These Are the 5 Best Places to Retire in Maine

Usually, you hear about folks leaving Maine, heading somewhere warmer to retire. Well, if you stick around, here are the best places!

Get our free mobile app

Maine is often called ‘Vacationland’ because of its popularity as a year-round tourist destination, but especially in the summer. However, our Pine Tree State is not typically known as a retirement spot.

The joke is that when folks are ready to retire, they leave New England for warmer places, like what Tom Brady did. Yet, some cities in Maine are gaining national recognition for their quality as retirement destinations.

So, with that being said, are we ready to turn ‘Vacationland’ into ‘Retirement-land?’

Well, before we start renaming things, we should determine how we got here in the first place.

In a recent publication, the personal finance website Insider Monkey has determined the best places in America to retire; additionally, Insider Monkey has also broken it down state-by-state.

Insider Monkey compiled its list of the 15 best places to retire in Maine by consulting various sources, including their own list of 15 Cities in the Northeast to Retire on $3000 a Month, Niche, The Travel, Movoto, NewHomeSource, Planswell, and Kiplinger. Insider Monkey ranked these places based on factors such as cost of living, livability scores, and median house prices.

To further deep-dive into Insider Monkey’s methodology, they used their own cost of living index, which covers housing, utilities, food, transport, taxes, and healthcare.
Each place was assigned a cumulative score, with livability scores given double weightage. In case of equal scores, the cost of living index was used as a tie-breaker.

Additionally, livability scores were sourced from Area Vibes, while median house prices came from Redfin Corporation and Realtor.

With all of this being said, where are these Maine cities that Insider Monkey has ranked as some of the best to retire?