I just ran across an interesting article on Forbes.com that talked about America’s most expensive cities. In many ways, the results aren’t surprising, with New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all ranked in the top five, but there are some names that I didn’t expect to see.

Here’s the rundown:

  1. New York, NY
  2. Los Angeles, CA
  3. White Plains, NY
  4. San Francisco, CA
  5. Honolulu, HI
  6. Miami, FL
  7. Chicago, IL
  8. Boston, MA
  9. Houston, TX
  10. Washington, DC

While American cities haven’t traditionally ranked amongst the most expensive worldwide, New York moved from #22 in the world in 2008 to #8 in the world in 2009. If you’re interested in looking more broadly, you can find the complete, worldwide dataset from which the above list was generated by visiting this link.

Not surprisingly, the main reason that New York sits atop the US leaderboard is the high cost of housing. In fact, housing costs (as measured in terms of 2 bedroom luxury apartment rents) in New York are nearly double those of #2 Los Angeles. Of course, many Los Angeles residents also have to deal with long, costly commutes.

A couple of other interesting tidbits:

The city on this list with the most expensive cup of coffee (on average) was San Francisco at $4.50.

As for fast food hamburger meals, the highest cost was in White Plains, NY at an average of $6.29.

Where does your hometown rank?

I’m just thankful that we live in a place where I can earn a good income without facing an astronomical cost-of-living. According to an online cost-of-living calculator that I just dug up, New York is nearly twice as expensive as our hometown. Once again, housing makes up a disproportionate amount of that difference.

What about you? How does your hometown stack up?

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