New Jersey And New York Ranked ‘Worst States To Retire’

As a generation of baby boomers weighs where they should retire, one popular survey has just proclaimed New Jersey – home to Bruce Springsteen and open sewer that is the Jersey Shore – the worst state in America for retirees.

The Garden State ranks last, with Mississippi and New York rounding out the bottom three.

Unsurprisingly, the No. 1 factor in Jersey’s low ranking was was the fact that NJ and NY are the two least affordable states in the US to live in, according to the survey released Monday by personal-finance website WalletHub.

They both scored slightly higher in terms of quality of life and health-care. But in both cases cost is still a serious factor.

Once again, Florida was ranked the best state to retire. It ranked fourth for affordability and fifth for quality of life, although surprisingly – considering the state’s large population of seniors – health-care ranked 27.

Virginia, Colorado, Delaware and Minnesota rounded out the top five states to retire, with each of these states boasting high marks on affordability.

WalletHub, the authors of the survey, compared all 50 states on different categories from affordability, quality of life and healthcare. Then these categories were divided into 47 metrics including tax-friendliness, risk of social isolation, elderly friendly labor market, life expectancy and health-care facilities per capita.

All of this was condensed down into a scale of 100 possible points, with each state being assigned a unique ranking.

Bloomberg took the WalletHub rankings and imposed them on a map of the US:

* * *

Source: Bloomberg