SmartAsset's best cities of 2016
SmartAsset looked at America through a number of personal finance lenses over the past year. We crunched data to find the best cities to get out of debt and the cities where homeowners save the most on taxes. We did analyses where finance was only part of the equation, like the most affordable beach towns in America or the best cities for millennials. We also analyzed the job market to see where workers are succeeding, for studies like the best cities for women in tech and the best cities for pay in STEM jobs.
In looking back on the year, we realized that some cities were consistently popping up in the top 10 in our studies and we wanted to highlight them. Below we rank SmartAsset's best cities of 2016. The best of the best, if you will.
To create this ranking we looked at data on all our studies in the past year which focused on cities. We counted the number of top 10 appearances each city had and rewarded them with points based on their rankings. Cities with higher rankings received more points than cities with lower rankings. To get a better understanding of how we put all the data together and where we got it, read our methodology section below.
Key Findings
Madison dominated - Madison, our pick for the best city of 2016, finished with a commanding lead. It ranked eight points higher than Anchorage, the second-place city. And it finished 14 points above the third-place finisher Orem.
No single region stood out - Although Madison was the standout city, the top 10 is pretty evenly dispersed throughout the country.
Take an in-depth look at all the cities in the slideshow below:
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