For seniors choosing a location to spend their retirement years, a state’s annual cost of in-home services can make it more attractive—or the opposite.
For this reason, personal finance website WalletHub took states’ annual cost of in-home services into consideration when compiling its list of 2016’s Best & Worst States to Retire.
WalletHub’s analysts compared all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., across three dimensions: health care, affordability and quality of life. The 51 regions were also compared across 24 metrics, one of which was the annual cost of in-home services.
The annual cost of in-home services is lowest in Louisiana and highest in North Dakota, the research revealed. Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia are tied for the second-lowest annual cost of in-home services, followed by Arkansas.
On the flip side, after North Dakota, the states with the highest annual cost of in-home services are Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Washington.
Few of the states that rank among the highest or lowest annual cost of in-home care services made the list for the top-10 “best” or “worst” states to retire.
In 2016, the top-five best states to retire are Florida, Wyoming, South Dakota, South Carolina and Colorado, WalletHub concluded. The top-five worst states to retire are Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Connecticut and Vermont.
In October 2015, WalletHub looked at the 150 most-populated U.S. cities to determine where in-home care services cost the most and the least. Cities with the highest annual cost of in-home services included Seattle and Tacoma in Washington, and San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont in California.
Cities with the lowest annual cost of in-home services included Brownsville, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Montgomery, Alabama; Fayetteville, North Carolina; and El Paso, Texas.
The cost of in-home services was twice as much in the highest cities as the lowest cities, WalletHub said at the time.
Written by Mary Kate Nelson
Photo courtesy of Lindsey G
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