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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Add Nevada to the list of places not to retire.

Puerto Rico is out. The Florida Keys are still under heavy repair. South Florida is not looking good. And hurricane season just started.

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I'm planning on avoiding any "place to retire". In addition to the criminals and scam artists who target the elderly there is an entire legal industry doing the same -- and you can bet they flock to the South West and Florida. Your best bet is probably somewhere like the Dakotas or Montana.

Living in bitterly cold states would certainly limit the amount of retirement savings I need. I live in a moderately cold one now, Montana would kill me before I reach 70.

Norway and Sweden, both countries which tend to get pretty cold in the winter, have life expectancies around 82 (a little higher than the US). Northern Europe in general, really; life expectancies are generally similar to the US or a bit higher, and it’s not particularly common to migrate to warmer countries for retirement.

Actually, my impression was that extreme heatwaves in hot places tend to kill more elderly people than extreme cold in cold ones.

Using Wolfram Alpha it certainly looks like Billings compares unfavorably to Oslo in terms of coldest temperatures during the winter. Norway appears more moderate, I assumed thanks to the ocean.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/widgets/gallery/view.jsp?id=af6f...

Oslo’s fairly far south; I’d imagine the more northerly cities would be more comparable.

What about outside the USA? Mexico in protected communities could be a very cost-effective and beautiful option (not to mention the culture is, I find, a little bit more "fun" than that of America). You could also find a community of retirees in Southeast Asia somewhere, again probably cheaper than the USA. Obviously puts you far from family, though.

Belize is awesome, they like foreigners with money, nice climate year around, and they have far fewer laws than we do.

Now, New Orleans gets hit by a hurricane in 12 hours.

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