Are you looking ahead to retirement? If you’re an entrepreneur, you may be focused on building your company right now. But experts say you should be making retirement plans at every age throughout your working life. And when the time comes to retire, there’s a big question you’ll need to answer: Where will you want to live?
With that question in mind, the personal finance site Bankrate has done a detailed analysis of all 50 U.S. states, using criteria that Americans say are most important to them in retirement. The results are likely to surprise you. They just might change your views about where you’d like to retire.
Top of the list? New Hampshire. How the heck did Bankrate come up with that? It’s a surprising result, but the analysis is very well thought out. First, researchers reviewed a YouGov poll of 2,260 Americans that asked what three factors were most important to them in a retirement location. Respondents’ top priorities were:
Affordability
Weather
Neighborhood safety
Healthcare
Local taxes
Arts, entertainment, and recreation
People of a similar age
Bankrate analyzed each state in relation to those criteria, giving more weight to those that more survey respondents considered most important. It created detailed results for all 50 states, ranking them from best to worst on those combined criteria.
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The rest of the top five, after New Hampshire, are just as surprising. They are: Maine, Wyoming, Vermont, and Idaho. Most came in toward the bottom of the ranking for weather specifically. But they outshone other states on factors like affordability, neighborhood safety, and healthcare. They also ranked strongly in having a large cohort of similar-aged people, which can help create the kind of community that is a known contributor to both longevity and well-being. And, they ranked high in the arts, entertainment, and recreation category—in other words, enjoyable things to do. Ideally, retirement should be all about enjoyment, so this seems like an important category to me.
Of course, in your own analysis, weather might outweigh all other considerations. You may dream of spending your retirement years strolling on the beach rather than slogging through the snow. States that are further south offer more sunlight, and more opportunities to be outdoors in that sunlight, both of which are known to improve your mood and well-being. If that’s a deciding factor for you, consider Virginia, West Virginia, or Utah, all of which ranked within the top 10 overall and ranked high for weather, too.
Florida ranks 41st as a retirement state.
Weather is a complicated question, especially in these days of climate change. That’s why Florida, favored by so many retirees that it’s a cliché, ranked near the bottom in Bankrate’s analysis. It scored 41st place overall and 45th for weather specifically. If you’ve ever lived through hurricane season in that state, or you know anyone who has, you’ll understand why. Not only that, warmer states are more at risk for droughts, fires, and extreme heat. Extreme heat is deadlier than any other weather, and it’s particularly dangerous for older people.
It’s worth noting that several analyses of the best and worst states for climate change also found the Northeast is the best place to be. They rank New Hampshire and Vermont, two of Bankrate’s top-five states, as the top two states in that category.
Deciding where to live in retirement is a complex question. Proximity to family and personal preferences make this an individual decision for each of us. Maybe you would never consider New Hampshire as a place to spend your golden years. But Bankrate’s ranking, and the factors they used to compile it, might get you thinking about what the best place for your retirement and what’s most important to you.
There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Want to know more? It’s easy to try it out and you can easily cancel anytime. Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many of my subscribers are thinking ahead to retirement and considering where and how they would like to spend those years. These rankings are a great starting point for making the right choice.
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— By Minda Zetlin
This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc.
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