Ft. Walton Beach - the “small metro area” - that Valparaiso falls under in the classification of cities has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the #52 small metro in America. Obviously, this score reflects the nature of opening a business in the area, but it factors in some characteristics of the town that are important to people living here. For instance, we are ranked #136 of 168 for cost of living. That’s terrible! In fact, the cost of living here is only slightly less than that of the real Twin Cities, Mpls/St. Paul. (The Niceville/Val-P area has come to be known the Twin Cities as well.) Anyway, there are a lot of factors that go into cost of living metrics, but most of them make it costly for a young family like us to live here. The benefit of having my family close outweighs all that of course, but Sarah and I still like to rant about how terrible it is for young people to try to make it financially in this town. Anwyay, check out the Forbes list and see how your town fares.

(Note: We do rank thirteenth for the number of engineers per capita. Hurrah for the military/academia complex.)