A.G. Edward’s Inaugural Nest Egg Index

A.G. Edwards has created their Next Egg Index in which tracks American’s savings and investing habits and turned up some really interesting statistics that might surprise you (or not). The most interesting statistic coming out of this study is the fact that major metropolitan areas aren’t represented in the top 200 communities (New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and San Antonio) which may not be a surprise if you’ve ever bought anything in New York City, Los Angeles or Miami, though cost of living wasn’t the only factor since San Francisco and Cape Cod were in the top ten as well. As Flexo noted, three of the top ten are in New Jersey (cheap compared to NYC, but try buying a house there) and my home counties of Nassau-Suffolk placed second. The top three states were New Jersey, Connecticut, and Minnesota.

How did they come up with this index scoring? They used the following statistics:

The owner-occupied housing values may have skewed the Nest Egg index towards more expensive areas (ie. the New Jersey neighborhoods, San Jose, Long Island, etc.) because a lot of the top places have extremely expensive homes. I wouldn’t put too much stock in these rankings, like all rankings, but it is fun to play around and see how your area stacked up. (check out the top rankings at CNN)

All the information in this article came from the A.G. Edward’s press releases provided by a representative of Carmichael Lynch Spong.