Where you retire could mean the difference of almost $1.5M. Here are the most and least expensive states and how to plan

4 days ago 6

Vawn Himmelsbach

Sat, January 31, 2026 astatine 6:15 AM CST 6 min read

Ensuring a comfy status requires making a batch of decisions: How overmuch should you save? How should you invest? When should you instrumentality Social Security? How overmuch should you retreat each period successful status and from which accounts?

The answers to these questions tin each person a worldly effect connected your retirement. But 1 important question — 1 that not everyone considers — is wherever you’ll unrecorded during your aureate years. More specifically, which authorities volition springiness you the biggest bang for your status bucks?

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While you request $2.2 cardinal to discontinue successful Hawaii, you don’t person to beryllium a millionaire to pb a comfy beingness successful status successful each state: For instance, to discontinue astatine property 65 successful Oklahoma, you’ll request a minimum of $735,284 successful savings — a much than $1.25 cardinal difference, according to caller findings (1).

The study, based connected Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2024 Consumer Expenditure Survey (2), calculates however overmuch a idiosyncratic would request to prevention successful each authorities to unrecorded comfortably successful status (when combined with Social Security and assuming retirees travel the 4% regularisation for withdrawals from savings).

The survey averaged yearly outgo of surviving for Americans 65 and implicit and past multiplied this by the outgo of surviving scale for each authorities from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center’s 2025 Q3 cost-of-living bid (3).

According to these calculations, the 5 states requiring the slightest magnitude of savings are:

Oklahoma ($735,284)
Mississippi ($752,178)
Alabama ($789,037)
West Virginia ($792,109)
Kansas ($804,395)

By contrast, the 5 astir costly states are:

Hawaii ($2,198,902)
Massachusetts ($1,755,055)
California ($1,538,508)
Alaska ($1,400,286)
New York ($1,383,392) (1)

A survey by NetCredit came up with akin rankings but found, for instance, that West Virginia requires the slightest savings ($712,921), portion Hawaii is the astir costly authorities successful which to retire, astatine $1,097,790 (4).

Armed with this information, you whitethorn privation to see relocating to a authorities with a little outgo of surviving erstwhile you discontinue — oregon you whitethorn determine you request to commencement redeeming much to enactment wherever you are.

When it comes to outgo of living, you’ll privation to comparison everything from lodging to groceries, utilities and proscription costs. Also see authorities income tax, arsenic good arsenic however the authorities taxes Social Security, pensions and concern income.