Good news to current residents of Wyoming as well as future: U.S. News has named Wyoming the "Best State to Build a Nest Egg."
Eight million jobs have been wiped out and portfolios have crumbled with the aftermath of the recession and Americans are still struggling to rebuild their nest eggs. The housing market is still weak, unemployment rates continue to stand in the way of sustainable recovery and many long-term investments are back to where they were a decade ago.
U.S. News created an index to measure which states are the best for Americans to reside who are saving for retirement. By looking at each state's housing market, unemployment rate, per capita income and taxes they were able to get a sense of where Americans are most likely to be able to tuck away money for their nest eggs.
The information used to form this index came from 2010 state-by-state income figures, unemployment rates from June 2010 and tax burdens from a 2008 study by the Tax Foundation. Based on this information. the highest possible score that a state could earn was 42 points.
Wyoming scored 40 and took the crown as "the Best". The reason for this? Wyoming's loose tax code. Residents don't pay taxes on wages or on capital gains which allows workers to save noticeably more of their earnings, both from investments and jobs, for use in retirement. Wyoming residents also have well-above-average incomes compared to the rest of the country. Only 5 states and the District of Columbia have higher incomes than Wyoming's per capita income of $45,584. Wyoming's unemployment rate of 6.8% also contributes to their #1 ranking because it is also well below the national average. Lastly, home prices are expected to grow 4.5% annually between 2010 and 2013 (according to Moody's Analytics). Since most people heading towards retirement usually downsize once they get there, price appreciation will help them grow the size of their nest eggs.
States that ranked in close with Wyoming are New Hampshire (Score, 39), Alaska (Score, 38), Washington (Score, 32), and North Dakota (Score, 30). And you are all probably wondering which states came in as "the Worst" states to build a nest egg, well those would include Ohio (Score, 9), California (Score, 11), Kentucky (Score, 12), Indiana (Score 14), and Georgia (Score 16).
All of us have been effected by this recession in one way or another. Luckily for us, being residents of Wyoming, tests show that we are sitting in better condition than those residents of other states throughout the nation in terms of saving for retirement.
I thought we could all use a little encouragement that things are and will continue to get better and hope you enjoy this extra tid bit of information!
View the full article released by Yahoo Finance, provided by U.S. News.