Top Metropolitan Areas of Best Places to Live for Retirees
Posted by Ted C. Jones on September 29, 2011
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Bankers Life and Casualty Company’s Center for a Secure Retirement completed a study to ascertain the best places for retirees to live in 2011. They included 50 metropolitan areas in the study and ranked on nine categories. Their nine criteria and their respective weights included:
- Healthcare 10
- Economy 8
- Health and Longevity 8
- Social 8
- Environment 6
- Spiritual Life 6
- Housing 5
- Transportation 5
- Crime 3
Some of these obviously can be very subjective. Under the environment category, for example, inputs included the number of sunny days per year, presence and access to bodies of water, air and water quality and the number of local and state parks. But no mention was made of the temperature, humidity or wind issues—all of which, in my opinion, are pretty critical for a general quality of life.
The Top 25 cities and their rankings include:
- Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
- Boston, MA
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Cleveland, OH
- Denver, CO
- Milwaukee, WI
- San Francisco, CA
- Portland, OR
- Kansas City, MO
- Newark, NJ
- Nassau-Suffolk City, NY
- Philadelphia, PA
- Edison, NJ
- St. Louis, MO
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Providence, RI
- Seattle, WA
- Indianapolis, IN
- Cincinnati, OH
- Columbus, OH
- Washington, DC
- Austin, TX
- Chicago, IL
My gut reaction? I guess you can select criteria and weights that can make any market the implied best. Or as my grand mother said, “Indeed you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
Several of these cities to me, given their weather, lack of affordable housing and dismal economies should not even be on this list. Evidently I am not the only skeptical reader of this study. Take a look at readers comments on the MarketWatch site of these rankings.
You can read the entire report.
Tell me your perceived best cities and why for retirees.
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Lottie–thanks for the kind words.
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Ted
Great writter, Thanks for delivering the prestigious post. I found it useful. Kind regards !!