Sheffield England is one of the Cheapest Places to Live in the UK

UK most popular destination for International Students

According to the Sunday Times.

"Amazing when you think UK has just over 100 fully accredited universities and US well over 4,000."

Sheffield England is one of the Cheapest Places to Live

The City of Sheffield is located near the confluence of five rivers, and is one of the eight largest cities outside London. The beginning of the 21st century has shown extensive redevelopment in some British cities, including Sheffield. The city's GVA (gross value added) increased by 60 percent in recent years which also indicates the stability of the industry and employment opportunities available. Sheffield is one of the cheapest places in UK to live and study according to a survey of 26 university towns and cities (Natwest Student Living Index 2008).

As a vibrant, modern and cosmopolitan city, two of the top universities in UK, are located in Sheffield, University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University The University of Sheffield founded as the Sheffield school of medicine in 1828, Sheffield now boasts Nobel Prize winners and famous alumni in the arts and politics, sport, journalism and law. It ranked within the World's top70 Universities published by the - QS World University Rankings and constantly ranked amongst the top 20 universities in Britain and Europe according to The Good University Guide. The university is one of the original 'red brick' universities and a member of the Russell Group. The University of Sheffield is a premier-league, research-led institution with a population of over 25,000 students including more than 3,700 international students from 120 countries and has a worldwide reputation for quality, operating at the forefront of research and training.

Sheffield Hallam University is one of UK's most progressive and innovative universities. International students voted for SHU No.1 in UK for overall learning experience. (International student barometer, spring 2007) The university is the sixth largest in UK, with more than 30,000 students, over 4,000 staff and 650 courses. One of its priorities is to promote regional wealth creation through enterprise and knowledge transfer. Universities' industry partners Sony, BP, NHS, Network Rail, Cisco, SAP and Microsoft choose Sheffield Hallam because of a flexible business led approach and a high quality research. The University is recognised as a Centre of Excellence for Teaching and Learning, e-learning and employability.

UK is one of the leading study destinations for Sri Lankan students. The key question is how do you make your decision on selecting a good university in UK? Fortunately help is here on Saturday September 12 " A Day with -University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University", an event hosted by ANC Education. Sri Lanka's leading private tertiary education provider offering post O/Level and post A/Level access routes to many of UK's top universities with guaranteed entry for students who successfully complete their courses.

Does Cheap Rent make it one of the Cheapest Places to Live?

Bob McPhail writes in the San Diego Reader about Cheap Rent in Tijuana.

“The loss of employment in the United States and the impossibility of paying rents over a thousand dollars a month has prompted many families to change their residence to Tijuana, where they can pay rents between 400 and 600 dollars,” reports the Tijuana daily El Mexicano.

Sounds a lot like many other Latin American destinations like Panama where Americans can find some of the Cheapest Places to Live.

Bob says that, "According to real estate agents, there has been an increase in emigrados (Mexican residents with legal permission to work in the U.S.) who have moved to Tijuana in search of a house.

By paying cheaper rent, the hope is that they can improve their financial situation. Even though Tijuana rents are high compared to the rest of Mexico, those who have lost their jobs can still afford to rent here with their unemployment insurance, said the report.

Meanwhile, the influx of emigrados is having a negative effect on Tijuana residents, who are also looking for less-expensive places to live during the economic crisis.

“They are trying to change to more economic housing whose rents are fixed between 250 and 300 dollars a month, but emigrados are renting many of these available homes,” according to El Mexicano. Real estate agents told the newspaper that when they show an emigrado a home that rents for 500 or 600 dollars a month, “for an emigrado, that’s cheap because over there on the other side you’re talking about thousands of dollars.”

Because of the effect of emigrados' on the housing market, real estate agents have adopted a new policy to protect themselves from the fluctuating value of the peso (currently about 13 pesos to the dollar): they are fixing prices in dollars instead of pesos in new rental contracts.

Source: San Diego Reader | Home Is Where Cheap Rent Is

How about the Cheapest Places to Stay!

