How to Find the Best Places to Retire in the Midwest Near the Water

For plenty of retirees, the Midwest is an affordable and attractive place to live especially if it means being geographically closer to friends and family. Six Midwestern states ranked among the states with the greatest percentage of 65+ residents in 2018:

RANK	STATE	TOTAL RESIDENT POPULATION (THOUSANDS)	POPULATION AGE 65+ (THOUSANDS)	POPULATION AGE 65+ (PERCENT)
14	Michigan	9996	1717	17.2
17	Iowa	3156	540	17.1
17	Ohio	11,689	1995	17.1
19	Wisconsin	5814	985	17
21	Missouri	6126	1034	16.9
23	South Dakota	882	147	16.6

Source: Population Reference Bureau

A look at net migration rates shows that 7 Midwestern cities made it (at least once) on the list of the top 25 U.S. cities for people aged 60+ moving from another state:

Top Midwestern Cities for People Aged 60+ Moving From Another State

(Net Migration)

CITIES	2015	2016	2017	2018
Overland Park, KS
Omaha, NE
Toledo, OH
Springfield, MO
Milwaukee, WI
Des Moines, IA
Witchita, KS

Sources: Smart Asset’s “Where Are Retirees Moving?” Series for 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018

The important question, however, is whether living in the Midwest during retirement might be right for you. Many of the Midwestern states make terrific places to live as long as you can handle the winter weather or have the budget to become a snowbird.

If you’re like us and your goal is to be near the water, the Midwest has a lot of potential. The Midwestern states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio all border the Great Lakes. Minnesota alone is known as the “The Land of 10,000 Lakes” while there are another 15,000 lakes in Wisconsin and 10,000 lakes and ponds in Michigan.

As you balance the pros and cons, we hope that this article will help you:

compare the Midwestern states in terms of their ranking for “best places to retire,” senior health care, housing, and quality of life;
identify the “best” Midwestern destinations near the water;
narrow down the destinations according to your personal preferences; and
consult helpful resources for further destination-specific research.

A. Compare the Midwestern States

In our Discovering the Best Places to Retire with a Megalist article, I found that the states with the most potential to serve retirees well on the health care, housing, and/or quality of life fronts were Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas, Minnesota, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Iowa. Because 4 of those 9 states on that list are in the Midwest, it makes sense to consider how they ranked against each other and the other Midwestern states:

Megalist of Best Places to Retire in the Midwestern States Compared to Their Rankings for Senior Health Care, Housing, and Quality of Life

Votes	Megalist for Midwestern States	Votes	Ranked Cities for Senior Health Care	Votes	Ranked States for Senior Housing	Votes	Ranked States for Quality of Life
12	Wisconsin	7	Cleveland, OH	9	Ohio	8	Wisconsin
9	Iowa	6	Chicago, IL	4	Indiana	7	Nebraska
8	Minnesota	5	Rochester, MN	4	Michigan	6	Minnesota
7	North Dakota	4	Milwaukee, WI	3	Iowa	4	Iowa
6	South Dakota	4	Ann Arbor, MI	3	Missouri	4	Michigan
6	Missouri	3	Madison, WI	3	South Dakota	2	North Dakota
5	Nebraska	3	Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN	2	North Dakota	2	South Dakota
5	Kansas	2	Toledo, OH	2	Kansas	1	Illinois
4	Michigan	2	Cincinnati, OH	1	Minnesota	1	Indiana
4	Ohio	2	Minneapolis, MN	1	Wisconsin	1	Kansas
1	Illinois	2	Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA	1	Nebraska	1	Ohio
1	Indiana	1	Cedar Rapids, IA	0	Illinois	0	Missouri
		1	Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA
		1	Detroit, MI
		1	Royal Oak, MI
		1	Southfield, MI
		1	Troy, MI
		1	West Bloomfield, MI
		1	Kansas City, MO-KS
		1	Springfield, MO
		1	St. Louis, MO
		1	Columbus, OH
		1	Sioux Falls, SD
		1	Milwaukee, WI
		1	Eau Claire, WI
		0	cities in North Dakota

For a discussion of the methodology used to identify these rankings, see Discovering the Best Places to Retire with a Megalist and corresponding spreadsheets. As you can see from the table, the states topping the rankings appear to be Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, and Indiana.

