Moving up in the ranks...

In early July, I wrote a post (Sticker Shock) comparing a basket of goods in Australia compared to the same or similar goods in the USA. I wanted to see how the cost of living in both places stacked up. I'll admit, it was a very unscientific study and contained questionable data sources. Today however, the good people at Mercer have published a survey which confirms my theory. Life in Australia is expensive, but not as expensive as Moscow apparently.

Moscow was ranked number one. Sydney was the most expensive Australian city and was ranked number 15 in the world. The most expensive city in the USA was New York City which ranked 22. The next most expensive US city was, you guessed it, Los Angeles. Los Angeles ranked 55th. Our hometown of Melbourne, Australia ranked 36th. So that means it's more expensive to live in Melbourne than it is in LA. Not only that, but Melbourne moved up significantly in the ranks this year from 64th last year to 36th this year. That's 28 places. Wowsers!

It's not that things in Australia or Melbourne in particular have become tremendously more expensive over the last 365 days, it's that the value of the US Dollar in comparison to the Aussie Dollar has decreased.

So that's bad news for the Americans amongst you who are hoping to have a cheap holiday to Australia. You should have gotten on the plane 8 years ago when the US dollar was buying 2 Aussie dollars and everything was essentially half price.

The good news is, America has become a lot more affordable for Australians. The even better news is I can now shop at Banana Republic instead of Old Navy during my next visit to the homeland.

You have to look for the silver lining right?