25 best cities for retirement

There is a pretty serious — and pretty basic — retirement crisis in the United States: Many employees haven’t saved a dime for retirement, and others are saving but haven’t saved enough.

According to research from TIAA, employees aren’t the only ones concerned about their ability to save for retirement — employers are seriously worried, too. Nearly half of employers say they are only somewhat confident in their employees’ retirement futures, citing concerns about their employees not being able to pay for healthcare expenses in retirement and outliving their retirement savings.

Meanwhile, one resounding refrain among future retirees who haven’t saved enough for retirement is that they never plan to retire, and will just keep working forever. But research has found that the majority of people end up retiring sooner than expected — by age 65 is the average — either because of their own health issues or because they have to take care of a loved one.

But there might be one fairly simple and smart way to ensure employees have enough money in retirement: Relocating to a city that has a lower cost of living and can stretch post-career savings. WalletHub, an online personal finance site, researched the Best & Worst Places to Retire by comparing 46 metrics across more than 180 cities, including cost of healthcare, affordability, things to do and quality of life.

Four key dimensions were measured: affordability (including taxpayer-friendliness and adjusted cost of living); activities (theaters per capita and recreation-friendliness); quality of life (including age-friendly community and mild weather) and healthcare (including care facilities per capita and suicide rate for elders). Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for retirement.

Here are the 25 best cities for retirement, based on WalletHub’s research.