While many point to Bellingham as a retirement destination, it’s not a cheap decision
Bellingham may regularly land on “best places to retire” lists, but a couple of new studies indicate living here as a retiree is expensive.
This area ranked ninth least affordable for retirees among mid-size U.S. cities, according to a study done by AdvisorSmith. West Coast cities dominated this least affordable list, with Santa Cruz, California, considered the least affordable. Bremerton was eighth on this mid-size city category, while Olympia was 10th. Mount Vernon was 10th in the small-city least affordable category.
The AdvisorSmith study looked at 518 U.S. cities that had a higher-than-average percentage of retirees. It then separated the cities by size and applied its cost-of-living index, which included housing, transportation and food expenses. It estimates Bellingham’s cost-of-living index to be 11.6% higher than the national average.
The percentage of people over 65 in Bellingham is 18.3%, while the national average is 16.4%, according to the report.
A separate study by SmartAsset estimated how long a retiree could live on a $1 million nest egg in different cities. In terms of which city would take the longest for a retiree to spend that nest egg, Bellingham ranked 203rd out of 230 U.S. cities studied. The report estimates a Bellingham retiree would take about 19.3 years to go through the $1 million.
That nest egg would last the longest in McAllen, Texas, taking about 32.3 years to be completely spent. In Seattle, the same nest egg would last about 14.2 years.
The SmartAsset study took a look at data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate expenses in housing, transportation, food, utilities and healthcare. Except for utilities, Bellingham’s average expenses were higher than the national average in all of those categories.
This story was originally published February 17, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
