-By Warner Todd Huston
Guess which state is the single worst state to try and retire in? Yup. Illinois.
TopRetirements.com, a site that tracks the best values for retirees, recently posted its top ten worst states to retire to and Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois tops the list of the worst. California comes up a close second worst.
Of Illinois the sites says, “Illinois’s fiscal health could be the worst of any state, which is what tipped the scales. It has even borrowed money to fund its pension obligations.”
The states’ dismal financial situation is why Illinois, California and New York top the list. Apparently a chief reason California got to rank only second worst is because it has a temperate climate whereas Illinois is a cold weather state. The site used three criteria by which to rate the states: Fiscal health, taxation, and climate.
So for all of you in the Land of Lincoln, welcome to the bottom of the barrel. Though I can’t imagine that there is a single citizen of the Land of Lincoln that could be much surprised that Illinois is essentially telling old folks that they should just get the heck outta Dodge, if you will.
I found the top ten list unsurprising except for its sixth entry; Ohio. Having been born in the Buckeye State I was saddened to see that Ohio had slipped so far into the doldrums that caused it to be forced onto such a list.
The full list:
- Illinois
- California
- New York
- Rhode Island
- New Jersey
- Ohio
- Wisconsin
- Massachusetts
- Connecticut
- Nevada
Click on over to TopRetirements.com to see their definitions and reasonings.
(H/T MarathonPundit.com)
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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