New Mexico: shockingly bad place to retire according to Wallethub

In recent years to the extent New Mexico’s population growth has grown it has largely been due to the addition of retirees. But, according to a new report from Wallethub New Mexico ranks a poor 46th overall among places to retire. The ranking which includes variables on affordability, quality of life, and health care give New Mexico low marks overall with 38th in affordability, 45th in quality of life, and 33rd in health care.

One particular area of concern is the cost of in-home services (below). This is undoubtedly driven by New Mexico’s burdensome gross receipts tax, high minimum wages in the cities, and low workforce participation rate. All of these unnecessarily boosts cost of labor-intensive services. New Mexico’s overall living costs were neither high or low, but typically New Mexico is seen as a low-cost option relative to other states. Not in this area.

And, of course there is crime. And, while seniors are not particularly sensitive to failing schools in New Mexico or elsewhere they ARE impacted by New Mexico’s high crime rate, especially property crime. According to the graphic below our property crime rate is 4X that of Idaho.