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Best Cities to Retire Calculator — Rank Destinations on a Fixed Income
Enter your fixed monthly income and what matters to you. Get a ranked list of US cities by how far your money actually stretches there — cost of living, state tax on retirement income, and climate weighted your way.
What Actually Makes a City Good to Retire In
The cities that show up on generic "best places to retire" lists usually optimize for one thing — warm weather, or low taxes, or cheap housing — without weighting them against each other or against your specific income source. A pension and Social Security income get taxed completely differently state to state: several states tax neither, several tax pensions but exempt Social Security, and a handful tax both fully.
Cost of living matters more in retirement than during working years, because there's no raise coming to outpace it. A city with a cost index 20% below the national average effectively stretches a fixed income 25% further (since $1 buys 1.25x as much), which usually outweighs a modest state tax difference on a typical Social Security + pension income level.
This calculator weights cost of living and tax treatment against each other based on your stated preference, applies your climate filter, and ranks real US cities by how far your specific monthly income would actually go — not a generic national ranking that ignores your numbers.
Which states don't tax Social Security or retirement income?
As of 2026, the large majority of states don't tax Social Security benefits at all. A smaller group of states tax neither Social Security nor most other retirement income (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, and New Hampshire — the same states with no general income tax). A few additional states exempt Social Security but still tax pension and 401k/IRA withdrawals.
Is a no-income-tax state always cheaper to retire in?
Not automatically. No-income-tax states often lean on higher property or sales tax instead, and several (Florida coastal areas, parts of Texas) have cost-of-living indexes well above the national average despite the tax advantage. The combined effect of tax treatment and cost of living, not either alone, determines how far a fixed income actually stretches.
How is the "match score" calculated?
Each city gets a cost-of-living score and a tax-treatment score, both normalized to a 0-100 scale, then blended according to your weight slider (favor-low-tax vs. favor-low-cost). Cities outside your selected climate preference are excluded from the ranking entirely rather than just scored lower, since climate is typically a hard filter for retirees rather than a tradeoff.
Does this account for healthcare costs?
Not as a separate line item — healthcare cost variation is folded into each city's overall cost-of-living index rather than broken out individually, since Medicare coverage (federal, not state-based) handles the bulk of retiree healthcare cost regardless of location. Out-of-pocket variation by state (Medigap pricing, provider density) is real but smaller than the headline cost-of-living gap between cities on this list.
