10 Best Places To Retire In Georgia For 2019

Where’s the best city to retire in Georgia? That would be Decatur. Surprised?

Decatur moved up 118 spots to clinch the number one spot best place to retire in Georgia for 2019. That deserves a big ‘ol holy guacamole!

It doesn’t end there, folks. They have an airport within 11 miles. That means you can be on a plane to see your grandkids in a matter of minutes. #Lucky

Factor in low crime and lots of friendly people, and you’ve got one heck Georgia peach to call home.

Review Of Decatur by HomeSnacks User

If you can deal with the surrounding Atlanta traffic, Decatur is a very nice city. It is very up-and-coming, with lots of trendy restaurants, a few small art galleries, and a very walkable landscape, which is rare in the Atlanta area. There are many festivals throughout the year, including art festivals, beer festivals, and a book festival in September.

Everything at Leon’s Full Service restaurant, especially the beef brisket, is great. Parking in Decatur can be a hassle, though, so be prepared to drive around looking for a spot.

Review Where You Live

Cruise northwest from Decatur, about 11 o’clock on the 285 dial, and you will arrive at our second best place to retire in Georgia, Marietta.

What makes Marietta so great for retirees? They are less than 30 minutes from great shopping and restaurants in Atlanta, they have six amazing golf course within the city limits; and when you get a hankerin’ for the senior citizen blue plate special, they have an IHOP around the corner.

Marietta is so great, they also earned a spot on our top 10 Best Cities to Raise a Family. (It’s worth a google.) They really know what they’re doing in this Cobb County city.

Where’s the third best city to retire to in Georgia? You might be surprised to hear it, but it’s Fayetteville.

Not only is Fayetteville one of the most beautiful cities in the state, it has the best of all worlds for retirees: great parks, a vibrant arts community, and lots of historical sites for all those history buffs.

And, if you want to get away to a bigger city, it’s easy. Atlanta is just 30 minutes away. Yeah, people in Fayetteville have it made.

Factor in low crime and lots of friendly people, and you’ve got one heck of a place to call home.

Our fourth best city to retire to in the Empire State of the South for 2019 is Lawrenceville.

Lawrenceville can be really really really exciting for any retiree looking for a little southern charm under the hot Georgia sun. It has 20 parks, four golf courses, and 18 coffee shops where you and your coffee clatch can get together for weekly bridge club.

Lawrenceville crushed our snackability scale in three categories. This Gwinnett County city has a boatload of stuff for retirees to do, it’s very diverse, and the home and rent prices, here, won’t break your bank.

We’re pretty sure the Georgia snowbirds would agree.

Review Of Lawrenceville by HomeSnacks User

I live in Lawrenceville and grew up there; the area is booming, the schools win awards, and my high school graduating class was almost 800 people.

Review Where You Live

Despite the fact that many people haven’t considered it before, Jesup is actually a great place to retire.

This city in Wayne County is two hours from 10 amazing Atlantic beaches. The city itself has a lot of great museums, historic places, and multiple venues for their growing arts and culture programs.

The numbers don’t lie, retiree’s are comfortable here. They have the largest percentage of people 65 and older on our list. You will be happy to make the transition because it seems that just about everyone in Jesup is in a great mood all the time.

Bainbridge comes in as the 6th best city to retire to in Georgia for 2019. While there are tons of places in the Peach State that seem like they are in the middle of nowhere, you won’t feel that way here.

Bainbridge’s average rent is doable and you can be on a plane to anywhere in just over an hour.

However, you probably won’t feel the need to travel much after you retire here, Bainbridge is located on Georgia’s Silver Lake. So when you need to cool off after a long day of playing golf, you can grab your fellow retirees, hop on your pontoon, and enjoy happy hour at sunset. That sounds like the best of every retiree’s world to us.

If you’re looking to retire to a Georgia city with a cute little village, Thomasville should be your go-to city.

The coffee shops in Thomasville are always buzzing with friendly meet-and-greets, and their downtown is the perfect quintessential Georgia backdrop for long walks in the park, horse drawn carriage rides, and deep porch sitting.
This proper southern city should be the poster city for all retirement cities. They have a boatload of activities that retired people like to do: like golf, tennis, shopping, and early bird dining.

So, pack up the Cadillac and head to Thomasville: there’s a seat at the local coffee shop with your name on it.

Review Of Thomasville by HomeSnacks User

There is so much to do both for local people and visitors. The local food is the best part of it all.

Grassroots Coffee absolutely blows other coffee out of the water.

Review Where You Live

Continuing our best cities in Georgia to retire tour brings us to Waycross This awesome city in Ware County moved up 15 spots to clinch our 8th best city to retire. #Kudos

Located slightly North of the Okefenokee National Forest and just West of the Atlantic Ocean, you can do a day hike and cool off on the beach all in the same day.

Do we think that’s why they blew away the competition on our snackability scale in terms of commute times? Probably.

Surprisingly there are hardly any vacant homes in Waycross. That means lots of people want to live here. We don’t blame them. There’s just something about Waycross’ small town charm.

Review Of Waycross by HomeSnacks User

I am from Waycross. It is safe in this town and people are friendly. I have traveled to many other places and people are the same

And trust me we have rednecks, we have uppity snobs and some really good and honest people.

And we thank G*d for convenience stores and discount stores and belks, jc Penney and all out boutiques.

It is enough. And we have less traffic. And our high schools have produced Ivy League students.

Thank you very much. And we also have many wonderful Churches.

Review Where You Live

With five golf courses in and around Newnan, this is every golf enthusiasts mecca. And if we know anything about retirees, they love to play golf.

We also know these golf clubs provide ample opportunities for retirees to explore activities like tennis, swim aerobics, bridge club, knitting club…you get the picture.

Heck with all of these clubs at your disposal, ‘lunch with the ladies’ will have a whole new meaning if you move to this city in Coweta County.

Now if shopping and dining is your idea of a relaxing retirement environment, there are great places in Newnan and you are only 45 minutes from Atlanta.

Our last stop on the best cities to retire to in Georgia for 2019 is Powder Springs.

We’re not surprised that Powder Springs crushed our snackability scale with an emphasis on amenities and affordability.

First off, it’s not far from Atlanta, which means it’s super close to great shopping, restaurants, and an international airport. Secondly, their median home price and rent are very retirement friendly.

Did we mention their median household income is close to $60,000? This means that Powder Springs has the money to keep the city nice and safe for all its residents.

So don’t wait another second, Powder Springs wants you to call it home.

How We Determined The Best Places To Retire In the Peach State for 2019

To create our list of the best places in Georgia to retire, we first used Census data to find all places in the Peach State — 620 cities and towns.

We then narrowed it down to places with at least 10,000 people that weren’t townships. This left us with 71 places from across the state.

For these 71, we looked at the following criteria taken from the Census, the FBI’s Crime Report, National Weather Service, and OpenFlights:

• Low cost of living as measured by rent
• Low crime
• Things to do (Museums, Colleges, and Libraries in town)
• Nice weather
• Distance to the closest international airport
• Other retirees (High median age)

We then ranked each of these places for each criteria from one to 71, with the lowest number being the best.

Finally, we took the average rank across these criteria. The place, in this case Decatur, with the lowest average rank was crowned the best of the best, a place for you to start your second careers.