Study Says Massachusetts Could Do Better For Military Retirees

Sadly, the month of May is almost over and I just found this out: May is Military Appreciation Month! I guess that makes sense with May being the month that observes Memorial Day.

In honor of Memorial Day and Military Appreciation Month, the personal finance experts at WalletHub recently released its 2023 report on the Best and Worst States for Military Retirees and while Massachusetts' showing wasn't terrible, the state can definitely do a lot better.

In order to come up with the results for the study, WalletHub compared all 50 states plus the District of Columbia across numerous key metrics to see which states were more retirement-friendly toward elderly military and veterans.

The metrics comprised everything from the quality and quantity of VA hospitals, veterans per capita, the percentage of homeless veterans, housing affordability, the percentage of veteran-owned businesses, etc.

Surprisingly (honestly, I thought it would be much higher), the Commonwealth, at least in terms of retirement-friendliness for veterans, is...well, AVERAGE. Massachusetts ranked at #18 which is not bad by any means, but it's not great.

According to WalletHub, these are 2023's top 10 "Best States for Military Retirees":

1. Florida
2. South Carolina
3. Virginia
4. Minnesota
5. Connecticut
6. New Hampshire
7. Maryland
8. South Dakota
9. North Carolina
10. North Dakota

And now here are 2023's top 5 "Worst States for Military Retirees":

1. Oregon
2. District of Columbia
3. Nevada
4. Mississippi
5. Vermont

Was anybody else out there as surprised as I was to see the District of Columbia ranked as one of the worst? I was not expecting that whatsoever. Take a look at the full rankings on WalletHub's website here.