Toronto Gets Cheaper on Cost-of-Living List

If you're complaining about the high cost of living in Toronto, it's understandable - we are the most expensive city in Canada. I live here because I choose to live here and the cost-of-living is something I accept (like I accept crowded streetcars, over-priced coffee and that nasty garbage smell on Queen West in the morning).

Now, there's another reason to not mind how expensive we are - turns out, we're not that expensive. According to the latest report from Mercer Human Resources Consulting, Toronto ranks 82 out of 143 cities around the world. The study, which is used to figure out how much compensation employees living abroad should get, compares the cost of over 200 items like rent, entertainment, and food in different cities.

And it looks like we got a lot cheaper (at least for employees being sent here). Toronto fell 35 places from 47th place in the previous year's ranking. The Canadian dollar has something to do with this - even though the loony is getting stronger against the United States, it has depreciated against the Euro over the last year.

That Euro factor, along with our low inflation and relatively stable housing market, has caused a bunch of Canadian cities to drop their rankings on the pricy-city list. Vancouver, the next most expensive Canadian city, is only at 89 (dropping from 56 last year). Calgary dropped to 92nd from the 71st spot last year. Montreal got 98th spot while Ottawa, the cheapest Canadian city on the list, got 109th place.

Surprisingly, only two American cities were on the top 50 list (NYC at 15 and Los Angeles at 42). And if you have a lot of money to spare, you could move to Europe - a whole whack of European cities made the top ten list, including Oslo (10th), Geneva (6th place), and second place London. Moscow tops the list for a second year in a row.

Photo: Image from Word Freak from the blogTO Flickr pool.