 5.0.7
installed on a FreeBSD 12.0 machine.

Thanks!

-- 
Jerry