By Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Where’s the best place for veterans to retire? Not Illinois, according to a new study.
Personal finance website WalletHub put Florida atop the list with Washington D.C. coming in last. Illinois ranked No. 39 overall. WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez worked on the report, which looked at nearly 30 different factors.
“Those range from veterans per capita to number of VA health facilities to job opportunities for veterans,” she said.
The state’s economy – including taxes and jobs – affected its ranking.
“Illinois could improve in two of those categories,” Gonzalez said. “The first is the economic environment. I don’t think anyone in Illinois would be surprised that it’s not the tax-friendliest state.”
Income tax is a significant factor for those living on a fixed income.
She said lack of jobs hurt Illinois’ ranking.
“There’s also not a lot of job opportunities for veterans,” Gonzalez said. “Illinois [is] kind of middle of the pack there and that’s important because I think a lot of people don’t realize that the average officer is only 45 years old upon retirement.”
Overall, Illinois was ranked at 40 and 41 for “economic environment” and “quality of life,” respectively.
Taxes and cost of living were negatives, but a bright note is that Illinois ranked above average in health care coming in at number 21 out of 50.
“There’s a good number of VA health facilities for the number of veterans there,” Gonzalez said. “There’s a lot of physicians per capita, which is good in terms of access, and the quality of the VA hospitals ranked pretty highly.”
Quality of life factors in the study also included the age of a state’s population, number of homeless veterans and the weather.
As for cities, the rankings put Austin, Texas, on top as the best city for veterans to live while Chicago ranked 69th out of 100 cities rated.
