Forbes Where The Price Of Everyday Items Are The Cheapest and Priciest
November 15, 2008
Interesting article written by Lauren Sherman over at Forbes.com. As you can see San Antonio does rank the cheapest for several categories. One category I would have like to see is Gas? I just filled up yesterday at $1.87 a gallon and haven’t smiled like that at the gas pump in a long time. According AAA Texas that is the lowest it’s been since 2007.
Monthly Rent
Cheapest: Charlotte, N.C.
$666
Priciest: New York, N.Y.
$3,500 (Now I know why my cousin moved back from NY)
Monthly Home Mortgage
Cheapest: Dallas, Texas
$967 (Looking for a house in San Antonio? Contact Me)
Priciest: New York, N.Y.
$5,831
Monthly Energy Expenses
Cheapest: Seattle, Wash.
$119
Priciest: New York, N.Y.
$362.28
Monthly Landline Bill
Cheapest: Los Angeles, Calif.
$19
Priciest: Boston, Mass.
$38.45 (Who still has landline?)
Half-Gallon of Milk
Cheapest: Cincinnati, Ohio
$1.67
Priciest: Sacramento, Calif.
$2.97 (Don’t you hate it when someone drinks all the milk then leaves the container in the fridge empty, throw it away!)
Head of Lettuce
Cheapest: San Antonio, Texas
$.93
Priciest: New York, N.Y.
$1.99
Loaf of Bread
Cheapest: San Antonio, Texas
$.79 (I can swear it said $.99 at H-E-B)
Priciest: New York, N.Y.
$2.68
11.5 oz. Can of Coffee
Cheapest: San Antonio, Texas
$3.08 (Starbucks anyone?)
Priciest: San Francisco, Calif.
$5.91
Pair of Boys’ Jeans
Cheapest: Indianapolis, Ind.
$13.97
Priciest: Boston, Mass.
$37.19 (I wish my jeans costs $37 bucks)
Men’s Haircut
Cheapest: Indianapolis, Ind.
$9.20
Priciest: St. Paul, Minn.
$24.40 (I love $11 dollar Tuesdays!)
*Each urban area includes every zip code that falls under the city’s name, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
As the economy continues its decline, those in San Antonio are far less likely to feel the pinch–at least when it comes to food prices. Residents there pay just $3.08 for an 11.5 oz. can of freeze-dried coffee, compared to $5.91 in San Francisco. And when it comes to bread, San Antonians win again: The average cost of a loaf of white bread is just $.79. In Manhattan, bread costs over three times that amount, at $2.68 per loaf.
Behind The Numbers
To determine the cities where everyday costs are the cheapest and most expensive, we turned to Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), an Arlington, Va.-based organization that works with local government and research groups to determine the costs of common goods in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) across the country. C2ER provided the average price of 10 different everyday costs in the urban areas of the top 40 largest MSAs in the third quarter of 2008.
An urban area is defined as an area of 50,000 or more people within an MSA. That means “satellite cities”–smaller cities within the MSA–are separated from the larger cities in this survey. Take Boston. Although a small city like Quincy, Mass. is a part of Boston’s MSA, itwas considered a separate city when compiling this research. Only Boston proper–which boasts an estimated 2008 population of 616,535–was included in the information offered about “Boston.” Places like Brookline and Cambridge, which are also part of the overall Boston MSA, were not included.
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