Naples or Palm Springs? Evaluating Two High Retirement Cities
Let’s play a little bit “would you moderately,” retirement version.
Would you moderately retire someplace heat or someplace heat? Somewhere you will get a tee time, or someplace you may additionally get a tee time? Somewhere in style amongst retirees or… you get the thought.
The playground model of “would you moderately” pits opposites towards one another: sizzling or chilly, candy or bitter. But one of many greatest selections of your life — the place to retire — typically comes down to 2 locations that, on paper, each sound good. According to the moving-services platform HireAHelper, greater than 2 million folks aged 65 and older had been primarily taking part in this recreation in 2025.
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Take Naples, Florida, and Palm Springs, California. Both are sun-soaked, golf-mad, upscale havens which were drawing retirees for many years.
Look nearer, although — on the taxes, the dangers, the tradition, the entire character of every place — and the similarities fall away quick. Get previous the sunshine, and certainly one of them might be a significantly better match in your subsequent chapter than the opposite. Here’s how they stack up.
What to find out about retiring in Naples, Florida
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When you image the Sunshine State, you most likely assume sandy beige and ocean blue. In Naples, the defining colour could be fairway inexperienced. It’s the self-titled “Golf Capital of the World,” with the second-most golf holes per capita of any U.S. metropolis.
So, head in any route, and also you’ll doubtless run right into a golf course or a millionaire, since Naples additionally has one of many highest concentrations of them per capita within the nation.
The worth of this facet of paradise
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Cost of dwelling issues at any age, however particularly in retirement when dwelling on a set revenue. It’s normally dominated by one factor: housing. Naples is a working example. Overall, the Economic Research Institute pegs the town’s price of dwelling at about 29% above the nationwide common, however on a regular basis bills — groceries, utilities, fuel — really run near or simply beneath the nationwide norm.
The median dwelling sale worth is round $1.2 million, in response to Redfin, with rents sometimes $2,000 to $2,500 a month. Set towards a median household income near $153,000, it is a market that rewards those that arrive with fairness already in hand.
What the taxman takes
Here’s the place Naples actually shines. If you like the phrase ‘no’ and hate taxes, that is the place for you as a result of Florida is about as tax-friendly as retirement will get. No state revenue tax. No tax on Social Security, pensions or 401(k)/IRA withdrawals. No property or inheritance tax. For a retiree drawing down a pension and retirement accounts, that may imply holding 1000’s of {dollars} a 12 months that different states would declare.
Still, as good as it’s to fret much less about taxes, it’s hardly ever the only purpose folks select Florida. “Clients don’t transfer to Naples simply to save lots of on taxes,” says Patrick Huey, a CFP® and founding father of Victory Independent Planning in Naples. “They transfer as a result of they wish to benefit from the way of life, after which we check whether or not the numbers assist that call.”
When you want a health care provider
Retirement and healthcare go hand in hand, and Naples delivers. NCH (Naples Comprehensive Health) has been named certainly one of Healthgrades’ America’s 50 Best Hospitals — the highest 1% nationally — and is a Mayo Clinic Care Network member. It can also be the area’s solely Joint Commission-accredited Comprehensive Stroke Center.
Sunshine… with an asterisk or two
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Naples is understood for heat, sunny days averaging round 83°F. But you may have an excessive amount of of an excellent factor. The space logged 53 days with a heat index of 105°F or higher in 2023.
And there is a greater asterisk. Hurricane season runs June by means of November, and Naples’ low coastal elevation leaves it uncovered to storm surge and flooding (Hurricane Ian hit in 2022; Helene and Milton adopted in 2024). Redfin flags nearly all Naples properties as going through extreme flood and wind danger over the following 30 years. That danger reveals up on the invoice. Home insurance coverage averages around $9,660 a year for $300,000 in protection, with flood insurance coverage a separate coverage on high.
Huey factors to the continued price of property and casualty protection as the true planning difficulty in coastal Florida. “For many retirees, the query is now not merely, ‘Can I afford to purchase right here?’ It is, ‘Can I comfortably carry this home for the following 20 or 30 years when insurance coverage, upkeep, and affiliation prices are layered on high?'” he says.
His agency has even rewritten a shopper’s retirement plan so they might transfer out of a floodplain and minimize a long time of insurance coverage prices. As he places it, insurance coverage “is what more and more determines whether or not the plan will assist them sleep at evening.”
The Naples vibe examine
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AARP offers Naples an general Livability Index score of 55 — stable, although dragged down by a low “alternative” rating (becoming for a spot extra about winding down than climbing up). With a median age of 67.3, that is unmistakably an older neighborhood, and a really secure one, with violent crime nicely beneath the nationwide common.
It’s additionally politically conservative and roughly 89% white. The way of life is upscale and conventional: white-sand Gulf seashores, luxurious procuring alongside Fifth Avenue South and Third Street South, high quality eating, and tradition at Artis–Naples and The Baker Museum.
