America’s Richest Retirement Town

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 30, 7:46AM EDT

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America’s Richest Retirement Town — © dobok / Getty Images

One trend among wealthy Americans is that, as they retire, they often move south to states such as North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. A new study by GoBankingRates shows that the richest retirement towns, based on income, are spread throughout the country. The richest, however, is in Florida.

The methodology of the GoBankingRates study was to locate cities with populations over 15,000 and where the percentage of people ages 65+ was over 25%. It found 131. Of those screens, among the top 20, California has five cities: Rancho Palos Verdes, Laguna Beach, Walnut Creek, Cerritos, and Novato. Florida had four: Lakewood Ranch, Palm Valley, Naples, and Palm City. Some of America’s richest cities are in other states.

The city with the most significant percentage of residents 65+ years old was Naples at 55%.

Rancho Palos Verdes, California, was the wealthiest retirement town, with a median household income of $166,747 and a 26.2% percentage of residents 65+.

According to the Census, Rancho Palos Verdes has a population of 40,527. Half of the population is White, and 32% is Asian. The median value of owner-occupied homes is one of the highest in America at $1,411,800. The poverty level is an extremely low 4%.

Whether age is a factor or not, Rancho Palos Verdes is one of the wealthiest towns in America.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.