It was an ordinary day. Checking out a few sites on my computer when I came across a LNP/LancasterOnline site that looked to be interesting. Headline read: Here are the five Pennsylvania places that topped the "Best Place to Retire" rankings. Directly below the heading was a really neat photograph that featured a team of mules, or possibly horses, that were plowing a field in Lancaster County with the sun in the background. Gorgeous sunset! The caption under the photograph read: Lancaster County's picture-perfect countryside and affordable living makes it a top-ranked locale to retire in many surveys. The story under the heading began with: Pennsylvania dominated the latest U.S. News & World Report Best Places to Retire rankings released this morning, with Lancaster County slipping from the top ranking last year to third this year. Pennsylvania represents 70% of the top 10 Best Places to Retire due to strong happiness, health care quality and retiree taxes scores, U.S. News & World Report said in a news release. Each of the 150 most populated metro areas are evaluated based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, the Tax Foundation, Wolters Kluwer, Sharecare's Community Well-Beiing Index, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Risk Index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. News' own internal resources. It gives weight to data based on a survey of people approaching retirement age (45 and older). This year affordability represented 24% of the score with happiness determining 22%; health care quality, 16%; retiree taxes, 16%; desirability, 13%: and job market, 8%. The top five consists of Pennsylvania metropolitan statistical areas:
1. Harrisburg (Harrisburg-Carlisle area including Cumberland, Dauphin and Perry counties)]
2. Reading (Berks County)
3. Lancaster (Lancaster County)
4. Scranton (Scranton-Wilkes-Barre-Hazelton includes Lackawana, Luzerne, and Wyoming counties)
5. Allentown (Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton area includes Lehigh and Northampton counties)
Lancaster is still among the top three best places to retire, which were neck and neck in terms of scoring as they all have competitive offerings, per Beverly Harzog, personal finance expert at U.S. News, in an email to LNP/Lancaster/Online. "While affordability is our most heavily weighted factor, Lancaster did see decreases in our happiness metric as well as our desirability survey from the year before. Lancaster's affordability scoring saw a marginal increase this year," Harzog said. The desirability survey is a poll of 3,500 people that asked them which of the rated metros they would most like to live in. U.S. News did not disclose the scores it uses to arrive at rankings. U.S. News said in its news release "The Best Places to Retire" rankings are intended to help people narrow their choices of where to live in retirement. "Best Places to Retire" website says Lancaster had an unemployment rate of 8% in 2021, but this is incorrect. In 2021, it had an unemployment rate of 4.7%, not seasonally adjusted. Its most recent rate in September was 2.4%. Harzog said currently, data on places pages and rankings data are not correlated. "Some data sources on our website are not used at all as a rating factor for Best Places to Retire," Harzog said in an email. "Updates to our web page data are forthcoming." Harzog noted in a news release that record-high interest rate in the housing market, steadily increasing cost of goods and extreme weather patterns are impacting the living conditions and that factors into what retirees are looking for when they relocate. Pennsyvania locations stood out because they are affordable as well as offering good health care and other amenities that make people happy. Lancaster County has regularly appeared in the U.S. News & World Report top 10, bouncing around from its most recent rankings to as low as five in 2021 and 1st in 2022 and 2019. The county has a growing retirement sector with 17 retirement communities, several of which are adding cottages and apartments. My wife and I retired to "Woodcrest Villa" about a year ago and just love it! Can't tell you how nice a place it is for just about anything and everything! At the high end of the scale is "Mosaic", a 20-story luxury high-rise, 55-plus senior living community at the corner of South Queen and Vine streets in downtown Lancaster, which is not yet under construction, but tentatively scheduled to open in the fall of 2026. Entry fees, the up-front cost to secure an apartment, will range between $642,000 and $998,600 for a two-bedroom unit. Monthly service fees are estimated between $4,598 and $6,308. Those outrageous prices for retirees is perhaps what might be why Lancaster County slipped from #1 to #3 in the ranking this year! If you have never visited Lancaster County, stop by and see why so many seniors have picked Lancaster, Pennsylvania to be their final stop in life. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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