RESOURCES FOR DREAMING

WEBSITE RANKINGS FOR U.S. LOCATIONS

It can be helpful to look at website rankings of the best/worst places to retire and their weighting methodologies to get a better idea of what factors are the most important for you, flag significant issues with a location that you were considering, or confirm that your current home is in the best place for you.  We have provided links below to some website rankings and have gone one step further to combine top rankings in a single table.

• • • AARP

The AARP Livability Index provides a tool 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.  The AARP website also has a number of “best places” lists, including its 2021 Best Places to Live and Retire Now list.

• • • Bankers Life Center for a Secure Retirement

Bankers Life Center for a Secure Retirement commissioned a study by Sperling’s Best Places to rank the 60 largest metropolitan areas and identify America’s Best Cities for a Healthy (and More Affordable) Retirement based on their scores in 8 categories: health care, the economy and affordability, social, wellness, activities, environment, transportation, and crime.  To determine an area’s affordability for middle-income retirees, the 2015 study considered the cost-of-living index, median housing price, and median rental price.

• • • Bankrate

Bankrate identifies the best and worst states for retirement by weighting data on affordability (40%), crime (5%), culture (15%), weather (15%), and wellness (25%).  Check out their website to use their interactive tool that allows you to see how the results change based on your preferences in retirement.

• • • Caring.com’s Senior Living Report

Caring.com examines all 50 states and 300 cities across the United States using 70 different factors and sorts its findings according to the following categories:  overall, health care (22%), senior living & housing (22%), community involvement (8%), transportation (13%), quality of life (22%), and affordability (13%).

• • • Forbes

Forbes provides 2 different U.S. lists:  The Best Places to Retire and The Best Places To Retire In Each State.  Forbes’s methodology focuses on identifying affordable places with a high quality of retirement living and populations of 10,000 or more, either in the specific locality or a metro area, with good economic prospects.

• • • Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies

You should also take a look at the metro areas with the cost-burdened (over 30% of income pays for housing) households for adults 50 to 64 and 65 and older.  If you hover your cursor over the map on Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies website, you can see the share of households with cost burdens by metro area as well as median monthly housing costs, median household income, and share of households ages 50 to 64 and ages 65 and over.

• • • Kiplinger

In 2018, Kiplinger ranked the Best States to Retire by focusing on financial factors critical to retirees and providing data for each state concerning its population, the share of population 65+, the cost of living, the average income for 65+ households, the average health care costs for a retired couple, and the tax rating for retirees.  Kiplinger also offers a 2020 State-by-State Guide to Taxes on Retirees tool that lets you to compare up to 5 states at a time.

• • • Livability

Livability identifies the top 10 cities in which to retire based on its review of 2,000 cities across the country and factoring in more than 20 data points including number of golf courses and assisted living facilities in each city, crime rates, natural disaster risks, the quality of local hospitals, housing affordability, climate, air quality, and the number of people over the age of 65.

• • • MarketWatch

Although there are many tools available to track your retirement funds, far less information is readily available to identify the best places to retire.  MarketWatch has an interactive tool to identify the best place for you to retire based on your preferences with respect to population, money and work, weather, health, transportation, outdoor activities, culture and arts, and other criteria.  ​

• • • Milken Institute’s Best Cities For Successful Aging

The 2017 BCSA index ranks 381 metropolitan areas for all adults age 65 and over, for those in the 65-79 range, and for those 80 and older.  The index separately ranks big and small cities and focuses on their “livability across the life course.”  In addition to an incredibly detailed ranking system, they provide an interactive map for quick comparisons:

• • • Money
      

Money provides 2 different U.S. lists:  The Best Places to Live and The Best Places to Retire in the U.S.  For its general “best places to live” list, Money’s methodology focuses on cities and towns with populations ranging from 25,000 up to 500,000 as well as their cost of living, economic opportunity, diversity, education, fun (aka amenities), health & safety, housing market, income & personal finances, and quality of life.  To keep the list interesting, they limit winners to 3 per state and 1 per county and disqualify the prior year’s top 5 places.  For its “best places to retire in the U.S.” list, Money’s methodology focuses on cities and towns with populations ranging from 25,000 up to 500,000 as well as their housing markets, economic health, cost of living, quality of life, mental and physical health factors, diversity, amenities, and COVID-19 vaccination rates.  For both lists, Money eliminates locations with more than 1.5 the national crime risk, low median incomes, or low levels of racial diversity. 

