Ranked: The Worst U.S. States for Retirement 🌧️

What We’re Showing

This chart ranks the 10 worst U.S. states to retire in, according to Bankrate.com, as of 2024.

What this ranking is not showing are states that people prefer to retire in for more qualitative reasons. Factors like weather are considered, but financial aspects of a state are weighted higher in this ranking.

Key Takeaways

• The worst ranked states for retirement are those that are cold, or expensive, or both.
• Alaska performed poorly across all retirement metrics except that of retiree well-being. It’s the coldest state by average temperatures. Housing, utilities, and cost of healthcare are much higher than the rest of the country.
• Texas is the only southern state in the bottom 10.

Retirement Metrics

To create this list, Bankrate analyzed all states across five categories with assigned weights: Affordability (40%), Wellbeing (25%), Health care (20%), Weather (10%), Crime (5%). One overall rank was then calculated.