Although every study and poll about the best places to retire are subjective, some of the choices are just silly. Anchorage Alaska where it gets to 30 degrees below zero and 20 hours of darkness in the winter, and a whopping 60 degree summer weather where you suck in ten bugs for every breath? Really, that's one of your top choices?

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Over the past week I've looked at many sites, and many studies. I've come to the conclusion that I don't always agree with their results because their choices don't coincide with my own evaluations. Yours will be different too, based on your criteria.

For example, when my husband and I were looking for the best places to retire for us, we considered many possibilities, including buying a catamaran and sailing the Carribean. That was short-lived however since we both need our own space to keep sane.

We then looked at retiring on a beautiful beach in Mexico or Central America. We actually flew to Costa Rica to see what it had to offer us because we'd been hearing so many positive things about it and came back convinced it wasn't for us.

We considered Belize because it was tropical, most people speak English and you can own property much like you can here in the U.S. (which is fee simple). Property in Belize and Costa Rica is not cheap however if you want a little more square footage...and we really dislike the amount of money you pay for condo fees. Very High!

We took the decision very seriously and continued to expand the search for our needs and wants.

After more thought, we decided that Mexico might be the best choice for us because we could drive there (I hate flying anyway). My good friend Elvia Lopez (yes, she's Mario Lopez 's mother. I am the agent that discovered him and we are still friends) said we would be crazy to go to Mexico because it had gotten so dangerous. I trust Elvia's opinion, but we kept in on the "watch" list.

Several months later, after even more bad news about drugs, murders, kidnappings and assaults....much of it towards U.S. citizens, we had to take Mexico off our list.

We have lived in many locations, and had both good and bad experiences everywhere like anyone else, but now it was crunch time. We had to decide what was most important to us, as you will, and which states and cities came closest to meeting our preferences. We actually did look at the best places to live page, and other sites with information on choosing the best places to retire, and wrote tips for this site so you could apply some or all of my suggestions to your own search.

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We considered Utah, Texas, California, Arizona, Wyoming and Idaho. We discounted the entire east coast for a variety of reasons. We lived there for a year and although we really loved the history, it left us cold. I actually became depressed in the winter. I need alot of light and sun. Even their summers were overcast. And drivers are very rude.

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 We kept going over our list and finally, after careful consideration of all of these places, we realized that we always came back to the same area over and over because it filled all of our requirements.

and chose to Retire Arizona.