They Keep Coming: Crazy Best Places Lists
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 3, 2023 — We get kind of a sick pleasure in reading the entertaining best places to retire that many websites, in pursuit of clicks and ad dollars, enjoy publishing. One that fits that bill just emerged from Bankrate.com, a website that sells credit cards and financial services and has no obvious connection to retirement.
The website used several criteria for their new ratings, which pushed Florida out of its top 5 for the first time. The criteria were affordability, quality/cost of health care, crime, and overall well being. While those sound like reasonable things to measure, the extra weighting given to affordability and well being might have been too much. Otherwise, it is hard to see how some of their picks could be rated so high.
Their top 5 places to retire:
Low cost of living, quality and cost of health care, and low crime drove the top ratings for these top 5 states.
Iowa.
Delaware
West Virginia
Missouri
Mississippi
What did not seem to be considered
Everyone has their own priorities when it comes to picking a retirement state. Yours might be warm winters (which Iowa is not going to excel at), access to beaches or mountains (not good for Iowa or Missouri), etc. Others might choose to retire in a state where they feel comfortable with the political landscape. Quality health care is certainly important, which is probably only available in the biggest cities of Iowa, West Virginia, Missouri, and Mississippi. States like Florida, Connecticut, California, and New York excel in that area. As we have seen in other studies, the most popular states for retirement are Arizona, Florida, and the Carolinas – states where warm winters are a big driver for retirement choice. Since people tend to retire near their friends and relatives, one would think those states should have been higher up in the rankings.
More top places to retire
Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Florida, Hawaii, and Nebraska were the other states ranked in their top 10. While many people might like the idea of retiring in Hawaii, it is prohibitively expensive for most. Nebraska is flat with no beaches or mountains. We agree – WY, PA, and FL are certainly reasonable choices as best states to retire.
How do the Smart Asset rankings compare to Topretirements?
Wyoming, Pennsylvania and Delaware have been on our previous best states to retire lists because of their climate, geography, and low taxes. So they match up with the Smart Asset list. Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Colorado, Oregon, Texas, and Nevada have been on the Topretirements lists for a variety of reasons. And these are states where the most retirees move to.
For further reading:
Best and Worst States for Retirement
Topretirements Best States for Retirement
Comments? What states would you put at the top for best places to retire? Do you agree with any of the SmartAsset choices? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section below.
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