Ranked: The Best U.S. States for Retirement
What is the most important aspect of retirement planning?
If you said finances, you’re probably right. But have you ever thought about where the best place is to retire? Being strategic about location can make a big impact on your quality of life, and perhaps help your savings go just a bit further.
To help break it down, we’ve visualized data from personal finance platform, WalletHub, which ranked the best U.S. states for retirement as of 2023.
Data and Methodology
WalletHub ranked each state using 47 metrics across three dimensions.
- Affordability (7 metrics worth 40 points)
- Quality of Life (22 metrics worth 30 points)
- Health Care (18 metrics worth 30 points)
Here are some examples of what each dimension measures:
- Affordability: Cost of living and taxation
- Quality of Life: Quality of elder-abuse protections and crime rates
- Health Care: Number of health professionals per capita and life expectancy
Visit the source for the full list of metrics.
The final scores (visualized as the bars in the infographic above) represent each state’s weighted average across all metrics. See below for more comprehensive results.Search:
| Rank | State | Score | Affordability (rank) | Quality of Life (rank) | Health Care (rank) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Virginia | 57.6 | 16 | 11 | 11 |
| 2T | Florida | 57.4 | 9 | 4 | 28 |
| 2T | Colorado | 57.4 | 14 | 27 | 5 |
| 4 | Wyoming | 55.6 | 5 | 9 | 38 |
| 5 | Delaware | 55.5 | 6 | 33 | 18 |
| 6 | New Hampshire | 55.0 | 31 | 5 | 7 |
| 7 | South Dakota | 53.6 | 25 | 30 | 9 |
| 8 | Minnesota | 53.5 | 40 | 2 | 1 |
| 9 | Idaho | 53.2 | 15 | 17 | 31 |
| 10 | North Dakota | 53.0 | 22 | 25 | 20 |
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According to this methodology, Virginia is currently the best state for retirement. Although the Southeastern state does not excel in any one dimension, it scores consistently well across all three to create a very balanced retirement profile.
This gives it a slight advantage over second place Florida, which excels in quality of life and affordability, but falls further behind in terms of health care. Third-placed Colorado is a mirror of Florida, offering excellent health care but a lower quality of life in comparison.
How to Interpret These Results
It’s important to remember that this ranking is purely based on data and the methodology above, and may not be tailored to your individual preferences.
For example, if you believe that health services will be very important during retirement, you may rank Minnesota (#1 in terms of health care) much higher than eighth place.
You may notice that prioritizing one dimension will often come at a trade-off in others. Looking at Minnesota once more, we can see that the state is also one of America’s most expensive.
Looking to retire outside of the U.S.? Check out this graphic on the top 25 countries to retire in.
