Most affordable places to retire? Sacramento isn’t bad but Texas is better

Just how long can a $1 million retirement fund last in Sacramento? Not as long as you might expect, according to a recent study.

SmartAsset, a New York-based financial services company, examined the 2018 cost of living in 268 cities in the United States and discovered that Sacramento residents can expect to survive for 19.81 years on a $1 million retirement fund.

Sacramento ranked third in California — behind Stockton, where $1 million lasts 20.14 years, and Bakersfield, where the same amount lasts 21.82 years — but fared much worse nationally, coming in at 240 overall, according to SmartAsset.

Annually, retirees in Sacramento can expect to pay about $12,444 for housing, $7,091 for food, $6,530 for healthcare expenses, $3,179 for utilities and $9,106 for transportation, according to SmartAsset.

Nationwide, annual expenses were considerably lower, with averages clocking in at $9,090 for housing, $6,056 for food, $6,279 for healthcare expenses, $3,541 for utilities and $7,428 for transportation, according to SmartAsset.

Sacramento retirees fared slightly worse in 2018’s study than last year’s, when SmartAsset showed $1 million would last for 24.24 years.

Of the eight California cities included in SmartAsset’s study, San Francisco retirees were the worst off. Their million would last a mere 12.72 years.

San Francisco was ranked 267th in the country, while New York City came in dead last. A million in retirement savings would last just 10.54 years there, according to SmartAsset.

So where does that $1 million nest egg go the furthest? SmartAsset says it’s McAllen, Texas, where it’ll last a whopping 33.03 years. Assuming a McAllen resident retired at age 65, they could make it to 98 on $1 million.

Three Texas cities were numbered among the study’s top 10 destinations for retirees, with Harlingen coming in second place with 31.68 years and Wichita Falls coming in seventh at 29.78 years, according to SmartAsset.

To conduct its study, SmartAsset collected Bureau of Labor Statistics data on seniors’ average annual expenditures nationwide and applied cost of living data from the Council for Community and Economic research to adjust the figures for each city included. The study does not factor in outside incomes, such as Social Security, pensions or inheritances and assumes that the $1 million grows at a rate of 2 percent.

McAllen also came in first place in SmartAsset’s 2017 study, though $1 million in retirement was then expected to last 42.29 years.