The best state to retire!

[Cromacster]

I realize different orgs use different metrics for ranking but I found this humorous.  I read the worst states first and I was curious what the best were.  Fidelity didn't have an article so I googled it and found one from bankrate.

Fidelity's 10 worst states (10th is Tennessee)
https://news.fidelity.com/news/news.jhtml?articleid=201312270841KIPLNGERFINANCE__12041&IMG=N&cat=default

Bankrates 10 Best states (1st is Tennessee)
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/retirement/best-states-for-retirement.aspx#slide=11

The funny part was as I was reading the best states article there were many southeastern states and I thought to myself "I bet Tennessee is going to be first"  lo and behold....

[arebelspy]

There's articles like this all the time, and they usually have completely different places.

If you stick around the early-retirement.org forums for very long, you'll see tons of these pop up.

[the fixer]

Isn't this kind of like writing an article on the ten best single mutual funds to own? Everyone has different circumstances and expectations, so you can't make a simple ranking and apply it to all.

[jjquantz]

What is so funny about these articles is that the 10 best list and the 10 worst list from the SAME website, magazine, whatever, often will have SEVERAL states that appear on both lists.  The reason seems to be that low tax rates get you on the Good places to retire list and poor public services get you on the Bad places to retire list.  Of course, low tax rates are at least somewhat correlated with poor public services.

[Jamesqf]

You also have to consider that a lot of the factors are going to vary considerably depending on where in a state you live.  Take California, for instance: about the only thing LA has in common with say Cedarville is the color of the license plates.

[dragoncar]

I once used a cool tool where you basically ranked criteria you care about and it would crunch the demographic numbers and suggest places to live.

It might be http://www.findyourspot.com/quiz/ or maybe that's just a similar service.  Either way, the answers won't be perfect but it will be much better than a mass- consumption article.

[arebelspy]

I once used a cool tool where you basically ranked criteria you care about and it would crunch the demographic numbers and suggest places to live.

It might be http://www.findyourspot.com/quiz/ or maybe that's just a similar service.  Either way, the answers won't be perfect but it will be much better than a mass- consumption article.

Here's a tool similar to what you describe: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org

[wtjbatman]

The best state to retire in is a happy state.

Thank you! I'll be here all week!

*banned*

[VuwylkOnlezzyen]

What is going on with Tennessee that Fidelity cites it's high state/local taxes and Bankrate claims it is the third lowest for state and local taxes?

[jjquantz]

What is going on with Tennessee that Fidelity cites it's high state/local taxes and Bankrate claims it is the third lowest for state and local taxes?

Tennessee does not tax wages, SS, pension, IRA withdrawals.  It does have a 6% tax on dividends and interest.  It also has a 7% state sales tax.  It may depend on how those two sources chose to weigh the impact of the details.