2024 Best States to Retire: Montana Ranks Below Average

We've written about how well Montana ranks as an option for retirees in the past, but a new report shows that Montana might be much less favorable than the first report indicated.

At the beginning of 2024, the financial website Wallet Hub ranked Montana as being a top 10 state for retirement, coming in at #9 overall. These are the states that ranked better than Montana for retirement.

8 Places That Might Be Better for Retirement Than Montana

Whether you live in Montana already or not, when looking for a place to retire, Wallet Hub has found 8 states that rank better than Montana. Take a look at why they might be better than the Big Sky State for your golden years. (Source: Wallet Hub)

Gallery Credit: Ashley

But the latest data to come out about places to retire in 2024 comes from BankRate.com and there are some key differences between their results, and the results from Wallet Hub published back in January.

Not only is Florida not the #1 state for retirement, it's not in the top five.
Only one of the top five states from Wallet Hub appears in the top five from BankRate.
Wallet Hub's study looked at affordability, quality of life, and healthcare while BankRate's study looked at "affordability, overall well-being, the cost and quality of health care, weather, and crime." This could explain the discrepancy in rankings: the two studies looked at different aspects of retirement.

So how did Montana fare in BankRates' list? It didn't make it into the top 10, but even worse, it didn't make it into the top 20. Montana is below average coming in at #28 overall.

Broken down into individual categories, Montana did crack the top 20 for the well-being rank and the top 10 for the quality/cost of healthcare rank.

Montana's Ranking 2024

Overall: 28
Affordability: 31
Quality/cost of healthcare: 8
Well-being: 12
Weather: 46
Crime: 29

BankRate also had rankings for 2023 and Montana performed almost the same:

Montana's Ranking 2023

Overall: 26
Affordability: 33
Quality/cost of healthcare: 8
Well-being: 12
Weather: 45
Crime: 29

If Montanans are looking to relocate for retirement but don't want to move far, Wyoming was ranked #10 by BankRate. Wyoming's weather ranking makes it not much better than Montana, but Wyoming comes in at #8 for affordability and #7 for crime.

Maybe you're looking to leave Montana and you're not retiring. Here are some of the places Montanans have appreciated living most.

The Best Places Where Montanans Have Lived

Of course, Montanans love our state and many will always call it home, but here is an idea of the other places all over the world where Montanans have enjoyed living.

Gallery Credit: Ashley