The best places to live for many are not always the most expensive locations. Housing, taxes, schools, incomes, crime rates, quality of life and other factors all contribute to a best place to live.
CreditDonkey.com completed an analysis of the top 50 metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) using a set of metrics they selected to find the most frugal places in the U.S. They looked at the unemployment rate, median monthly housing costs, average annual cost of daycare, the number of members on Freecycle.org and the number of garden plots per 10,000 residents.
Where did CreditDonkey.com obtain these data?
Median monthly housing costs came from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Childcare costs were obtained from NACCRRA, which claims to be the “Nation’s leading voice on childcare.” To read more click http://www.naccrra.org/
Freecycle.org consists of 7+ million members that give and receive free items to both reduce landfill space and make use of resources at minimal costs for members.
Unemployment data were obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Click http://www.bls.gov/data/
The number of public garden plots came from The Trust for Public Land. To read more click http://www.tpl.org/
So where are the most frugal cities?
To read the entire report click http://www.creditdonkey.com/where-frugal.html
Needed in the this analysis , I believe, are comparable incomes. A city with a low cost of living may be no more affordable than a city with high costs once the typical income is considered. To read a previous blog discussing comparable incomes click http://blog.stewart.com/stewart/2012/04/11/more-important-than-per-capita-income-is-the-comparative-cost-of-living/
By the way, they also titled this topic “The Best Place to Live for Cheapskates, so I guess your perspective delineates the focus.
Ted