After NYC, what are the most expensive cities to live in in the U.S.

Do you mean “aside from”? I ask only to clarify that you’re not asking for a ranking – because I believe that San Fransisco beats NYC in terms of COL.

Generally because they have something to offer that other places don’t, and a limited amount of space to offer it in. Generally they have an industry center (L.A. – Film, NYC – Finance, D.C. – Government). And mostly they’re the older port cities on the coast.

@iamthemob Yes I mean “aside from”

According to the data from Kiplinger the highest cost of living can be found in:

1 Olympia, WA
2 Boulder, CO
3 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT
4 Burlington-South Burlington, VT
5 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
6 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
7 Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA
8 Cedar Rapids, IA
9 Pocatello, ID
10 Salt Lake City, UT
11 Dothan, AL
12 Topeka, KS
13 Rochester, MN
14 Austin-Round Rock, TX
15 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
16 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
17 Pittsburgh, PA
18 Springfield, IL
19 Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, WA
20 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI

NYC doesn’t even hit the list until #34.

Boston, Juneau and Anchorage come after NYC according to this.

I think it’s tough to come up with a metric that’s going to work for comparing cost of living accurately so you see a lot of variety in answers. There’s an economic index that’s used (more on the index from the wiki), but that doesn’t really take in to account everything that varies place to place.

For example, do you include real estate (where place like San Francisco are famously expensive, but Alaska probably not so much), do you include the whole city limits? How about suburbs and areas people commute to the city from? Manhattan is going to be more expensive than outlying areas around NYC to live. Are you adjusting for income potential? Wages in the midwest aren’t the same as in the major metropolitan areas.

Some places try to include everything, others just look at what it would actually cost to live there (food, housing, gas, etc). If you’re just looking at basics, places like Hawaii and Alaska are going to be a lot higher because so much has to be transported in and those transport costs are passed along to consumers. So there’s no one list that is “correct”...

General consensus is that places with a lot of people and a lot of money changing hands are generally going to have higher cost of living. There’s more income available and the people who have the cash will pay more for “the good stuff” which trickles higher prices down to everything.

Using fireside’s data it looks like the top 8 are (sorted by cost of living index rather than ID)

1 – New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
2 – Honolulu, HI
3 – San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
4 – Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
5 – Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
6 – San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
7 – Fairbanks, AK
8 – San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA

But some of those cities are huge, and they seem to be grouping them into even larger groups which will offset a lot of the differences. (for example I don’t imagine Oakland has the cost of living as high as San Francisco, so it may skew those numbers)

Also, from 9 to 29 on that list all have the exact same cost of living index, so I wonder where they got their information that so many areas came out identical.

@marinelife – I think that may be the wrong link (refers to effects of alcohol in the cold)

@funkdaddy – good catch. For some reason, when I copied and pasted the data from the web page into excel, it mismatched the columns. When I save the page and then open it the cost of living index is in the order you provided.

Depends on what you call the most expensive. High prices or prices compared to income? Affordable apparently means the comparison of average income to cost of living, not actually dollar amounts.

From what I have heard friends and family discuss of their rent in various cities, it seems to me that NYC is definitely number one, followed closely by San Francisco. But just San Francisco….my brother lives in Oakland and pays less than 300 dollars a month in a nice house near the Oakland/Berkeley border. For a one bedroom in Boulder, CO right now my boyfriend and I pay 995 a month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :(

I can also vouch for the fact that Pittsburgh and western PA in general should NOT be on the top even 50 most expensive places. Most friends of mine that live in Pittsburgh and have a few roommates pay less than 200 a month. WHAT!