Nearly half of Americans in an Ipsos poll last year said they prefer to live in the suburbs, compared with 24% who preferred urban areas and 23% rural communities.
Small-city life works best for people who want more elbow room, shorter commutes and fewer degrees of separation, according to a recent report from the personal finance website WalletHub. The report notes that these little urban areas also involve tradeoffs, such as shorter business hours and fewer dining and drinking venues.
One of the benefits of living in a small city is affordability. WalletHub cited an example based on figures from Economic Policy Institute’s family budget calculator of the cost of living for a two-parent, two-child family in Hanford, California, compared with that of the same family in San Francisco: $8,013 per versus $17,621 per month.
“Moving from a bustling metropolis to a small city could drastically cut down your cost of living,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said in a statement. “On top of that, the best small cities offer strong job markets, high-quality education, good health care, safe living conditions and plenty of local flair to help you achieve a high quality of life.”
Financial advisors might choose to live in a small city for a number of reasons. They might benefit from reduced local competition or find it easier to build bonds with the local affluent population. Others might be able to keep their living costs low while serving clients in more expensive areas remotely.
In order to determine the best small cities in America, WalletHub selected 1,318 cities with populations between 25,000 and 100,000, and considered only the “city proper” in each case, excluding cities in the surrounding metro area. Researchers compared these cities across five key dimensions:
— Affordability, including median household income, cost of living, homeownership rate and housing costs
— Economic health, including population growth, income and job growth, foreclosure rate and median credit score
— Education and health, including school system quality, high school graduation rate, share of adults in poor or fair health and premature-death rate
— Quality of life, including average commute time; restaurants, bars, clubs, and coffee and tea shops per capita; bike rental facilities per capita; and department stores per capita
— Safety, including violent- and property-crime rates, pedestrian fatalities per capita and drug poisoning deaths per capita
Researchers then evaluated the five dimensions using 45 relevant metrics, and graded each one on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for small-city residents.
See the gallery for the America’s 12 best small cities in 2025, according to WalletHub.
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