The Most Expensive Cities for Singles -- and the Cheapest
Looking for love in all the pricey places? Check out these lists of the most and least expensive cities for singles before you go on that next date or plan your next move. Looking good doesn’t come cheap, and the price of a decent wardrobe and a gym membership add ups before you even step out the door.
To determine which cities were the least and most affordable for singles, GoBankingRates examined 89 cities and rated them according to four expense categories -- clothing, dates, gym memberships and rent -- using data from Numbeo.com. “Singles are more likely to exercise, and to have a gym membership,” says Elyssa Kirkham, a finance writer for GoBankingRates. “They’re more likely to rent than own a home, and spend more money on dates and clothing.”
Related: Hot New Dating Criteria: What’s Your Credit Score?
San Francisco is the most expensive city for singles, especially when it comes to rent. Rent is 30 percent more expensive in San Francisco than it is in Honolulu. The cost of a date here is $147, compared with the median cost of $109. California just might be the most expensive state to date in, claiming seven of the top 15 spots: San Francisco, Fremont, Glendale, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland.
The second most expensive city? New York City, which boasts the most expensive gym membership at $90 per month. Clothing costs here are the second-highest in the nation -- bad news for all the Carrie Bradshaws out there. And date night will set you back $145.
The most expensive date night in the country is in Washington, D.C., which came in third overall. Date night in our nation’s capital costs $166 for dinner, a bottle of wine, two movie tickets and a 10-mile taxi ride. Compare that to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which had the cheapest date night at $78.
Looking for more bang for your buck? Move to Reno, Nevada. Rent here is just 86 cents per square foot, and a night out averages $97.30. Keep in mind, though, that “the Biggest Little City in the World” was once known as the divorce capital of the world, so dating there may offer less promise than other locales.
Related: The Bad News About All the Singles in America
Most Expensive Cities for Singles
- San Francisco
- New York
- Washington, D.C.
- Honolulu
- Boston
- Fremont, California
- Glendale, California
- Anchorage, Alaska
- Miami
- Seattle
- Irvine, California
- Los Angeles
- San Diego
- Oakland, California
- Madison, Wisconsin
Related: Marriage?? Young Americans Aren’t Even Shacking Up
15 Cheapest Cities for Singles
- Reno, Nevada
- Tucson, Arizona
- Grand Rapids, Michigan
- Tacoma, Washington
- Indianapolis
- Mesa, Arizona
- Little Rock, Arkansas
- Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Huntsville, Alabama
- Memphis, Tennessee
- St. Louis, Missouri
- Jackson, Mississippi
- Stockton, California
- Omaha, Nebraska
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
Stat of the Day: 0.2%
The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”
Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.
Number of the Day: 44%
The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”
Number of the Day: 4,229
The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”
The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.
Number of the Day: $3 Billion
A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”
Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs
President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.
