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# How Money Chooses the Best Places

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G7ZKL771.m3u8" -->
## Video: How Money Chooses the Best Places

[Watch (HLS stream): How Money Chooses the Best Places](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G7ZKL771.m3u8) (2:05)

![How Money Chooses the Best Places](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G7ZKL771/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2015-08-14. Money Magazine carefully evaluates each town that ends up on the Best Places to Live list, evening sending reporters to dozens of places to make sure they live up to the data._


---

Jul 27, 2023 6:40 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

[The Cheapest Places to Travel Each Month of the Year MONEY](/video/BZinDnFy/)

### The Cheapest Places to Travel Each Month of the Year MONEY

[MONEY's Best Places to Live Launch](/video/39tOqwJM/)

### MONEY's Best Places to Live Launch

[MONEY's Best Places to Retire](/video/CT0oNUGL/)

### MONEY's Best Places to Retire

---


## Transcript

[ MUSIC ] Money's process for choosing the best places to live in America begins months ahead of time. We start with a pool of every town from ten to 50, 000 people and then we exclude places with extremes of wealth or poverty compared to the rest of the state. We also exclude the places with high crime, a lack of diversity and problem schools. Once we narrow things down to about 2000 towns, we apply a formula that assesses these places across 40 different data points. These include many factors job growth for the next five years, affordability. Whether you can buy a home easily, whether groceries are cheap compared to income, and of course, whether property taxes are extremely high.

We care about education, and we wanna make sure people are comfortable sending their kids to public schools. We also rank places based on their racial diversity compared both to the state, and the rest of the country. Places that have great access to doctors, and healthcare of course, tend to rise to the top. That also includes places where people live healthy lifestyles, where there's lots of green space, where the weather's pretty good. We even look at divorce rates. Finally, we rank places based on access to culture. That includes theaters, museums, and of course, leisure activities, like golf or even skiing.

Once the data is in and crunched, we hit the ground running and we visit the dozens of places that have risen to the top. We send out reporters to interview residents. To talk with the community board. To check out those beautiful parks that we've seen in the data. And of course we want to learn about the different events and cultural activities that bring. Towns together. Sometimes we visit a town that looks great on paper, but when we get there we realize that it doesn't quite live up to our expectations. We do one last screen to make sure that the list is geographically diverse and represents all of the United States.

And then, it's just a few weeks before the list is in your hands. [ SOUND ]

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