U.S. News World & Report issued its latest 250 Best Places to Retire list. They are always doing a “Best of Something” report, (one day I want to see a “Worst Of” list from them) and they often don’t mean a lot except to the people who read these kinds of things.
And a lot of people do read these things.
So where did Greenville rank on the list?
60.
Wait, 60. That seems really low. At least, we did better than last year, right?
Wait, what, we were 30th last year. We dropped 30 places in one year. I know Clemson football is bad this year, but they are like two counties over from Greenville. Did I miss something else? Did the Liberty Bridge fall down?
According to the Post & Courier:
U.S. News overhauled its criteria for the 2026 rankings, leveraging entirely new data and expanding its list from 150 to 250. This year, the report analyzed more than 850 primary cities from metropolitan and micropolitan areas across the country, instead of the broader metro areas as it did last year.
“We do not recommend year-over-year comparisons for that reason,” said Tim Smart, retirement expert for U.S. News. “New cities were added, some had never been evaluated before and scored highly in quality of life and affordability and other factors that retirees say they consider most important.”
People looking to relocate for retirement should consider using the rankings as a starting point, Smart said. They can filter by factors including average rent, housing prices and population size.
Whew, I feel a little bit better right now.
It wasn’t all bad news for Greenville. We were ranked the third-highest of places in the Southeast outside of Florida, and we were the highest-ranked in South Carolina. Other South Carolina cities included in the overall rankings were No. 123 Rock Hill, No. 160 Spartanburg, No. 211 Sumter and No. 244 Florence.
So, what is the message today?
Greenville is a great place to retire. Way above average, actually. And Greenville does normally perform really great on these rankings. We love to talk about them and share. However, it’s also sometimes good to get some not so great news from these reports.