If those results were disappointing, fear not! Maybe you aren’t obsessed with being geographically close to the best health care options in the country, maybe your housing budget is more flexible than most, or maybe the “quality of life” metrics don’t really apply to your lifestyle. If so, continue reading to see how you can factor personal considerations into your research.

B. Identify the “Best” Midwestern Destinations Near the Water

Whether any particular state will be a good fit for you will depend on where you will be living and what you will be doing in that state. Let’s face it, good health care options and affordable housing probably aren’t really what floats your boat. It’s natural to want the basic essentials to be automatically included in the package.

Personally, I am in search of a suburban or rural area that is close to the water (ocean or lake) with mild winters. The downtown would be small enough that you could stroll from the ice cream parlor to the independent book store but large enough to support year-round restaurants and a well-stocked international section in the grocery store. If you have a suggestion for us, please share it in the comments below.

In order to identify particular destinations of interest in a state, it can be helpful to pick geographical features that are the most important to you, like the presence/absence of oceans, lakes, mountains, forests, wetlands, deserts, farmland, urban centers, etc. For our purposes, I compiled recommendations from 29 lists identifying the 58 “best” lakes, beach towns, and coastal living destinations in the Midwest. As the pie chart shows, Michigan at the state level had the greatest number of recommended lake destinations followed by Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Ohio (tied), Nebraska, North Dakota and Kansas (tied), and South Dakota.

Number of Recommended Lake Destinations in Each Midwestern State

(hover over pie slices for numbers)

The results are a little different when you look at the individual Midwestern destinations receiving the most votes:

MIDWESTERN DESTINATION	BODY OF WATER	# OF BEST LISTS
Saugatuck/Douglas, MI	Lake Michigan	10
Duluth, MN	Lake Superior	8
Traverse City, MI	Lake Michigan	8
Versailles, MO	Lake of the Ozarks	7
Washington Island/Door County, WI	Lake Michigan	7
Okoboji and Arnolds Park, IA	Lake Okoboji	6
Grand Marais, MN	Lake Superior	6
Branson, MO	Table Rock Lake	6
Illinois Beach State Park, IL	Lake Michigan	5
Chicago, IL	Lake Michigan	5
Beverly Shores, IN	Lake Michigan	5
Ludington, MI	Lake Michigan	5
Nebraska	Lake McConaughy	5
Wisconsin	Lake Winnebago	5
Meyers Beach, WI	Lake Superior	5
Lake Geneva, WI	Geneva Lake/Lake Como/Lake Delavan	5
Chesterton and Hebron, IN	Lake Michigan	4
Miller Beach, IN	Lake Michigan	4
Michigan	Lake Superior	4
Pentwater, MI	Lake Michigan and Pentwater Lake	4
St. Ignace, Mackinaw City, and Mackinac Island, MI	Lake Michigan	4
Mentor, OH	Lake Erie	4
Sheboygan, WI	Lake Michigan	4
Bellaire, MI	Torch Lake	3
Minnesota	Lake Kabetogama	3
Put-in-Bay, OH	Lake Erie	3
Milwaukee, WI	Lake Michigan	3

Do these rankings mean that you should look for housing close to any of these destinations? Not necessarily. This list only identifies the highest-ranking lake destinations in the Midwest without regard to other considerations.

C. Narrow Down The Destinations According to Your Personal Preferences

Next, we need to narrow down the destinations according to your personal preferences, so I did another pass through the data to identify all of the 20 destinations that were within a 60+/- minute drive to “ranked” senior health care (at least 1 vote from the 9 “best” lists). As I’ve learned, access to good health care becomes more important as we age, which is also when we are least likely to drive over an hour to see the best doctor.

Proximity to an international airport is far less crucial, but it might help make our travel dreams come true and make it easier for folks to visit us. I’ve noticed that most locations within a 60+/- minute drive to good health care are also usually within reach of an international airport. According to the experts, we are more likely to find more direct international and domestic flights at major airports, which makes international travel less expensive than flying out of smaller airports. If you think that you will be a budget-conscious traveler after you retire, take a look at Scott’s Cheap Flights’ list of the best and worst U.S. airports for cheap international flights and sign up for their deal alerts.

