Minnesota, North Dakota are among the best or worst states for retirement: take your pick

Dueling headlines in local media will lead to much confusion among retirees looking to relocate.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune published this article last week under the headline:

Is Minnesota one of the worst places to retire? By some measures, yes.

The article cites this study by Bankrate.com. It ranks Minnesota as the 10th worst state for retirement. Bankrate uses five criteria for ranking states, in order of importance: affordability, well-being, health care, climate, and crime.

“Climate” isn’t helping the local cause. Alaska ranks dead last for climate, and dead last, overall. Minnesota is next worse after Alaska on climate and 10 worst overall. North Dakota comes next on climate and ranks 5th worst overall.

Minnesota does well on health care but ranks below average on affordability. North Dakota ranks below average on every measure except for crime.

By comparison, Florida ranked 8th best overall for retirement and 3rd best for retirement.

But earlier this year, KARE-11 TV ran this headline:

Minnesota ranked 8th-best state to retire in

What gives? KARE-11 relies on WalletHub as the source, citing this study. Minnesota ranks 8th best here with North Dakota coming in a respectable 19th best. By comparison, Florida ranks at No. 1 best overall.

WalletHub groups their criteria into three broad categories: affordability, quality of life, and health care. Minnesota ranks No. 1 on health care, No. 4 on quality of life, and below average on affordability

North Dakota ranks about average on all three measures.

Digging into the WalletHub methodology, all the usual measures are there: tax rates, cost of living, life expectancy, etc. “Bingo halls per capita”?

In their measure, climate is given a much lower weight than the Bankrate formula. Bankrate weighs the climate score at 10 percent of the total, while WalletHub weighs the climate score at only 2.5 percent.

Regardless, these state rankings serve no useful purpose other than as media clickbait. Each retiree has their own criteria and own weighting and won’t make a life-changing decision based on a website’s opinion.

Yet, somehow, these state-to-state comparisons have now entered Presidential election politics. The Tampa Times today devoted a PolitiFact piece to parsing a single sentence Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote regarding the home of his counterpart Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz:

“In 2021, Minnesotans were roughly five times more likely to move to Florida than vice versa,” Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, posted Aug. 6 on X. 

PolitiFact quibbles that the actual number is closer to 4 times than 5 times. No matter. Here are some palm trees: