When choosing retirement destination cost of living is an important factor to consider so today we present you the cheapest states to live in the US for seniors. On this ranking you can find places where median home price does not exceed $150,000 and where healthcare costs are from 12% to 1% below America’s average. All of the ranked states are tax friendly toward retirees – seniors do not have to pay taxes on money coming from social security while others types of retirement income are completely or partly exempt from taxation. Moreover, in many of them property and sale taxes are below the national average.
Although low costs of living go with fuller wallet they do not guarantee high quality of life. Many of ranked states struggle with physicians shortfall and overall poor quality of healthcare – five of 10 states with worst healthcare in the US are present on this list. The health care quality ranking, which was made by US news, shows that residents of the southwestern region receive poorer medical care compared to people living in other parts of America. A similar conclusion can be drawn from AHRQ research. However, since southwestern states are among the cheapest ones in America and on of our criteria was cost of living, they found a place on our ranking. Other downsides of living in cheap states can be high crime and poverty rates. Still, crime and poverty greatly vary across individual states, and it is always possible to find small safe towns to enjoy retirement days.
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Besides affordability the states ranked here attract seniors with natural beauties and abundance of opportunities for outdoor activities from hiking, golfing, exploring hidden places to boating, fishing, swimming. If you dream of spending retirement near an ocean you can check our previous list of the Cheapest Places to Live in the World on the Beach.
In creating the list of 16 Cheapest states to live in the US for seniors we took into account three criteria – median home prices and healthcare costs, which we found at Sperling’s best places, as well as tax friendliness as determined by Smart Asset.
