Now You Can Create a Personalized List of the Best Places to Retire

Should you retire to the beaches of Florida? Or what about sunny Arizona? The answer, of course, depends on your personal preferences.

Now a new interactive map prepared by Zillow for Reuters allows you to customize the best places for you to retire.

According to Reuters, you prioritize several screening factors, including population, home values, weather, size of the retired population, access to entertainment, and crime rate, in an effort to determine the ideal locations for you to enjoy your golden years. You can also select which states you’re interested in.

For instance, if you marked all the screening factors as important and said you want to spend no more than $200,000 on a home, it says that Vamo, in Sarasota County, Fla., is the single best place for you to retire, Reuters says. With a median home value of $187,400, Vamo is located within 3 miles of local beaches and boasts a whopping 158 days of pleasant weather per year. Sounds blissful. Vamo earned an overall rating of 8.5.

“It’s particularly a good area for single-home living near a world-class beach and a world-class retirement city like Sarasota,” Ben Bates, a real estate agent for Bennitt Bates at Coldwell Banker, told Reuters.

I ran another scenario based on an individual who likes small town living (no more than 10,000 people) and home values in the area of $200,000 to $300,000, and also somewhat values health care access, nice weather, entertainment opportunities and a retired population. The town of Rhinebeck, N.Y.. came out on top with an 8.3 overall rating. Coupeville, Wash., and Dauphin Island, Ala., also ranked high.

My hometown received a high ranking (nine out of 10) in access to health care, and our median home value is $169,000. But with just 37 pleasant days per year and only 14 percent of the population over age 65, my town received an overall score of 5.5 (out of 10).

You can customize your own retirement map by clicking here.

Share your ideal retirement places, according to the Zillow map, below or on our Facebook page.

Now, here’s a video that will help with your retirement goals. It’s about how best to invest your retirement savings.