Retiring in South Dakota? There’s Good News and Bad News

We spend a large part of our lives working hard so that we can retire comfortably someday.

How good our lives are once we stop working has a lot to do with the money we have available in those 'golden years'.

According to the latest Social Security figures, retirees count on those government checks for at least half their income, with the rest coming from retirement savings.

A state's low cost of living also plays a large part in making those retirement dollars stretch as far as they can.

That's good news for retirees in South Dakota.

According to USA Today, South Dakota is among the ten least expensive places to retire in America (41st overall) with the sixth-lowest average cost of living (12.1%) and 13th best total retirement spending level ($997,390).

That lower than average cost of living helps offset smaller Social Security checks in the state. According to Yahoo! Life, the Mount Rushmore State has the eighth smallest annual payouts in America (estimated at $17,788 for 2021).

And while a lot of us happy to see the of 2020, things aren't looking too rosy for retirees in 2021, with an increase of just 1.3% in Social Security benefits for the new year. That's the second-lowest in history.

Enter your number to get our free mobile app

A pair of legendary Christmas songs have actually made it all the way to the top of the chart.

The first time was in the Hot 100's first year when The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) by Alvin and the Chipmunks and David Seville went to number-one for the final two weeks of the year and the first two weeks of 1959.

The song also won three Grammys in 1958.

It would be another 60 years before a Christmas song would reign supreme on the Billboard Hot 100.

That happened at the end of 2019 when Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You would top the chart for the final two weeks of the year and the first week of 2020. It re-emerged at number-one just this week (December 19).

Not bad for a song that was first released in 1994.