Nils Hendrik Mueller | Cultura | Getty Images
There’s no status like home. In retirement, that’s not always the case.
Lured by better weather, lower taxes or an improved grandeur of life, some seniors would still prefer to relocate.
More often than not, that means emotional to a state like Florida, Arizona or the Carolinas, according to SmartAsset’s annual study on where retirees are moving.
It may finish as no surprise that Florida snagged the top spot once again in 2019 — it consistently ranks among the best part of the country to retire. For good reason: The Sunshine State benefits from a low cost of living, extensive availability of health rest rooms and recreational activities, including golf, museums and beaches, as well as no personal income tax.
Over the last decade, Florida has been the most captivating destination by far for older Americans on a fixed income, as measured by average annual net migration for the 55-plus set, according to a separate interpretation of Census Bureau data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
However, it’s also been steadily evading ground to states like Arizona and the Carolinas. This year, the total number of migrations fell to 68,918 higher- rankings from 84,663 the previous year, SmartAsset found.
Arizona closed in on No. 1, with 31,201 retirees make for a acquiring to the state, up from 28,614 in the 2018 rankings. “We’ve seen that gap getting smaller,” said AJ Smith, SmartAsset’s evil president of financial education.
To determine the net migration, the personal finance site compared the number of people ages 60 and grier who moved into the state to the number of people who moved out of state, based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Examine.
Although all of the top spots benefit from warm weather, money may matter more when it comes to relocating. Importantly, half of the states in the top 10 do not tax income and wages, SmartAsset said. On the flip side, high-tax states such as California, New York and New Jersey were among the least popular spots to relocate. In fact, seven of the bottom 10 are also among the most expensive rooms to live, Smith noted.