The Best Places to Retire

In this podcast, Motley Fool retirement expert Robert Brokamp and contributor Matt Frankel discuss The Motley Fool’s recent “Best Places to Retire” report as well as:

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A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on March 21, 2026.

Robert Brokamp: Where are the best places to retire and all the stock turmoil under the market's surface? You're listening to the Saturday Personal Finance Edition of Motley Fool Money. I'm Robert Brokamp, and this week, I invite fellow podcast regular Matt Frankel on the show to discuss a report published by the Motley Fool that asked people which factors make for a good place to retire and then identify the counties that are more likely to have those factors. But first, a few headlines that jumped out to me from this past week, as I'm sure you've seen, it's been a volatile year for the stock market, or has it? As of this taping on Thursday morning, the S&P 500 is down around 3% for the year. But if you look under the hood, you can see why it feels like a market of extremes. As highlighted in a March 13th Axios article by Emily Peck, 57 stocks in the S&P 500 are up by at least 20%, and 47 stocks are down by at least 20%, based on data published by the Bespoke Investment Group. Five of the 11 major market sectors are down for the year so far, with the worst being financials, down 10%, partially on fears about the private credit market, and in a reversal of what we've seen for much of the past few years, the stocks of many tech-oriented companies have been foundering.

The iShares Expanded Tech Software Sector ETF, ticker IGV, has dropped 20% so far in 2026. Of the six sectors that are in positive territory this year, the clear winner is energy, which is up 30%. What does an investor do? One step is to make sure you're sufficiently diversified. I've mentioned on the show before that we have the Motley Fool believe you should own at least 25 stocks. But in his recent quarterly call with premium members, Motley Fool co-founder and CEO Tom Gardner suggested that number should be moved up to 50 stocks. Tom pointed out that the market is still richly valued, and an internal tool we've created suggests that S&P 500 will provide slightly below average returns over the next decade, but perhaps with higher levels of volatility. Diversification could help you write out the bumps and in Tom's words, commit to being a lifelong investor. Of course, diversification isn't just about stocks. It's also about holding some cash and bonds, especially if you're getting closer to your goals. This brings us to our next item, which is an article on the Think Advisor website written by David Blanchett, Michael Finke, and Wade Pfau, three of the nation's leading retirement experts who have each been guests on this show in the past. The title of the article is Exploring the Retirement Risk Zone, which is a time period several years before and several years after retirement when a bear market can significantly change your retirement plans.

For the article, they analyzed how annual portfolio returns for the 20 years before and the 20 years after retirement are correlated with retirement spending outcomes. The result, called returns immediately before retirement, have the greatest impact on retirement spending, and as an individual approaches retirement, the importance increases each year. Returns immediately after are also important, but the impact of returns falls more rapidly such that the return five years after retirement matters about as much as the return 10 years before retirement.'' The takeaway is that once you're within a decade of retirement, it might be time to start playing it safer with a portion of your portfolio, especially if you've already saved enough to meet your goals. What does that mean from an asset allocation perspective? The article didn't say, but I recently calculated the average allocations of the target date funds offered by the five biggest providers, American Funds, BlackRock Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and Vanguard. For the 2030 funds, the average allocation was 50% stocks, 43% cash and bonds, and for the 2035 funds, it was 67% stocks, 33% cash and bonds. Keep in mind that target date funds are meant for investors with a moderate risk tolerance, which might be too tame for many Motley Fool podcast listeners. But for those in the retirement risk zone, it might make sense to dial back your appetite for risk just a bit so that you can still retire when and how you want. Speaking of bonds, let's get to the number of the week, which is 4.32%. That's the yield on the 10-year Treasury as of Thursday morning, up from 3.97% on February 27th, the day before the start of the war in Iran.

Now, this might be surprising. Geopolitical events often cause a flight to safety with investors rushing into treasuries and causing yields to drop. Why not this time? It could be because inflation, which was already creeping up, will be driven even higher due to skyrocketing oil prices. Inflation is one of the biggest ness to bond investors, so perhaps they're now requiring a higher yield to compensate for the greater risk. We may not get as much relief from the Federal Reserve as experts were expecting earlier in the year. On Wednesday of this week, the Fed concluded its latest meeting and kept rates where they are. According to Bloomberg's Jonathan authors, Fed futures were predicting three rate cuts on the eve of the war, but now it's down to one and higher rates are a worldwide phenomenon. As authors wrote, ''the Fed is a global outlier as it's still expected to cut. Each of the nine other largest developed market central banks is now forecast to hike.'' High rates will not only affect our portfolios, but also our borrowing costs. The rate on a 30 year mortgage has risen from 5.99% on February 27th to 6.36% according to Mortgage News Daily. You might be considering a mortgage if you plan to move in retirement. Where are the best places to retire? That's the topic of our next discussion when Motley fool money continues.

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Robert Brokamp: The Number 1 investing goal of most Americans is retirement and a key determinant of happiness and retirement is where you live. Which factors are most important and where are the places that have those factors? To answer those questions, we have the Motley Fool surveyed Americans Ages 55 and older, and here to help discuss the results is fellow certified financial planner and real estate expert Matt Frankel. Thanks for joining us Matt.

Matt Frankel: Thanks for having me. It's always great to talk about this stuff.

Robert Brokamp: There are two aspects of the report that I think are interesting. First, I think it partially answers the question of what makes for a good retirement in general and secondly, it suggests places where that can be found. Let's get into the methodology a little bit. Based on the survey results, we, and by we I mean, some of our colleagues at the Motley Fool, not specifically Matt and me, but we identified seven key retirement factors and weighted each according to the preferences of the survey participants. Coming in, number one was quality of life, had a 31% weighting. Next, was healthcare access and quality, 15% weighting, housing affordability, 13%, crime and safety 12%, weather and climate 12%, state and local taxes 11% and non-housing affordability, 6%. That biggest weighted factor was quality of life being more than twice as important as any other factor. But what did the study find were important components of quality life? Based on the survey results, we considered features such as restaurant options, walkability, access to outdoor recreation, proximity to airports, and availability of arts and entertainment. That's what's behind the study. Matt, what's your take on what the report found as being important about a location when it comes to retirement happiness?

Matt Frankel: No, obviously, different factors are important to different people. For example, my wife can't stand to be called, period. Climate and weather would definitely play a role even over things like housing affordability in a lot of cases for us. But, I totally understand where the methodology came from. Quality of life, for example, it totally makes sense that's number one. The number one retirement killer is boredom. Everyone, that's been well documented, people want things to do when they leave the workforce so that makes a lot of sense. Healthcare access obviously makes sense. You use healthcare several times more after you're retired than you do when you're still working, but it is very personal specific, and there are other factors that matter to a lot of people. For example, proximity to your family and friends. My parents wouldn't move to one of these top counties if it was free because their grandchildren are here. There's a lot of different moving parts here, which is why we gave 50 different locations instead of just naming one for everybody.

Robert Brokamp: When you lump all the financial factors together, which were housing affordability, no housing affordability and taxes, they add up to 30%. Put together, they're close to the same weighting as quality of life and for some people, that might be more important, especially if they retired, but they don't have a huge margin of error in terms of their net worth and their income, or if