Where is the Worst Place to Retire?

Map“High taxes and cost of living make these states undesirable for retirees, according to Bankrate.com.”A state’s taxes and cost of living are the most critical factors when deciding where to retire, according to a new survey by Bankrate.com. Think Advisor recently listed the “12 Worst States for Retirement: 2018.”

The least desirable states for retirement typically had poor ratings in the categories for cost of living and taxes, and were also weighed down by low scores in other categories. Bankrate.com created its rankings by looking at seven categories of interest to retirees and weighted those rankings based on the importance given to them by respondents to the firm’s 2017 survey. The categories were:

  • cost of living (20%);
  • taxes (20%);
  • health care quality (15%);
  • weather (15%);
  • crime (10%);
  • cultural vitality (10%); and
  • well-being (10%).

The last category, well-being, took into account how people felt about their community, friends, health and general purpose. One Bankrate.com analyst remarked that it’s important to have strong relationships with friends and your spouse and spend your money on leisure activities that bring you joy, citing recent research.

The seven factors were averaged, so some states that were down in the rankings had low crime, well-being, health care and cultural quality, even though they scored well on cost of living. Other states with high scores on cultural quality and crime may have done very poorly on cost of living and taxes.

Here’s the list of the 12 worst states for retirement:

  1. Oregon
  2. Oklahoma
  3. South Carolina
  4. Nevada
  5. Washington
  6. Illinois
  7. California
  8. Arkansas
  9. Louisiana
  10. Maryland
  11. New Mexico
  12. New York

Reference: Think Advisor (July 17, 2018) “12 Worst States for Retirement: 2018”