If you have other “must-haves,” feel free to use our basic spreadsheet identifying the “best” midwest destinations near the water and replace the health care column with your own research.

Of the 58 destinations, the 20 Midwest destinations identified on the map by the sailboat icon are all recommended lake destinations near “ranked” senior health care (in the United States), but only 11 of those destinations (7 on Lake Michigan) received more than 1 vote:

MIDWESTERN DESTINATION	BODY OF WATER	WITHIN 60+/- MINUTES TO RANKED SENIOR HEALTH CARE?	# OF BEST LISTS
Branson, MO	Table Rock Lake	Yes	6
Illinois Beach State Park, IL	Lake Michigan	Yes	5
Chicago, IL	Lake Michigan	Yes	5
Beverly Shores, IN	Lake Michigan	Yes	5
Wisconsin	Lake Winnebago	Yes	5
Lake Geneva, WI	Geneva Lake/Lake Como/Lake Delavan	Yes	5
Chesterton and Hebron, IN	Lake Michigan	Yes	4
Miller Beach, IN	Lake Michigan	Yes	4
Mentor, OH	Lake Erie	Yes	4
Sheboygan, WI	Lake Michigan	Yes	4
Milwaukee, WI	Lake Michigan	Yes	3

D. Consult Helpful Resources for Destination-Specific Research

At this point, you are now ready to do some destination-specific research before planning to look at available housing options. Consult the resources listed on the HOME-DREAM and HOME-DECIDE pages to compare locations in terms of their population, average home price, affordability, transportation, employment, crime, and climate, including:

Use AARP’s Livability Index to compare up to 3 different locations based on housing, neighborhood, transportation, environment, health, engagement, and opportunity factors. The tool also lets you adjust the importance of each factor based on your preference. Note that an average community will receive a score of 50, while above-average communities score higher and below-average communities score lower.

Sperling’s Best Places website is a treasure-trove of updated statistics on population, cost of living, average rent, crime rate, tax rates, religion, local economy, climate, and weather. Use their Compare Cities tool to help identify the best place for your needs and rule out the duds.

Use TopRetirement.com’s searchable database to narrow down locations by country, state, cost of living, culture, environment, average temperatures, tax burden, and overall rating. Note that the “environment” section allows you to search by 27 different criteria including boating communities, coastal, island, lake, etc.

Use UMass Boston’s Elder Index to compare how much you can expect to pay for your basic needs in terms of housing, health care, transportation, food, and miscellaneous essentials for up to four counties.

Numbers, however, can only tell us part of the story. Try taking a virtual tour of the area to narrow down your list. Go to Google Maps and drag and drop the little yellow pegman in front of any site to give you the Street View. Try slowly dragging the little yellow pegman over the site, and you might see that you have the option of putting him down on the blue Street View lines or the blue Photo Sphere balls as in the example below:

Take a virtual stroll on the beach and drive through the downtown area to see if it appeals to you.

If you find other helpful tools in your research, please let us know in the comments!

H+A Takeaways

In our Discovering the Best Places to Retire with a Megalist, I found that Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Iowa were the Midwestern states with the most potential to serve retirees well on the health care, housing, and/or quality of life fronts.
In order to identify specific destinations of interest in a state, it can be helpful to pick geographical features that are the most important to you, like the presence/absence of oceans, lakes, mountains, forests, wetlands, deserts, farmland, urban centers, etc.
We’ve found that the top 11 Midwestern destinations near the water with easy access to ranked senior health care are: Branson, MO; Illinois Beach State Park, IL; Chicago, IL; Beverly Shores, IN; Lake Winnebago, WI; Lake Geneva, WI; Chesterton and Hebron, IN; Miller Beach, IN; Mentor, OH; Sheboygan, WI; and Milwaukee, WI.
If you want to explore other options in the Midwest, you can use our spreadsheets and the resources listed on the HOME-DREAM and HOME-DECIDE pages to compare the pros and cons of various destinations within a region. H+A newsletter subscribers can access the 5 spreadsheets referenced in this article on our CACHE page, so please subscribe at the bottom of this page if you’re interested.