No wonder I'm broke!

So Forbes just released their list of the top ten Most Overpriced Places in the U.S. They determined these by studying the median home price and other costs of living in relation to the job growth and unemployment or something like that.

Big duh: New York is #2 (though I guess you could say it's a surprise that it's not #1).

The big surprise? Portland is #3!! Wha??????

Now, I know for a fact that Portland is way cheaper to live in than New York or even Sacramento, my home town. In fact, it's probably the most inexpensive cool city to live in! But apparently, our unemployment rate is high and homes are actually fairly expensive, so it's overpriced:


Forbes says: "Portland comes in on the northern end of the list once again. Like Seattle, it took some hard knocks during the dot-com bust. "Oregon's economy has not yet recovered from the recession of 2001," according to the state's official fact book, the Oregon Blue Book. At the end of 2004, the state's unemployment rate was lingering around 7% (it was 5% nationally in June). The quality of life is good, but real estate comes at a price. From the end of 2003 to the end of 2004, the median home-cost price increased by nearly $20,000 to $201,500, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development."

Well, crap, I'm screwed. Just when I find out that my boss won't be able to keep me on full-time at PR-at-Large after the end of this month, thereby cutting my guaranteed income in half (don't worry, I'm job searching!), this fancy-pants money magazine tells me that I'm living in a way too expensive city. Ack! Okay, I'm just going to deal with it through denial: the magazine's statistics don't apply to me and that's the end of it. My Portland is cheap cheap cheap!