Today Sun Mon
It is forcast to be Chance of Snow at 10:00 PM EST on February 11, 2012
Chance of Snow
-2°/-3°		 It is forcast to be Chance of Snow at 10:00 PM EST on February 12, 2012
Chance of Snow
2°/-5°		 It is forcast to be Partly Cloudy at 10:00 PM EST on February 13, 2012
Partly Cloudy
3°/-2°

5 Comments

news

Toronto Embarrassingly Inexpensive, Says Economist

By Patrick Metzger

2007_03_08_beck_bling.jpgThanks to Shanghaist Editor Dan Washburn for calling our attention to the latest Cost of Living Survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which rates 132 cities worldwide by how much it costs to live there.
Toronto, for all our complaining, comes in as only 43rd most expensive, behind North American leader New York City at 28, and fellow Canucks Vancouver and Montreal at 34 and 36 respectively. Blame Honest Ed and all those dollar stores for making us look cheap and unsophisticated.
The top 5 most expensive cities in which to live were Oslo (Norway), Paris (France), Copenhagen (Denmark), London (UK), and Tokyo (Japan).
Those who still find Toronto a little pricey might consider a move to Manila or Tehran, which are bargain hunters paradises at numbers 131 and 132 on the list.
Photo courtesy Tobbycat on Torontoist Flickr Pool .

Comments

  • matty

    you people are rankings obsessed. it’s a GOOD thing if your city is inexpensive. not a bad thing.

  • Steve

    If I could get a job and make enough to move there, I would in a heartbeat. I live across the lake in Rochester andmy rent for a one-bedroom is $600/mth. I have a friend in TO who pays $900 for a one-bedroom. I don’t know how you guys do it. Once I find out, I’m there. Overall though, I don’t think Toronto is uber-expensive when doing other things.
    Besides, TO is worth it.

  • http://www.jillmurray.com Jill Murray

    “Perhaps more importantly, the EIU research also does not account for accommodation costs.”
    So what do these results mean for average Torontoist readers? Rent, food and taxes are my biggest expense categories, in that order. Any cost comparison is meaningless to me if it doesn’t factor them in.
    Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of number crunching on the relative expense of different cities according to my actual lifestyle, income bracket, potential earnings in each city and plans for the future. With my current circumstances, working with my personal ambitions, factoring in rent, food, transportation, potential auto insurance, moving costs and taxes, Montreal would be much less costly than Toronto. If I were to try to purchase real estate, or have children, the gulf would grow even greater. But the results could be vastly different if I just had slightly different values and aspirations.
    I think it’s important that individuals do their own analysis before letting studies like these impact their impressions of a place. Each set of perosnal variables can throw the whole generalized evaluation way, wayyyy off.

  • Kate

    Moving here from Glasgow, U.K. my standard of living is so much higher in Toronto where I can afford to eat out, but new clothes, go to the cinema or to gigs, have a couple pints with my mates and still pay rent (thank goodness for no council tax). Things are pretty sweet here.

  • rek

    I just moved from Toronto to Seoul last month. I was surprised to see Seoul wasn’t in the top 5 — by most accounts it’s the second most expensive city in the world (if you’re going to buy a house). How can a “cost of living” survey call itself such but not “account for accommodation costs”? The survey is useless to all but tourists and the homeless then.