These articles are always suspect because of the methodologies, but it is interesting reading:
[Best states to grow old in](The Best States to Grow Old In – 24/7 Wall St.)
[Worst states to grow old in](The Worst States to Grow Old In – 24/7 Wall St.)
Using crime statistics on a state-wide basis is particularly suspect, because crime rates can change drastically from mile to mile, they are not uniform across the state.
Congratulations @sax. I have at least five years to go, and my husband may never retire, but this is a great thread to learn from. I Missed out on many retirement dollars because my employer only lets u put a certain amount of your pay into retirement, and they only match when you are putting in. It took me years to pay attention and realize I needed to put LESS in and distribute it such that I got the matching all year.
Notrichenough, what about weather? I think Vermont is a beautuful state. There is a lot of beauty in New Hampshire.
But it is too freaking cold in those states. 
We all have our own criteria.
There is no best state. Even within a state, areas vary. Even in counties, in neighborhoods, areas vary.
Notrichenough, are you going to move to another place when you retire?
@sax
Congratulations!
@1214mom
I’ve been out of the corporate arena for a few years, but did spend years being corporate counsel. Are you saying that most employees don’t read / understand (not targeting you, obviously) the employee handbook or summary plan description? If not, I’m not surprised. Those do not make for exciting reading. But, I recall that most employers hold annual benefit “fairs” so that employees can review and change their elections. It is also in the interest of highly-compensated employees (corporate officers) to broaden employee participation.
To be sure, that’s one more thing to add to the list of “life skills” for our children – that they pay attention to retirement saving at the earliest possible time when they start having earnings, particularly if employers are kicking in matching funds.
Some friends of ours are already spending 6+ months in no estate tax states establishing residency. Two popular states are Nevada (Lake Tahoe area) and Wyoming (Jackson Hole).
Turbotax’s Taxcaster is pretty easy to use:
https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/calculators/taxcaster/
You can plug in last year’s numbers and add in the sum you want to convert from tIRA to rIRA under “IRA/Pension Distributions” and watch the tax numbers change and the categories into which they fall.
Obviously the calculations are based on 2014 tax rates, but it is helpful to see how, for example, a $50K conversion affects your marginal tax bracket.
Then you can add in pensions and SS benefits and see how that affects taxes, and so on, and so on.
Who knows?
Not sure I’ll want to be fighting NE winters when I’m old.
Yeah…
I’m hoping to be eating lobster in Maine for the nice months, and then be somewhere warmer (NC?) for the rest of the year.
I’m probably older than most of you, and this winter was rough in Northern NJ.
@AttorneyMother I should have been paying attention, and it was certainly not a secret, but I was busy “birthing babies” and worrying about child care and things like that. I also should have taken more risk with my retirement funds when I was younger, but I am where I am. I’m not looking for any sympathy, I’ve done fine for myself and my family, but I will certainly try to help my kids make smart decisions about retirement funding as they move into the workforce.
I do have a place in South Carolina, but now that I see it is #10 on the list of worst states to grow old in, I’m re-thinking it… 
@1214mom, I think we could all come up with a list of things that we should have done better financially, and things we could be doing now, but aren’t. Some of our lists are probably far longer than others…if you knew my list, you’d probably think I was a complete idiot (if you don’t already)! There are things I tell people they really need to do, that I’m not even doing myself right now, even though I know better. I rationalize it by thinking that I am very happy with what has happened in my life and my families lives, so if I had done something differently then maybe we wouldn’t all be doing what we are now. So regrets are completely unnecessary. Then again, maybe I’d be sitting on a beach in Hawaii, even happier, if I hadn’t screwed up so many things financially. Hmm…maybe I shouldn’t think about this so closely!
My plan is to stay in NJ but that can change depending on my daughter. If she moves (which I doubt) we will follow. I plan to torment her for the rest of her life.
@1214mom
I hope you did not take my comment the wrong way. It was not meant to be unkind. Having always watched from “the outside” once disclosure documents are released, I have wondered whether people really read documents that took up so much of my working life.
No one is immune to mistakes. Somewhere up thread I mentioned a good friend and colleague who was trying to talk to me about the Vanguard 500 Index Fund in 1986 when I was more interested in paying my credit card bill in full each month. We were both single and earning money to spend only on ourselves. So, no excuses. I finally managed to catch on by 1991.
It’s been a while, but whenever I had a question to ask the HR “benefits” person, they looked at me like I was from Mars. They knew even less than I did. I would bet that they never read the documents. This was not a small company, either, with tens of thousands of employees in the US alone.
Thankfully, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and I credit myself with enough sense to not fix what’s not broken.
The place where there are the most MDs and specialists available is Oahu. Housing prices on Oahu are expensive in most of the places where people want to live and have access to healthcare. Even those of us on Oahu can have problems getting a good internist and other medical care.
We do NOT have the temperature extremes but do have allergens blooming year round–pollens, molds, dust mites and roaches, as well as termites thrive in our tropical climate. The humidity and traffic are also issues that many find tough to take. Air fares are high for folks wanting to visit or to fly to visit loved ones; road trips are not a valid alternative.
I’d strongly recommend that anyone who wants to live in HI (or anywhere else) have a long term rental before splurging, just to be sure it will work out as anticipated and that they don’t end up with a very expensive and exhausting mistake. Major moves are a readjustment–finding your tribe and the support services that help make a place “home.”
@IxnayBob
This might offend someone. But in my experience the HR departments of corporate clients were frequently staffed by some of the lesser-sophisticated managers in the hierarchy. I think employees today have to approach their retirement planning in much the same way as entrepreneurs do.
@AttorneyMother, I took your post as a legitimate question, not bad at all. No worries. I agree with @busdriver11 about the long list of mistakes we all make. But we are all trying to learn and help each other along, and trying to keep from making new and different mistakes, which is all good.
HImom, great advice about maybe doing a long term rental befor uprooting to a new locale.
Right now I’m trying to convince myself to just start getting rid of some of the stuff we have accumulated over the years, so we can downsize if we do move elsewhere. But that’s another thread…
Yes, tossing “stuff” and baggage is a GREAT thing and can help increase your options and make vacations and moves much easier. There is the “bag a week” thread that can help (or bag a day if you’re ambitious). Long term rentals are much cheaper than repeatedly making big moves, IMHO. There are a lot of intangibles that are hard to weigh on a short vacation that can really add up if you decide to relocate. On a visit, it may not be as noticable, for example finding a dentist, eye doc, internist but are key if you want to make a real move.