• • • Niche

Niche is another interactive research tool that can be used to find the best places to retire in the United States based on key factors, such as weather, crime rates, residents 65 and older, housing costs, and access to amenities such as restaurants, golf courses, exercise facilities, grocery stores, libraries, and doctors.

• • • Resonance’s Rankings & Reports

Resonance compares 23 perception-shaping factors in six categories (place, product, programming, people, prosperity, and promotion) to create city rankings for the world and the United States (America’s 100 Best Cities and America’s 100 Best Small Cities).

• • • Sharecare’s Community Well-Being Index in Partnership with Boston University School of Public Health

Sharecare’s Well-Being Index also has an interactive U.S. map that provides state rankings based on responses to more than 3 million surveys concerning 600+ proven health risk factors.

• • • SmartAsset’s Best Places to Retire Calculator

SmartAsset’s Best Places to Retire Calculator provides granular data at the county level for three quality of life factors for retirees:   (1) tax-friendliness (based on state/local income and sales taxes); (2) medical care (based on the number of doctors’ offices), and (3) social opportunities (based on the number of recreation/retirement centers per thousand residents). The calculator then provides an average ranking for each area by weighting the three factors equally, and areas with the highest average rankings were determined to be the best places to retire.

SmartAsset also has a regional series identifying the best places (U.S. cities) to retire in the northeast and midwest based on 8 criteria:  the percentage of the population that is 65 and older; housing costs as a percentage of average retirement income; estimated senior tax burden; retirement communities per 10,000 residents; medical centers per 10,000 residents; violent crime rate; property crime rate; and unemployment rate.

• • • Sperling’s Best Places

Sperling’s Best Places has a website and app devoted to place-related research.  To get started, try using their SuperMap to pull home price, cost of living, property crime, and violent crime data by state, city, county, metro area, or zip code.  Compare your top picks using their City Compare tool to learn more about the following categories:  cost of living, real estate market, job market, crime, climate, weather, education, economy, health, religion, people, politics & voting, housing, commuting, rankings, and reviews.  In 2015, Sperling’s Best Places also ranked the 60 largest metropolitan areas and identified America’s Best Cities for a Healthy (and More Affordable) Retirement based on their scores in 8 categories:  health care, the economy and affordability, social, wellness, activities, environment, transportation, and crime.   As explained in our article on How to Find Places with the Best Year-Round Weather, Sperling’s Best Places also has a Climate & Weather Tool for U.S. Cities.

• • • U.S. News & World Report Best Places to Retire in the USA

U.S. News & World Report also prepares annual rankings of the 125 largest metropolitan areas based on its own weighting of various factors, including the happiness of local residents, housing affordability, tax rates, and healthcare quality.  The rankings allow you to sort locations by population size, average rent, median home price, and commute time.

• • • WalletHub

WalletHub regularly updates its list of the best states in which to retire based on its own weighting of affordability, quality of life, and health care.  Use your cursor to hover over each state and find out how it ranks:

WalletHub also has a list of the best places in the United States to retire that ranks 182 cities (including the 150 most populated U.S. cities and at least two of the most populated cities in each state) based on its own weighting of affordability, activities, quality of life, and health care.  Use your cursor to hover over each city and find out how it ranks:

• • • Zillow

Zillow’s website provides a tool based on 2014 data that identifies the best places to retire using 8 criteria:

Once you’ve selected your top three locations, use Zillow to select the right housing criteria for you, save your search, and receive alerts with updates regarding your search terms.

NATIONAL RETIREE MIGRATION STUDIES

The following sources provide national retiree migration studies that track where people have actually decided to retire.

• • • HireAHelper Study

The HireAHelper study relies on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and its Annual Social and Economic Supplements for 2021 to identify the top states and metro areas for Americans moving for retirement.

• • • SmartAsset’s Annual “Where Retirees Are Moving” Study

To show where retirees are moving in the United States, SmartAsset has analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau for people age 60+ and the largest cities for the following years:  2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

• • • United Van Lines’ Annual National Movers Study

Since 1977, United Van Lines has tracked customer data to show interstate migration patterns over time.  Their website has an interactive map that displays the primary reasons for inbound and outbound moves in each state since 2013.