The 10 Best Affordable Places to Retire

A potential retirement spot’s cost of living is often an important consideration for retirees living on a fixed income. While the cost of housing is factored into the overall Best Places to Retire ranking, U.S. News breaks out especially affordable places to retire into its own ranking, including housing affordability and price parity, the ability to afford everyday goods and services.

The 10 Best Affordable Places to Retire in the U.S. in 2024:

  1. Youngstown, Ohio.
  2. Hickory, North Carolina.
  3. Springfield, Missouri.
  4. Brownsville, Texas.
  5. Huntington, West Virginia & Ashland, Kentucky-Ohio.
  6. Fort Wayne, Indiana.
  7. Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
  8. Mobile, Alabama.
  9. Toledo, Ohio.
  10. South Bend, Indiana.

15 Best Places in Arizona

Here’s a list of the 15 best places in Arizona where retirees can enjoy life on a Social Security check alone. In order to do this, they took the median Social Security benefits for 2023, doubled it for couples, and then set out to find cities where the rent doesn’t take up more than half of that total.

Here are the 15 best places to live in Arizona on just a Social Security check:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-best-places-arizona-couple-140129724.html

Incentives to Move Abroad

Our Cedarcrest listing hit the open market on January 25th, and we recieved NINE offers! I gave all of them a chance to bid it up, and ten days later, our sellers had their net proceeds in their account!

They moved to Portugal, and yesterday they reported that the weather is similar to what it is in California, and his favorite cup of coffee only costs seventy cents!

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You’ve saved and invested your whole adult life for this, and the time has come to quit working and start living. But where will you spend your retirement years?

If you decide the answer is abroad, you won’t be alone. Millions of Americans have done just that. Some experts estimate that as many as 12% of the nation’s 45 million or so retirees are living overseas.

There are a lot of incentives for such a move: a lower cost of living for a higher quality of life, for instance. New experiences in exotic settings. And there are any number of locales willing to up the ante to have you choose them as the golden isle for your golden years.

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2023/11/06/these-3-countries-have-amazing-incentives-for-reti/

Top 10 According to ExPats

Do you ever think about packing your bags and moving to another country to start a new life abroad? If so, you’re not alone. An October 2023 survey by language tutoring company Preply found that more than 37% of its respondents aged 18 to 26 want to live abroad indefinitely. As for why, 1 in 4 said they wanted access to better programs, like universal health care. Others cited new cultural experiences, the high cost of living in the U.S., and our current political climate.

If you’re serious about moving out of the country but unsure where to go, a recent report from InterNations ranking the places where expats are thriving might point you in the right direction.

Mexico is also the friendliest nation on the list, with 89% of expats saying that locals are kind to foreigners. That’s 24 percentage points above the global average of 65%, per the report. Although finding a place to live can be challenging, housing is affordable and 71% of expats are happy with the cost of living. They’re also satisfied with the career opportunities and the work-life balance.

The InterNations survey found that 90% of expats in the country are enjoying their life in Mexico. Portugal is the only other European country to make the top 10, while the others are in Asia and the Americas:

  1. Mexico
  2. Spain
  3. Panama
  4. Malaysia
  5. Taiwan
  6. Thailand
  7. Costa Rica
  8. Philippines
  9. Bahrain
  10. Portugal

For its survey, InterNations – which represents the world’s largest expat community – polled more than 12,000 people of varying nationalities living in 172 countries or territories.

Participants rated different aspects of expat life, from healthcare and safety to work culture, housing and more. Click below to see the full report.

https://cms.in-cdn.net/cdn/file/cms-media/public/2023-07/Expat-Insider-2023-Survey-Report.pdf

Migration Report

This must mean that Allied’s best salespeople are in San Diego!

The 2023 Allied US Migration Report presents a detailed analysis of the current trends in interstate moves across the United States, highlighting significant patterns and underlying economic factors.

This year marked another decrease in the volume of interstate moves. Following the 20% decrease in 2022 compared to 2021, there was a further 12% decline in 2023 relative to the previous year. This continuous decline indicates a notable shift in migration patterns over the last two years.

https://www.allied.com/migration-map

Happy Happy

I know San Diego-Carlsbad is on this list, but there are others. It’s a great time to move elsewhere!

Designed by Gallup senior scientist Dan Witters, the study established 15 metrics—from eating healthy and learning something new every day to civic engagement, financial security, vacation time, and even dental checkups—that signal happiness. The National Geographic Gallup Special/Blue Zones Index draws on nearly 250,000 interviews conducted with adults from 2014 to 2015 in 190 metropolitan areas across the U.S as part of the Gallup-Sharecare Well Being Index.

In happier places, locals smile and laugh more often, socialize several hours a day, have access to green spaces, and feel that they are making purposeful progress toward achieving life goals. For our index, it tracked factors that are statistically associated with doing well and feeling well; these include feeling secure, taking vacations, and having enough money to cover basic needs.

Link to NG article

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