Josh & Josh are Rich and Famous

New York City Is The Worst Place In America To Save Money; Minneapolis Named One of The Best

A new study has found that New York City is the single worst place in the United States to live and try to save money. Shocking? Maybe not so much, but nice to have it confirmed in a well-publicized study.

Meanwhile, the Josh & Josh hometown of Minneapolis has been named one of the five best places in the United States to live and save money.

Hmmm.

From the study:

If you'd like to build a nest egg with your paycheck, it may be time to give up New York. A survey by pay experts at Salary.com evaluated 69 cities with more than 250,000 people and ranked the Big Apple last.

New York's diverse economy and highly-educated residents couldn't save it from sinking to the bottom due to its high cost of living and paychecks that just aren't 'inflated' enough to make up the difference, the report stated.

According to the survey, the top five cities are home to some of the nation's largest companies and have recorded strong periods of growth. Following first-place Plano, Tex., came Aurora, Colo., Omaha, Neb., Minneapolis and Albuquerque N.M.

Fun times! (Check out the full story here.)

Meanwhile, if you should happen to be in Minneapolis, this week The New York Times suggests what to do with 36 hours in the Twin Cities, and mostly gets it right.

Merry Christmas from Minnesota

Photos by Josh K.

Minnesota Briefs

•Minneapolis is the second most literate city in the county.  St. paul is #4.  Go Minnesota, go!

•From Minnesota Public Radio:

For people with a reputation for being humble, Minnesotans sure like to promote themselves.

It's hard to get through a day without hearing that Minnesota was named the healthiest state in the country. Or that it has more recreational boats than anywhere else in the nation. Or that it's home to the world's largest fiberglass crow.

Reporter Nikki Tundel compiled some of Minnesota's top honors and put together a tribute to the land of 10,000 lakes.  [click here to listen]

•A couple weeks ago I got an email from my grandma asking me if I'd seen the locally-made movie Sweet Land.  My grandma told me that she had seen it and loved it and that her good friend's son-in-law, Ali Selim, is the director.  She insisted that I see it with her.  So I did.  And it was lovely.  Click here to hear Ali Selim tell the story of its success (also from MPR).

Minnesota from Above

The photos above were taken last week by me (Josh K.) on my very first trip in my dad's new plane.  He's officially been a pilot for a couple months now, but since m'dad is a bit of a safety freak he would not allow passengers until very recently (and even now he insists that his flight instructor, Susan, come along for the ride--just in case; "Safety first!"  God love 'im).

Susan suggested that we fly directly over the Minneapolis / St. Paul International Airport so my dad could get comfortable talking in whacked out pilot lingo to the various control towers in the area.  So we did.  Or we tried.  No: my dad tried and fumbled with the correct sequence of the request; I sat back in my comfy leather bucket seat and took in the amazing view of the twin titties.  Who the hell knows what actually happened.  All I remember hearing is a bunch of niner-niner-whiskey this is blah blah blah requesting flyover access to blah blah blah heading southbound, over shit.  In any case, we were denied access.  So we flew through St. Paul instead and headed south, making stops at small airports in Owatonna and Fairbault and passing over Carleton, St. Olaf, and Gustavus Adolphus colleges before making our way back up to the Twin Cities.

From the top:  The capitol building of the great State of Minnesota near downtown St. Paul | Downtown St. Paul on the Mighty Mississippi.  For you out-of-towners:  Minneapolis and St. Paul were built just a few miles apart on the Mississippi River.  Together, they're often referred to as the Twin Cities (for obvious reasons), as evidenced in the first and second photo above (downtown Minneapolis is the cluster of skyscrapers visible in the upper right hand corner of the photo) | Downtown Minneapolis | A random lake just south of the Twin Cities | Suburbville | Frost on the window--it was 12º outside | Me, getting motion sickness from watching the ground below wisk by at 150 m.p.h.

//Josh K.