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The other day, I wrote an article with a link to a Business Insider article titled “After visiting all 50 states, there are only 3 I’d choose to live in“. I tried to make this clear in my original post, but that was just a link to an article that I found interesting and was not necessarily my own opinion. The author’s 3 states (if you don’t want to read the article) were New York, Wyoming and Rhode Island – truly an eclectic trio.

There were a few people in the comments who disagreed with the article, so I thought maybe I’d take another look at different lists of “The ‘Best’ State to Live in”. Of course choosing where to live is a hugely subjective decision based on a number of factors that are likely to be different for everyone. But let’s not stop that from TRYING! :-). Here are a few lists I found – I limited it to ones who at least TRIED to be somewhat subjective (unlike the earlier article)

US News And World Report

Of course US News and World Report has a list for this, since they have a list for everything. They ranked the 50 states in Crime & Corrections, Economy, Education, Fiscal Stability, Health Care, Infrastructure and Natural Environment and used that to come up with a somewhat objective ranking.

Their top 10 states to live in were:

  1. Utah
  2. New Hampshire
  3. Nebraska
  4. Minnesota
  5. Idaho
  6. Iowa
  7. Vermont
  8. Washington
  9. Florida
  10. Massachusetts

Bottom three were Mississippi, New Mexico and #50 Louisiana. I could actually see myself living in some of these top 10 states, though I am a) white and b) a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so Utah is probably higher up on my list than many. If you are one or zero of those things, I could see it perhaps being less attractive.

WalletHub

WalletHub has a similar list. Their methodology used several statistics grouped under the headings of Affordability, Economy, Education and Health, Quality of Life and Safety, and their top 10 is

  1. Massachusetts
  2. Florida
  3. New Jersey
  4. Utah
  5. New Hampshire
  6. Idaho
  7. Pennsylvania
  8. Wisconsin
  9. New York
  10. Wyoming

Bottom three were Arkansas, New Mexico and Louisiana.

The Bottom Line – The Best State To Live In

All of the other lists that I found pointed back to either the US News or the Wallethub version. I was kind of surprised that Ranker didn’t have a list for this, since that’s kind of their thing, ya know? They had lots of lists of states but none that I saw that specifically was the best state to live in (maybe I missed it).

Personally I do like my home state of Ohio (#36 according to US News and 30th via WalletHub) but maybe that’s just because it’s the only place I’ve ever really lived. Guess it’s time to start traveling more :-), though there’s a big difference between how you experience a place when you live there vs. when you’re just there on vacation.

Okay – now it’s your turn. What’s your pick for the best state to live in?

 

 

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