In doing some scanning of the news this morning I see WalletHub has done an article on the “Best States to Live In” and I see my home state of Maryland doesn’t fair too well coming in at #35. A long way from #1 which was Idaho.

I was going to argue with it but when I saw the methodology they used, I thought better of it because it was pretty good in my opinion.

I can’t argue with the first ranking in affordability. We came in 38th and rightly so. This is an expensive state.

Economy rank is kind of a puzzling one though. Coming in at 44th out of 50 seems puzzling because things seem very strong around here. But when I look at the factors they use, I can see how it happened. With recent government downsizing I guess our employment issues hurt us. We do have a big wealth gap and taxes are killing us.

Education and Health ranking of #14 is a bit lower than I thought it might be. I thought this state was one of the best in terms of education, and we have some of the best hospitals in the country here. I’m guessing the individual health rankings drove our ranking down because we do have a lot of out of shape people here.

Our ranking of #33 in Quality of Life I highly disagree with. Yes, we have traffic congestion and long commute times. But other than that, the other factors used I thought we would rank much higher. I see one of the factors they used is accessibility to beaches. Well in this state I can be at the beach in a little over two hours and in the mountains skiing (if I did) in two hours also. We have all 4 seasons, and they are beautiful because none are too severe.

The safety rank of #35, I’m not going to argue with. Statistics usually don’t lie. But it is where you live. I’m sure there are good and bad spots in every state.

I know my home state of Maryland isn’t perfect. Far from it. It’s a state of contrast. Mountains and shoreline. Great wealth and great poverty. Great opportunities and great food shortages. Some of the best rated cities in the country and some of the armpits of the earth.

I love it personally. I loved growing up here, but I admit much has changed very fast and made it a very different place. But it’s our home. And as long as my children and grandchildren are here, I will be also.

I’ve thought about a home in Delaware near the shore, specifically Bethany Beach or Fenwick. But that isn’t happening at this stage.

The thing I feel about the state of Maryland is that if we were to apply this to our ranking 25 years ago and 50 years ago, I think we would be much higher which I think indicates that we are going the wrong direction. So, we got some things to figure out, don’t we.