20 Worst US Cities for Retirement: 2018

Many American workers who are not confident they will have enough money to retire comfortably see staying on the job as their only option. Recent Gallup polling shows that workers this year plan to retire at age 66 on average, compared with age 60 in 1995.

WalletHub suggests that one alternative to remaining in the workforce is to relocate to an area where the dollar will go farther without sacrificing lifestyle.

In order to identify places where Americans could spend their retirement years in comfort, WalletHub compared the retirement friendliness of 182 U.S. cities — including the 150 most populated ones and least two of the most populated cities in each state — across four key dimensions: affordability, activities, quality of life and health care.

It evaluated those dimensions using 46 relevant metrics, grading each on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for retirement. A city’s overall score was a weighted average across all metrics.

The study found many cities scored poorly across most or all the dimensions. One city — Fontana, California, — had 1.5 health care facilities per 100,000 residents, 31 times fewer than St. Louis, which had 45 per 100,000 inhabitants. That may be a chief reason why Fontana had the fewest residents 65 and older among the cities studied.

Check out the gallery above for the 20 cities WalletHub found to be the least retirement friendly, ranked by their overall score.

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