BEST STATE TO RETIRE 2021???? WHAT IS ONE OF THE BEST STATES TO RETIRE TAX WISE? MOVING TO GEORGIA.

Hey, this is Parker your favorite Atlanta realtor! If you’ve considered moving to Georgia to retire, well there’s great news! Bankrate.com has just chosen Georgia as its best state to retire to in the year 2021. So, why is Georgia such a great place to retire? Give me three minutes and I’ll tell you why!

For starters, homes are still very affordable in Georgia, and in terms of cost of living, Georgia actually has the sixth lowest cost of living of any state. Georgia’s cost of living index, which covers groceries, housing, utilities, transportation and health care is 89.2. For comparison, California has the highest cost of living index in the continental U.S. at 151.

Georgia also has a very low personal income tax rate, although it’s not quite as low as our neighbors to the north in Tennessee and to the south in Florida. If you’re over 62, Georgia also exempts social security income and pension payments from income tax, so that lightens the tax burden even more. Many of our counties exempt people over 65 from the educational portion of their property tax bill, which is obviously the largest chunk of your property taxes. So, you’re getting a very nice discount not only on your income taxes, but also on your property taxes.

One of my favorite things about the state of Georgia, and something that will surely appeal to any retiree is the incredibly broad range of geography we have in the state. In North Georgia, we have the cool beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, with hundreds of waterfalls and endless hiking trails, and in the southeast part of the state, we have Savannah, Georgia – one of the crown jewels of American cities, and some of the loveliest coastlines anywhere along the Atlantic coast.

if you’d like to find out more about the North Georgia mountains and the Georgia coast check out my video here. If you love lake life, Georgia is a great place to be, and we currently have over 7,000 miles of lakefront shoreline. So, if you’ve dreamed of retiring and living on the lake, Georgia is where you want to be!

Now, while our biggest cities Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah have steadily gotten more expensive over the last 10 years, they’re still very affordable relative to most major metropolitan areas around the country. If you’re interested in a small farm or a parcel of land, you can find these you know 45 minutes to an hour from all of our biggest cities and pick it up for peanuts.

So, you can buy a home, you can buy a farm, you can buy some acreage and stay very close to your kids, stay close to your grandkids. In fact, many of the people i’ve worked with over the past couple of years have been what we call trailing grandparents. There are people who are moving to Georgia to stay close to their kids and their grandkids. So it’s a very nice trend to see, and i’m sure if that’s what’s on your mind you’re gonna love it! So, if you’re thinking about making the move to the state of Georgia to be close to the kids or the grandkids or maybe to get away from the kids and the grandkids, feel free to reach out to me give me a call i’d love to talk to you thanks!