A mid-year Cost of Living Index published by Numbeo has ranked the Mother City as a cheaper city to live in than either Pretoria or Johannesburg.
The Numbeo index compares the cost of living in cities around the globe to that of the world’s most expensive city to live in, New York City, which has an index score of 100% or 100.
Relative costs are taken into account on the index across a number of categories, including rent, food costs, entertainment, transport, and the local purchasing power of the city.
New York is used in this index as the standard against which to compare each city’s cost. if New York is 100 and Cape Town is roughly 44, we know it is 56% cheaper to live in than New York.
The new index surprisingly shows that, contrary to popular belief (especially those of locals), Pretoria with an index score of 49, and Johannesburg with 47, are more expensive to live in than Cape Town with its score of 44.
Less pricey than the Mother City to live in were Port Elizabeth with a score of 41 and Durban, the most-easy-on-the-wallet city in South Africa with a score of 40.
Unsurprisingly Cape Town still scored the highest in terms of rent cost with a score of 26 where Pretoria scored 16 and Johannesburg scored 18, but the costs that brought the ranking home for the Mother City were those of groceries. Compared to Pretoria with a score of 35 and Johannesburg with a score of 37 for grocery costs, Cape Town scored 36 for its groceries index and a low 43 for its restaurant index compared to Johannesburg’s 44.
So you may be paying a pretty penny for the roof over your head in our beautiful city but at least our groceries are cheap and our restaurants not only vast and varied but also well-worth the price tag.
Picture: Unsplash/Tierra Mallorca/www.tierra-mallorca.com