If you can bear the brutally cold winters, head to the Twin Cities -- there's money to be made in the Midwest. According to the results of a just-released study by ReliaStar Financial Corporation, Minneapolis-St. Paul is the best city in the United States to earn and save money, a finding based on 15 criteria measuring financial security, including housing costs, unemployment, cost of living, lack of health insurance, cost of community services, job quality and creation, crime rates, education, and household income. A panel of 12 experts reviewed the data and ranked the cities accordingly. And those rankings leave us consumers in a peculiar dilemma: Do we throw our cares away and head to sunny San Diego, even though our money-earning potential ranks a mere 92nd in that city? And for those of us who love New York, it really does appear that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere ... because the Big Apple ties with San Diego for 92nd place. To what do we attribute the Midwest's rise to the top, and how seriously can we take these findings?

"Minneapolis-St. Paul and El Paso [which ranks dead last at #99, tied with Modesto, Calif.] are good examples of the national trend," says ReliaStar Vice President Rick Naymark. "The northern cities diversified their economies, investing in new industries and revitalizing the ones that already exist. At the same time, many southern cities are attracting low-margin, low-paying industries. Meanwhile, an influx of workers from other countries and from the northern regions of the United States has contributed to low wages." Here are the top 10 and bottom 10 metropolitan areas in terms of money-earning potential, as found by ReliaStar (note that some cities have tied):

The ReliaStar study also found that general economic security in the United States has improved 2.8 percent since 1996, although results vary to a great extent within various regions of the country. "One of the most striking findings in the index is the economic renaissance of the northern cities," Naymark says. "The Rust Belt has restored its gleam."

Minneapolis-based ReliaStar and its subsidiaries focus primarily on residential mortgages, mutual funds, individual life insurance and annuities, retirement plans, personal finance education, life and health reinsurance, and employee benefits. An in-depth, one-page profile of each metropolitan area in the study is available upon request via: the ReliaStar Line, P.O. Box 20, Route 5920, Minneapolis, MN 55440; or by calling the ReliaStar Line toll free at (888) 757-5757. ReliaStar's e-mail address is rline.reliastar@reliastar.com

Published: January 21, 1998

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