{"id":14866,"date":"2025-05-09T21:11:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T21:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=14866"},"modified":"2025-05-09T21:11:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T21:11:12","slug":"how-forbes-picks-the-best-places-to-retire-and-how-to-find-your-ideal-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=14866","title":{"rendered":"How Forbes Picks The Best Places To Retire And How To Find Your Ideal Spot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Villages, a fast-growing active retirement haven in central Florida north of Orlando, is one of Forbes’ Best Places To Retire In 2025.<\/p>\n

Michael Warren\/Getty Images<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

K<\/abbr>en and Kathy Granacki <\/strong>are doing retirement their way. In their early 50s they decided to leave Bend, Oregon. For years, they had lived and worked on a 10-acre spread there, operating a dog kennel and grooming facility. They sold the property at Bend\u2019s sky-high prices and moved (along with their three white Samoyed show dogs, Howdy, Gator and Rumor) to a boat, a spacious 64-foot-long Grand Banks trawler. Then, they began slowly working their way up and down the East Coast, asking themselves whether a port-of-call or someplace near it might be the ideal place to retire.<\/p>\n

Last year, after three years at sea, they settled on The Villages, a fast-growing active retirement haven in central Florida north of Orlando, midway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico (or as the Trump Administration calls it, the Gulf of America). \u201cWe decided to sell the boat and go back to land,\u201d says Ken. Their new home is a three-bedroom, three-bath, one-story house with 3,500 square feet\u2014more living space than the boat, and for that matter, the facility they left behind in Oregon. Also left behind: the Beaver State\u2019s colder weather and stiff personal income tax. (Florida doesn\u2019t have an income tax.) \u201cHere, every week is six Saturdays and a Sunday,\u201d exults Ken, now 57, a year older than his wife.<\/p>\n

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Samoyeds (from front) Rumor, Gator and Howdy accompanied Ken and Kathy Granacki on their nautical search for their best retirement place.<\/p>\n

Courtesy Ken Granacki<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Granackis\u2019 water-based search produced a solid result. The Villages, with a population of 155,000, is the only Florida community to win a spot on Forbes\u2019 new list of 25 Best Places To Retire In 2025, which identifies locales providing high quality retirement living at an affordable price. The cost of living in The Villages is 2% below the national average and the median house there is $404,000, right at the national median. Rising property insurance premiums have caused consternation in hurricane-and-flood-prone Florida, but The Villages sits comfortably away from the areas with the greatest potential for storm tidal flooding, so premiums remain tolerable.<\/p>\n

That Ken Granacki hit the seas to check out retirement venues fits with his heritage. He grew up in Bellingham, Washington, a port city north of Seattle near the Canadian border on Puget Sound, where boats are everywhere. His wife of 16 years is from Grants Pass, Oregon. After a lifetime in the Pacific Northwest, \u201cWe wanted to go someplace warm, with no gray winters,\u201d he says, but with the same emphasis on outdoor activities as Bend. Their four kids from previous marriages were grown and out of the house.<\/p>\n

Before setting out on their aquatic odyssey, they ruled out some places. Arizona, they decided, was too dry. They previously had a get-away place in the Atlantic Ocean town of Boynton Beach, Fla., but found the folks there a little too impersonal. On their journey they checked out and rejected places like Brunswick, Ga., (\u201cIt\u2019s seen its better days,\u201d says Ken) and North Carolina\u2019s Outer Banks (\u201ctoo remote; we wanted to be closer to stuff\u201d). They also realized they wanted a place with what Ken calls \u201can up-and-coming economy,\u201d in case he wanted to buy investment property or even have a second career as a real estate agent \u201cif I get bored with golf and pickleball.\u201d The Villages fits that economic profile in spades; it sits in the Orlando metropolitan area, ranked in the top 6% on the Milken Institute\u2019s new economic list of \u201cBest Performing Cities\u201d in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The couple learned about The Villages, which started a half-century ago as a mobile home park, from online videos they watched on the boat. While having boat maintenance work done in Jacksonville, they rented a car, drove to The Villages, and were hooked. Eventually, they rented a house there for six months before buying. \u201cWe feel like we live in a retirement Disneyland here,\u201d Ken gushes.<\/p>\n

To start your own search, take a look at Forbes 25 picks here; they\u2019re spread across 19 states in all four domestic time zones\u2014a recognition that many folks want to retire near family. To make its selection, Forbes compiled data on more than 950 places with populations above 10,000, in every state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The main factors we took into account involve money, especially median home prices and overall cost of living, both compared to national measures. Also reviewed are state taxes, including marginal tax rates, income tax exemptions for Social Security benefits and other retirement income, and the existence of state estate or inheritance taxes. On the theory that a good local economy helps retirees looking for part-time work or later selling a home, we use job and economic growth prospects from the Milken Institute\u2019s latest \u201cBest Performing Cities\u201d report.<\/p>\n

Quality of life is also important, so we look at a number of non-economic indicators, ruling out cities with far too high rates of serious crime compared to national averages or way too few primary care doctors per capita. We also take into consideration factors that promote an active retirement, including air quality and ratings for walkability (how easy it is to shop and get to places on foot) and bikeability (whether dedicated lanes and other measures make it easy to bike around town). While the data underlying the list is quantitative, final picks are qualitative, reflecting our judgment.<\/p>\n

For the sixth year, we weighed each area\u2019s vulnerability to climate change and natural disaster risk, primarily using the National Risk Index for Natural Hazards<\/a> published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This calculates for every county, including municipalities in Puerto Rico, a vulnerability measure encompassing 18 natural hazards, including flooding, hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes and wind. We automatically exclude places assigned a \u201cvery high\u201d risk rating.<\/p>\n

Our full write-up for each of our picks includes extra information points that don\u2019t influence our final choices but might affect yours. These include county-wide results in the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n

Sources for our data include: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, FEMA, the Tax Foundation, the Milken Institute, individual state tax departments, zillow.com, trulia.com, bestplaces.net, neighborhoodscout.com, the National Association of Realtors, countyhealthrankings.org, walkscore.com, the League of American Bicyclists and state or local election agencies.<\/p>\n

More From Forbes<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Forbes<\/span>Best Places To Retire In 2025: Greenville And Other Surprisingly Affordable Gems<\/span>By William P. Barrett<\/span><\/small><\/span><\/span><\/span>Forbes<\/span>25 Best Places To Enjoy Your Retirement In 2024: Eugene And Other Top Spots<\/span>By William P. Barrett<\/span><\/small><\/span><\/span><\/span>Forbes<\/span>This Pandemic Boom Town Is Also A Surprisingly Wonderful Place To Retire<\/span>By Emily Mason<\/span><\/small><\/span><\/span><\/span>Forbes<\/span>25 Best Places To Enjoy Your Retirement In 2023: Traverse City And Other Top Spots<\/span>By William P. Barrett<\/span><\/small><\/span><\/span><\/span>Forbes<\/span>The Best Places To Retire Abroad In 2024<\/span>By William P. Barrett<\/span><\/small><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Villages, a fast-growing active retirement haven in central Florida north of Orlando, is one of Forbes’ Best Places To Retire In 2025. Michael Warren\/Getty Images Ken and Kathy Granacki are doing retirement their way. In their early 50s they decided to leave Bend, Oregon. For years, they had lived and worked on a 10-acre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[332,2633,6115,513,22,788,2427],"class_list":{"0":"post-14866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finance-news","8":"tag-find","9":"tag-forbes","10":"tag-ideal","11":"tag-picks","12":"tag-places","13":"tag-retire","14":"tag-spot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}