• Running out of money in retirement is a big concern for many Americans.
• Economic uncertainty is making it even harder to afford retirement.
• These are the top states where your retirement nest egg will go the furthest.

As people live longer and spend more time in retirement, it's more important now than ever to plan for life after your job.

To make matters even more complicated, the ongoing trade war has created a tricky economic backdrop for older Americans to retire in, causing people to delay their retirements, wait to collect Social Security, or "unretire" and go back to work.

That's why being smart about where you live in your golden years can have far-reaching consequences, as housing costs — whether it be a mortgage, property taxes, or rent expenses — are typically the largest part of your monthly expenses.

Financial technology company Remitly compiled data on Americans' retirement savings across the country. How much you need in retirement varies, but the rule of thumb is that by the time you retire, you should aim to have around 10 times your salary saved. Remitly found that Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 have typically saved an average of $537,650 and a median of $185,000 — meaning there's high variability in the amounts that people have saved.

When calculating how much money you need for a comfortable retirement, take into consideration annual expenditures such as housing, utilities, transportation, and healthcare — and also factor in an additional 20% buffer for unexpected costs.

Depending on the state you retire in, the cost of living could fluctuate wildly. Remitly looked at the average retirement savings and expected annual expenditures for a comfortable retirement for each state to calculate how long a retirement nest egg lasts in different parts of the country.

While the annual expenditure to retire comfortably in many states hovered in the $60,000 to $80,000 range, a few states took the cake for sky-high costs of living. In Hawaii, Remitly found the average annual expenditure to be $129,296. California was the second-most expensive state, with annual retirement expenditures coming out to $100,687. In those states, retirement savings will only last 2.8 and 4.5 years, respectively.

On the other hand, Kansas takes first place for sustainable living costs in retirement — retirement savings last 7.5 years on average there.

Listed below are the top ten states where retirees can get the most bang for their buck. The average amount of savings at the time of retirement, the annual retirement expenditures, and number of years the retirement savings will last are also included.

Kansas

Average retirement savings: $452,703
Annual expenditures: $60,620
Years of comfortable retirement: 7.5 years

Iowa

Average retirement savings: $465,127
Annual expenditures: $62,565
Years of comfortable retirement: 7.4 years

Minnesota

Average retirement savings: $470,549
Annual expenditures: $65,828
Years of comfortable retirement: 7.1 years

Virginia

Average retirement savings: $492,965
Annual expenditures: $70,342
Years of comfortable retirement: 7 years

Pennsylvania

Average retirement savings: $462,075
Annual expenditures: $66,384
Years of comfortable retirement: 7 years

Illinois

Average retirement savings: $449,983
Annual expenditures: $64,787
Years of comfortable retirement: 6.9 years

Connecticut

Average retirement savings: $545,754
Annual expenditures: $78,605
Years of comfortable retirement: 6.9 years

South Dakota

Average retirement savings: $449,628
Annual expenditures: $64,856
Years of comfortable retirement: 6.9 years

Michigan

Average retirement savings: $439,568
Annual expenditures: $63,745
Years of comfortable retirement: 6.9 years

Kentucky

Average retirement savings: $441,757
Annual expenditures: $64,301
Years of comfortable retirement: 6.9 years

Last week, Nintendo made waves across the game industry by announcing that Mario Kart World would sell for a suggested price of $80 in the US. That nominal price represents a new high-water mark both for Nintendo and for the game industry at large, which has generally reserved prices above $70 for fancy, trinket-laden collectors' editions or Digital Deluxe Editions that include all variety of downloadable bonuses.

When you adjust historical game prices for inflation, though, you find that asking $80 for a baseline game in 2025 is broadly in line with the prices big games were commanding 10 to 15 years ago. And given the faster-than-normal inflation rates of the last five years, even the $70 nominal game prices that set a new standard in 2020 don't have the same purchasing oomph they once did.

The data

To judge Mario Kart World's $80 price against historical trends, we first needed to figure out how much games cost in the past. To do that, we built off of our similar 2020 analysis, which relied on scanned catalogs and retail advertising fliers for real examples of nominal console game pricing going back to the Atari era. For more recent years, we relied more on press reports and archived digital storefronts to show what prices new games were actually selling for at the time.

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