Cora and I had hoped to fill our baskets with provocative reading material at the bookstores earlier this summer, but we were hard-pressed to find anything novel in the financial magazine section. On one hand, I'm glad we saved some money with limited purchases. On the other hand, I never thought I'd see the day when Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine would be my only bookstore purchase.

Last summer we discovered Pink, a new financial magazine for women. We couldn't find that magazine on the shelves this summer, although the Pink Website is still alive. We also covered Red Herring's offerings last summer, but this year we glanced through their June issue with a yawn. Red Herring, among other financial magazines, offered nothing, it seemed, but warmed-over headlines for the summer.

So, Kiplinger's made it home with us. I was pleasantly surprised with their June offerings (and their price - a mere $3.50 for one issue off the rack). Their "50 Smart Places to Live" article pleased me as well on first glance, because this magazine actually included the down side about living in any one of the fully-covered top-ten out of the fifty listed choices.

The "Smart Places" list was developed by a Kiplinger readership poll to find a focus for the selection of fifty places to live. They discovered that main concerns centered on housing prices, reasonable cost of living, and a "great quality of life." Kiplinger's then partnered with Bert Sperling, co-author of Cities Ranked & Rated, and host of BestPlaces.net, to compile the final list. Kiplinger's then sent employees to the top ten cities on that list to learn more about those places from residents.

The efforts that Kiplinger applied to construct this list rates an A+ in my book, as actual research was conducted to reach a conclusion. I've seen many lists for "top places to live" in financial magazines that seem to be based on realtors' advertising monies rather than on readership benefits. The Kiplinger list itself, however, mystified me at first, as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco weren't mentioned. In fact, Ithaca was the only New York state city mentioned, and California and Illinois were nowhere to be found.

It could be that, while housing prices seem to average about $200,000 - $300,000 across the board, you can find larger living spaces for the same price when you compare a place like Austin, TX (#5) than you can in New York. One example included a couple who paid a few hundred dollars more for a monthly mortgage payment on a four-bedroom house in Austin than they paid for a "tiny" Manhattan apartment. Another choice included Pittsburgh, PA (#9), where a person could live a "millionaire's lifestyle on a middle-class budget."

Other choices, like Lexington, KY (#13 with a median home price of $122,240) and Lynchburg, VA (#42 with a median home price of $173,250), surprised me until I realized that these two city/towns were favored more by families and retirees than singles and young couples. Both towns have little to offer a person who's used to big-city life. Singles and young couples favored places more like Nashville, TN (#1 with a median home price of $137,920) and Atlanta, GA (#4 with a median home price of $138,830).

Finally, when I read the column in this list entitled, "Cost-of-Living-Index," I discovered the real reason why these fifty places were chosen. The only city/towns with a cost of living index of 100 or more included Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn (#2 at 100), Philadelphia, PA (#22 at 106), Charlottesville, VA (#39 at 108), and Burlington, VT (#48 at 100). Most of the other choices carried a cost of living index in the 80-90 range, with the lowest being College Station, TX at 75 (#43).

I had to search for College Station on a map, because I had no idea where this town might be located. College Station, filled with 200,336 cost-of-living-happy residents, is located a mere 97 miles northeast from Houston. This choice made me curious about long-distance suburban drifts, a move that would place residents far enough from a metro area to avoid big-city costs, yet close enough to enjoy big-city shopping and culture. This drift from large metro meccas like Seattle into smaller cities like Olympia (#27, located about 62 miles southwest from Seattle) seems to reflect the huge suburban sprawl created in the 1950s. But, one look at the group preference for these cities shows that many of these "semi-suburban" choices are preferred by retirees and families, not by singles or young couples.

Considering that Baby Boomers - a disproportionate number in America's population - has entered the retiree group, I wondered how some of these places will fare in about twenty years, when retirees will enter the great beyond or possibily live in retirement homes or with family members. While this group is often balanced by families in Kiplinger's list, I also wondered how many kids will remain in their hometowns, or how many parents will remain when they enter the "empty nest" group. The Kiplinger list shows that empty nesters didn't prefer College Station or Olympia, but I can't draw conclusions from this indicator. A good look at a town's historical census files might provide information about how these places might fare in the future.

Other articles, like "Hurricane Alley?" in Kiplinger's June issue were just as thought-provoking as the "Smart Places" piece. This article states that east-coast homeowners might pay steep prices for insurance or lose their homeowner's insurance altogether based on the costs entailed by last year's storms. It appears that insurers have taken a beating and, based on the assumption that the northeast coast is overdue for a big storm, east-coast homeowners are losing out on protection. This is a cost of living issue that might be one reason why Philadelphia and Virginia Beach were the only two east-coast choices included in that top-fifty list?

Until Next Week,
Linda Goin