Best States to Retire 2018: All 50 States Ranked for Retirement

We rank all 50 states for retirement from the best state to retire (South Dakota) to the worst state to retire (New York). Where does your state rank for retirement?

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In contemplating retirement, the big question tends to be when to retire? Or, perhaps, how much money do you need to retire? But where to retire can be an equally pressing matter. In fact, according to a survey by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave (a research firm focused on the aging population), 37% of retirees have already moved in retirement and another 27% intend to. Even if you're among the rest who plan to stay put in retirement, you might find that entering a new stage of life changes the world around you, requiring a reassessment of how your home state treats your nest egg.

To help you weigh the pros and cons of each state when it comes to retirement, we ranked all 50 states based on financial factors critical to retirees, including living expenses, tax burdens, health care costs, household incomes, poverty rates and the economic wellness of the state itself. Of course, plenty of other factors figure into this major life decision, from proximity to family to climate preferences. But we'll leave assessing those personal considerations to you.

Whether you're figuring out where to head next or just how you need to adjust your budget when moving into retirement, see how every state in the union treats its retirees financially.

Disclaimer

States are listed in alphabetical order. See "How We Ranked Every State for Retirement" at the end of the rankings for details on our data sources and methodology.

Stacy Rapacon
Online Editor, Kiplinger.com

Rapacon joined Kiplinger in October 2007 as a reporter with Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine and became an online editor for Kiplinger.com in June 2010. She previously served as editor of the "Starting Out" column, focusing on personal finance advice for people in their twenties and thirties.

Before joining Kiplinger, Rapacon worked as a senior research associate at b2b publishing house Judy Diamond Associates. She holds a B.A. degree in English from the George Washington University.