12 States to Retire Comfortably on Less Than $52,000 a Year

Related: 12 Best States for Retirement: 2021

Although the Social Security Administration says "full retirement age" for those born in 1960 or later is 67, the average retirement age in every state is below that number. According to Money Talks News, retirees in the U.S. leave the workforce on average at age 64. The state in which a retiree lives can play a big role in how early he or she can leave the workforce. A comfortable retirement requires a lot of cash, but in some states much less than in others. GoBankingRates conducted an analysis on Dec. 14 to find out the cost of a comfortable retirement in each state. Its analysts examined the average retirement age in every state, as reported Sept. 29, 2019, by Money Talks News, and compared it with the cost to retire in each state, using U.S. Census Bureau data. To determine the cost of a comfortable retirement in each state, they used 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics data to analyze annual spending on groceries, housing, transportation, health care and utilities, adjusting the results for each state's itemized cost-of-living index sourced from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center's third quarter 2020 average annual cost-of-living index. The analysts then calculated an additional savings buffer, assuming that total expenditures cover 50% for necessities and 30% for discretionary spending, with 20% left over for savings. See the gallery for the 12 states with the lowest annual costs for a comfortable retirement.