25 Best US Cities for Retirement: 2017

It may seem all retirees go to Florida, but that doesn’t have to be the case, as many cities, with both hot and cold weather, offer retirees many benefits that can ease their living situation, including health facilities, Affordability and overall Quality of Life.

Although many retirees settle where they have family, others may be more analytical, as was this WalletHub study, which reviewed four overall categories to determine the best U.S. cities in which to retire. These categories were: Affordability, Activities, Quality of Life and Health care.

Although the four areas were weighted equally, within each were different aspects that were weighted differently. So within Affordability, WalletHub looked at adjusted cost of living, which was given the heaviest weighting, in addition to tax-payer friendliness and annual costs of adult day Health care and in-home services.

Within the Activities category, all aspects were weighted evenly, ranging from recreation and senior centers to golf courses, theaters and art galleries, bingo halls and even fishing facilities.

For Quality of Life, the heaviest weighting was given to weather, mild being the most favorable, while air and water quality were weighted least. The category also included share of population that was 65 and older, the labor market for elderly, city walkability, as well as crime rate.

Finally, Health care weighted almost all areas evenly including numbers of physicians, nurses, Health care facilities and top-rated geriatrics hospitals.

What were the top scorers in each category?

Affordability: Laredo, Texas;
Activities: San Francisco;
Quality of Life: Honolulu;
Health care: Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

For the big picture, WalletHub combined these categories to find the top-rated U.S. cities of the 150 most populated in which to retire. Those cities that scored highest in a particular category are noted with a Shout Out: BEST of the Best! Those that scored the lowest in a category among these 25 cities gets noted: WORST of the Best!

— Related on ThinkAdvisor: