The real best places to retire

This post comes from Tom Sightingsat partner siteU.S. News & World Report.

A blizzard of articles give advice about the best places to retire. They generally recommend fleeing the North and heading for the Sun Belt, to places in the Carolinas, Florida or Arizona. Occasionally they offer a surprise retirement spot in Iowa or Indiana. Sometimes they even tout retirement locales outside the United States.

These articles rely on statistics such as the cost of living or winter temperatures. But they miss the most important thing -- the human element. Here are the real best places to go when you retire:

Stay home. As we get older, moving, making new friends and acclimatizing ourselves to new surroundings get more difficult. Don't underestimate the value of your current community. Think long and hard before you cut those connections to go off to get a sunburn.

Your hometown likely offers more senior citizen benefits than you think, including tax breaks, low-cost transportation and subsidized meals.

We have friends in the outer suburbs of New York who always thought they would retire somewhere warmer. But they finally realized how important their church community was to them and decided to stay put. Now they visit the senior center for a free meal every Thursday night. They walk at the mall two or three mornings a week and stay for coffee with new acquaintances. And they are still active in their church, among the friends they've known for decades.

Move near your children. My brother-in-law spent most of his career working around Pittsburgh After he retired, he and his wife gathered together all the brochures and ultimately decided to move to Massachusetts. Post continues below.

Follow your friends. One fellow I know retired to Maryland. Why? His longtime golfing partner retired there a few years earlier. He moved to the same town and joined the same golf club. Soon they were prowling the links together, just like old times. A year later, another friend, who had a relative living nearby, joined them, and they all now play golf twice a week.

Their wives, who had known each other casually, are now close friends. They started a bridge club and brought in some other women, and from there developed meaningful connections to the community. These couples now feel as though, as one of the women put it, "we've lived here all our lives."

Move back home. One friend of mine grew up in El Paso, Texas. She went to college in California, then got married and moved to Washington, D.C. Some 25 years later, her husband died, and she felt lost in the big city. She moved back west, to New Mexico, where she started a small business that included some clients in Washington. Now she lives in her beloved mountains and travels to Washington occasionally to see clients.

Another woman grew up outside New York. She got married and moved to Oregon and spent most of her 20s and 30s around Portland. Eventually she got divorced and moved first to California, then Arizona, with a yearlong stint in Alaska. But when she retired, she felt the pull of Portland, where she still had friends. To her, that was home. And that's where she moved.

No matter where you end up in retirement, remember that relationships are more important than the weather. The warmest climate can be found amid the safety and security of family and friends.

More from U.S. News & World Report and MSN Money:

• The 10 best places to retire in 2012
• 12 Retirement Resolutions for 2012
• Tips for baby boomers reaching retirement age in 2012
• 5 myths about Social Security
• 5 tips for retiring early
• Calculator:Am I saving enough for retirement?