Just came across this interesting review at TripAdvisor. Of course Luna's in Panama City, Panama caught my eye. Now this may not be about the Cheapest Places to Live but it does give you some of the Cheapest Places to Stay. It seems to reason that the Cheapest Places to Stay might also have the Cheapest Places to Live, you think?

Cheapest Places to Stay - 10 Hotels less than $19/nt (Seriously!)

Hotel Lion d'Or Buenos Aires, Argentina $14/nt

Mandalay Inn Siem Reap, Cambodia $13/nt

Tod Motor Hotel Las Vegas, Nevada $17/nt

Shiva Guest House Kathmandu, Nepal $9/nt

El Panchan Palenque, Mexico $6/nt

Ani Motel Kas, Turkey $14/nt

Luna's Castle Hostel Panama City, Panama $12/nt

Venus Hotel Luxor, Egypt $9/nt

Dai Hoang Kim Hotel Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam $12/nt

Bling Bling Hostel Krakow, Poland $16/nt

*average price/night

best places to live in Canada for professionals

Here's one I found at the Oshawa Express. It seems Oshawa could be considered one of the Best Places to Live in Canada for professionals but it doesn't aspire to be one of the Cheapest Places to Live.

The article says,

"According to the Next Generation Consulting (NGC) ‘Next Cities’ list, Oshawa ranked 23 out of 27 Canadian cities, after the company collected and analyzed 45 measurements for cities with a population of more than 100,000. NGC studied residential and relocation patterns of 20 to 40 year olds since 1998 and has developed an indexing system that evaluates a city based on assets that are important to workers. The cities were assessed based on earning,
learning, vitality, around town, after hours, cost of lifestyle, and social capital.

The recent rankings are based on a city’s total score in all seven areas.“Simply being the cheapest place to live, or the city with the most jobs is not a long-term workforce strategy,” says NGC’s founder Rebecca Ryan in a press release.“The next generation is very savvy about choosing where they’ll live. They look carefully at quality of life factors like how much time they’re going to spend in traffic commuting, if they can live near a park or hike-and-bike trail and whether a city’s downtown stays awake after five.” Victoria, British Columbia ranked first among the cities.

Looking for the Best wages in the World? Try Switzerland

It pays to work in Switzerland: employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world, a study by banking group UBS shows, while those in India's Mumbai take home the lowest but enjoy one of the Cheapest Places to Live.

The Swiss cities were also ranked among the top five most expensive in the world in the bank's 2009 "Price and Earnings" international study.

"With its extremely high gross wages and comparatively low tax rates, Switzerland is a very employee-friendly country," the Swiss bank said in a statement.

"No other cities allows workers to take home more income at the end of the month than Zurich and Geneva."

The study, published every three years, compares the income and purchasing power of employees in 73 cities across the globe, highlighting wide discrepancies in wages between different regions, and even within the same country.

The biggest gaps were found in Asia, the study said, with Tokyo ranking as one of the world's five costliest cities while the capitals of developing countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines and India were all at the bottom of the price range.

Oslo was this year's most expensive city, based on a standardized basket of 122 goods and services, followed by Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York.

When rents are factored in, however, New York rises to the top spot, the study said.

This year, the bank said currency fluctuations caused by the global economic crisis affected the rankings of several cities, most notably London, which was the second most expensive city in 2006, but which fell nearly 20 places following the pound's drop earlier this year.

The analysis involved more than 30,000 data points, collected by several independent observers in each city, in March and April, the bank said. All amounts were converted into a single currency before being compared.

The world's cheapest places to live were Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur, Manila in the Philippines, and India's Delhi and Mumbai. But the average employee in many of these cities, as well as Jakarta and Nairobi, gets paid some of the world's lowest salaries which have between 11 percent and 15 percent of the purchasing power of a salary in Zurich.

"An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy an iPod nano from an Apple store after nine hours of work. At the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai need to work 20 nine-hour days, roughly the equivalent of one month's salary," the study said.

Working hours also varied in the cities surveyed, with the study finding that on average, people in Asian and Middle Eastern cities work much more than the global average of 1,902 hours per year. Overall, the most hours are worked in Cairo, followed by Seoul, while the least hours worked were in Lyon and Paris.