Retirement is a working life-long goal for most people--great amounts of thought are given to planning and saving and making sure all ducks will be in a row when it's finally time to clock out for the last time. This work should all be worth it, though, when retirees get to spend their last years enjoying family, friends and hobbies worry-free. But maybe Illinois is not the place to do it.
After deciding when and how to retire, deciding where to retire is the next step. Careful consideration of possible activities, weather, taxes, cost of living and proximity to family and friends is undertaken.
USA Today ranked the 10 worst states in the U.S. in which to retire. The newspaper named Illinois as the fourth-worst state in the country in which to spend your last years, citing the state's rough labor laws and the fact that the population of retired people in the state is relatively low.
From USA Today:
A combination of a weak labor market and high property taxes place Illinois as the fourth worst state in the nation for retirement. It may seem unusual to include labor conditions in a retirement ranking, but MoneyRates notes that more retirees are working part-time jobs these days. Illinois' proportion of older people in its population is well below the national average.
Combine all that with Illinois' other economic woes (underfunded pensions, unpaid bills and income tax disagreements) and our familiarity with polar vortices and it's not difficult to see why the 65-and-older crowd might want to stay away.
Alaska was named as the number-one worst state to retire in the United States because of its harsh economic conditions and even harsher weather conditions.
Check out this map to see which other states USA Today would advise retirees to stay away from. Click on each marker to see to which state it belongs.
Check out Reboot Illinois to see what other kinds of considerations retirees take into account when choosing where to live and how Illinois stacks up.
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