These States Ranked Best, And Worst, For Retirement In 2018

Selecting a place to settle in your retirement years is an important step toward making that transition and a new set of rankings lists the best and worst states for retirement in 2018. Iowa is one of the few Midwest spots hovering near the top of the list.

According to the rankings, Florida, Colorado and South Dakota are the top states for retirement; Iowa came in fourth. Someone better call our snowbird friends in Arkansas (46th) and Arizona (10th) and tell them sampling sunnier climes with a future move in mind might not be such a good idea.

The list, compiled by WalletHub, looked at affordability, health-related factors and overall quality of life and compared all 50 states across 41 key indicators of retirement-friendliness. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale and assigned a weight. WalletHub then calculated each state's weighted average across all metrics to determine overall scores.

According to WalletHub, the 10 best states for retirement in 2018 are:

1. Florida
2. Colorado
3. South Dakota
4. Iowa
5. Virginia
6. Wyoming
7. New Hampshire
8. Idaho
9. Utah
10. Arizona

The 10 worst states for retirement are:

1. Alabama
2. Hawaii
3. New Mexico
4. Louisiana
5. West Virginia
6. Arkansas
7. Mississippi
8. Rhode Island
9. New Jersey
10. Kentucky

Looking at specific factors, states like Massachusetts, New York, Alaska, California and Hawaii had the highest adjusted cost of living while Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahoma had the lowest adjusted cost of living.

However, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi also had the lowest life expectancies while Massachusetts, California and Hawaii were among the states with the highest life expectancy, according to WalletHub.

Iowa cracked the top 10 in the health care ranking at ninth place and just missed the top 10 with 11th place for quality of life. The state's lowest ranking was a 26th place finish for affordability — so apparently money isn't the key to being happy and healthy.

Because we always like to know how we stack up against neighboring states, WalletHub ranked other Midwest states as follows: Minnesota, 11th; Wisconsin, 12th; Kansas, 17th; Missouri, 18th; Illinois, 31st; and Nebraska, 33rd.

Kudos to Minnesota for ranking first in quality of life and health care (but it came in 42nd for affordability), while Florida was deemed the most affordable.

Find all the rankings here, along with more about the data sources and methodology used by WalletHub.

Image via Skitterphoto/Pixabay