Golden places for the golden years

Dallas lands on Forbes list of golden spots for retirees in 2021

Dallas is a great place to retire.

Photo by Tony Shi Photography/Getty Images

Once again, Dallas has earned gold status among the country’s best spots for retirees.

Big D appears on an unranked Forbes list of the country’s 25 best places to enjoy retirement for 2021, where it's joined by one other popular Texas city: Austin.

In lauding Dallas, Forbes highlights the city’s passions for arts and culture, fine dining, and golf.

"Nearly 80 golf courses in the area plus a robust arts/culture and fine dining scene distinguish the Big D," Forbes says. "The city has an adequate number of physicians per capita and is somewhat walkable and very bikeable."

Dallas also appeared on Forbes' list in 2020.

Regarding Austin, the publication highlights its "big music and dining scene," plus "free senior citizen tuition for six credits a semester at the University of Texas at Austin."

While those are the only Texas cities on the Forbes list, the charming Hill Country town of Fredericksburg recently earned a spot on an unranked Travel + Leisure list of the country’s 10 best small towns for retirement.

T+L emphasizes the town’s German heritage and its proximity to Austin and San Antonio.

“Wine lovers will enjoy living in the midst of more than 100 wineries in the area, and stargazers will appreciate the city’s efforts to become a Dark Sky Community, with measures to minimize light pollution,” Travel + Leisure observes. “Seasonal changes are significant, with dry, warm summers and cold weather in winter. The area is safe, and crime rates are low.”

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Population report

This is how many new Texas residents came from other countries in 2023

Welcome to Texas sign

We're so friendly.

The biggest source of new residents to Texas and Florida, the two U.S. states with the largest number of new residents last year, was other countries.

Of the almost 612,000 Texas residents who had lived elsewhere in the previous year, 43 percent were from another country, according to migration data released Thursday, October 17 by the U.S. Census Bureau. Texas has 30.5 million residents.

And Florida is slightly ahead of Texas. A little over 45 percent of the almost 634,000 residents in Florida who said that they had lived in a different state or abroad the previous year came from a foreign country.

Florida, with 23 million residents, had more people who said they had lived in a different place the previous year than any other state.

The migration figures don't show from which countries the new residents arrived.

Priscila Coronado moved last year to Miami from Guatemala, looking for a better future.

“I am happy. My dream is to study, learn English and graduate with a nursing degree,” Coronado says. “There is no crime here, and that is an achievement."

Among U.S. states, New York was the top producer of new Floridians, and more recently minted Texans had lived in California the year before than any other state.

But Texas and Florida didn't just gain residents; some also moved out. California had the most ex-Texans last year, and Georgia gained the most former Floridians.

moving texas population growth