Retirement: FL Cities Among Best For Golden Year Destinations

TAMPA, FL — More and more Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce for a well-deserved life of relaxation. Whatever the reason for hanging it up after decades of work might be, retirees in every state ought to consider heading to greener pastures. That’s according to the good folks at WalletHub, who recently determined the best and worst cities to retire to in the US.

The report from the personal finance website ranked the 150 most-populated cities in the U.S., plus at least two of the most-populated cities in each state, and ranked them across four key retirement dimensions — affordability, activities, quality of life, and health care.

WalletHub then evaluated those four dimensions using 46 relevant metrics, which included such things as annual cost of adult day health care, public golf courses per capita, and the share of population aged 65 years or older.

Tampa ranked second overall in best places to retire across the country. Our city had an overall score of 59.06, and ranked 10 in affordability, 19 in activities, 45 in quality of life, and 95 in healthcare.

Orlando was the only city to finish higher than Tampa, as it took home the award for the best city to retire to in the nation with an affordability ranking of nine, an activities ranking of 11, a quality of life ranking of 68, and a health care ranking of 48.

Here's how all the other Florida cities that made the list did:

• 5. Miami — 57.21
• 7. Fort Lauderdale — 56.58
• 8. Cape Coral — 56.50
• 12. Pembroke Pines — 55.50
• 16. St. Petersburg — 55.25
• 25. Port St. Lucie — 53.57
• 32. Hialeah — 52.99
• 42. Tallahassee — 51.70
• 88. Jacksonville — 48.10

Florida was by far the most featured state in the top 15 list with six cities, but Laredo, Texas, actually led the country in lowest adjusted cost of living and the lowest annual cost of in-home service.

More importantly though, Fort Lauderdale led the country in fishing facilities per capita.

According to the study, half of the ten worst cities in which to retire were in California:

173. Providence, Rhode Island: 39.86
174. Baltimore, Maryland: 39.53
175. Rancho Cucamonga, California: 38.80
176. Fresno, California: 38.73
177. Newark, New Jersey: 37.84
178. Bakersfield, California: 37.53
179. San Bernardino, California: 36.94
180. Warwick, Rhode Island: 36.34
181. Bridgeport, Connecticut: 35.74
182. Stockton, California: 33.73