Moving to a new state can be exhilarating, but it can also be quite frightening since you’re uprooting your whole life, but when retirement comes that might be the best idea, so today we’re going to take a look at the 10 best places to retire in Massachusetts.
Up north, on the shore of the Atlantic, sits Massachusetts, a state that is home to some 6.8 million people. Out of the 10,565 square miles of territory, over a quarter is water, so there’s plenty of that to enjoy, whether you like fishing, swimming, boating and so on. There are several large bays around the state as well as plenty of rivers, including Charles River. If fishing is your flavor, then you should know there are plenty of freshwater species around here, as well as marine species.
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When it comes to the climate, Massachusetts is somewhere between humid continental and humid subtropical with warm summers and cool winters.
While Massachusetts is the seventh smallest state in the USA, it is a big educational center. For instance, both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are located here, in Cambridge.
There’s also plenty of activity going in this state so, even if the new place you choose to move to isn’t that rich in entertainment opportunities, be it cinemas, restaurants or art galleries, there’s always the possibility to take a drive to the nearest big city, such as Boston. Alternatively, you might want to read up on another location, such as the 10 best places to retire in Maryland.
Across Massachusetts, the average home price is $315,200, while the cost of living index is 137.4, which is quite a bit above the national average. The violent crime rate was calculated at 47, which isn’t too great, but not too terrible either. Massachusetts also has 408 physicians per 100,000 residents, well above the 261 national average.
For our list today we took a look at several aspects, such as the average commute time (included as the general state of traffic, since pensioners use the same roads as the commuters to go about their daily activities, albeit not necessarily at the same time), the median home price, the cost of living index, the crime rate and the number of physicians per 100,000 residents for each county in the state, getting information from Sperling’s BestPlaces which centralizes data from various governmental sources. Then we handed out points according to the ratings for each of these categories and offered extra points to those counties that have more physicians than the state’s average since healthcare is such an important issue.
Without further ado, here are the 10 best places to retire in Massachusetts.
