10 States That Best Protect Your Retirement Nest Egg

Where you retire directly impacts your savings and thus your quality of life in retirement.

As the financial website GoBankingRates states:

Deciding where to retire shouldn’t be something you do based on weather or even proximity to kids. … If you want to retire and maintain your nest egg, you should be looking at important regional factors, such as taxes, local living expenses and the affordability and accessibility of health care.

Those are the factors GoBankingRates recently analyzed in every U.S. state to determine the best and worst states in which to retire rich.

The top three states are:

New Hampshire

• Pros: No sales tax, no Social Security income tax, no estate tax, no inheritance tax, excellent health care, above-average Medicare payouts
• Cons: High cost of living, above-average home prices, middling deposit account rates, second-highest median property tax in the country, above-average individual health insurance premiums

Delaware

• Pros: No sales tax, no Social Security tax, no inheritance tax, low property tax, high Medicare payouts
• Cons: Estate tax (16 percent), above-average cost of living, above-average home prices, pricey average individual health insurance premiums

Idaho

• Pros: No Social Security tax, no estate tax, no inheritance tax, fairly low property taxes, low local tax rates, low cost of living, above-average local deposit rates for retirees, low average individual insurance premiums
• Cons: Average score for seniors’ health care, average Medicare payouts

The states that made up the top 10 are:

1. New Hampshire
2. Delaware
3. Idaho
4. Wisconsin
5. Wyoming
6. Alaska
7. South Dakota
8. Michigan
9. Utah
10. Arkansas

The worst states are:

1. New York
2. New Jersey
3. Illinois
4. Connecticut
5. California
6. Vermont
7. Rhode Island
8. Massachusetts
9. Washington
10. Nebraska

To learn more about preparing for a comfortable retirement — regardless of how far off it might be for you — be sure to check out “The 10 Golden Rules of Retiring Rich.”

Have you thought about what state you want to retire in? Have you considered state-specific factors like taxes that would affect your retirement savings? Share your thoughts in a comment below or on Facebook.