“People select to retire right here as a result of they’re shopping for a life-style as a lot as a tax profile,” Huey says. “Warm winters, entry to the water, robust golf and social communities, and the sensation of being in a spot constructed round retirement all matter an incredible deal.”
What to find out about retiring in Palm Springs, Califonia
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Tucked into the Sonoran Desert two hours east of Los Angeles, Palm Springs made its identify on sizzling springs, trendy accommodations, golf and spas. It’s a glamorous throwback to the period of Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and mid-century Hollywood. It’s been a retiree magnet because the Seventies, drawing individuals who need an energetic, clever, unapologetically freer model of retirement.
The worth of this facet of paradise
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Like Naples, Palm Springs is not low-cost. The Economic Research Institute places its price of dwelling at about 29% above the nationwide common too, primarily neck-and-neck with Naples. The distinction is what it prices to get within the door. The median dwelling sale worth is round $590,000, per Redfin — roughly half of Naples’ — with rents operating roughly $1,480 to $1,970 a month. Median household income sits at about $73,119, notably decrease than Naples, reflecting a broader mixture of residents.
What the taxman takes
If Naples is the taxman’s pal, Palm Springs is the place he collects. California is among the least tax-friendly states for retirees with heavy pension and 401(okay) revenue. Social Security is exempt, however pensions and IRA/401(okay) withdrawals are taxed as odd revenue at charges from 1% as much as 13.3% — the best high fee within the nation — with most retirees touchdown close to a 9.3% marginal fee.
The one vivid spot for legacy-minded retirees: like Florida, California levies no estate or inheritance tax.
“The greatest downside is California’s revenue tax,” says Joon Um, a CFP® and advisor at Secure Tax & Accounting in Beverly Hills. But he factors out that “most retirees are nowhere close to the 13.3% high fee” (for state tax).
Um says retirees can handle the chew by means of “Roth conversions, managing withdrawals earlier than RMDs, and utilizing a mixture of taxable, IRA, and Roth accounts to higher management taxable revenue.”
Even so, he provides, the tax hit typically is not the deciding issue: “Many retirees settle for the upper taxes for California’s climate, way of life, household and healthcare. Taxes matter, however way of life typically issues simply as a lot.”
When you want a health care provider
If the new springs cannot treatment what ails you, the medical care can. Desert Regional Medical Center sits proper within the metropolis, a Level II trauma heart, graded “B” for security by Leapfrog. And a brief drive away in Rancho Mirage, Eisenhower Health earned Leapfrog’s high “A” grade for 10 straight cycles and ranks because the #1 hospital within the Riverside County–San Bernardino metro by U.S. News.
Sunshine … with an asterisk or three
This is the desert, so sunshine is the entire level. The space boasts about 300 days of it a 12 months and fewer than 5 inches of rain. Winters are wonderful, with highs within the 60s and 70s. Summers are the catch, with triple digits for months on finish, incessantly topping 108°F.
The different asterisks are geological and environmental. The San Andreas Fault runs through the region (earthquake protection is a separate coverage by means of the California Earthquake Authority), and the realm faces excessive drought plus some wildfire and flash-flood danger. The state’s broader insurance coverage market is underneath pressure, however Palm Springs correct is much less uncovered than California’s hearth nation.
The Palm Springs vibe examine
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AARP scores Palm Springs a 49 on its Livability Index. The atmosphere is its weak spot, a standard knock on Southern California, because of air air pollution. With a median age of about 57, it skews a contact youthful than Naples, and the vibe follows.
This is energetic, sociable retirement. Palm Springs can also be one of the vital outstanding LGBTQ communities in America, with among the many highest concentrations of same-sex {couples} of any U.S. metropolis, and that openness shapes its complete character. It’s a mid-century-modern design mecca (Modernism Week is a marquee occasion), with a full of life arts scene (the Palm Springs Art Museum, galleries, a movie pageant), golf and critical outside recreation, from mountain climbing the Indian Canyons to using the Aerial Tramway up Mt. San Jacinto.
While crime is barely larger right here than in Naples, it’s usually property crime, the bane of resort cities.
So, would you moderately?
A Seventies pool social gathering in Palm Springs captures the city’s modernist spirit, whereas the fountain and brightly painted buildings typify Naples’ downtown.
(Image credit score: Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The alternative is not actually about climate or golf since each cities have these in spades. Naples rewards you at tax time and with a genteel, conventional really feel, when you can clear the upper price of shopping for a house and abdomen hurricane season. Palm Springs asks extra of you at tax time and prices much less to enter, buying and selling hurricanes for warmth and earthquakes whereas providing you with a livelier, extra various, extra design-forward scene.
The proper reply comes all the way down to your priorities, your funds, and maybe your politics simply as a lot as your postcard. But if selecting between two sun-drenched havens is your greatest retirement dilemma, that is a reasonably good downside to have.
