Top 10: Best or Brokest, Part One

I wrote recently about an annual survey by A.G. Edwards, the money management firm, which ranks the best and worst cities in the country for building a nest egg. A.G. & crew looked at 12 factors, from the rate of homeownership, to income levels, debt levels, home values, the percentage of a city's population that are investors and the percentage that at least owned savings accounts. Looking at the criteria itself, it was tough to tell whether they wanted to show the best areas to start building a nest egg, or where people already had a good head start at doing so.

Of course, this also got me thinking about whether A.G. Edwards' data could tell us anything else, namely, where black folks stand a better chance of gaining some financial ground, or at least the cities where we're already doing OK.

No, said Sophie Beckmann, financial planning specialist for the firm. A.G. Edwards didn't collect demographic data at all. Fair enough. Still, in her own words, the city-by-city rankings are important because they show where in the country people are getting ahead and where it might be tougher to do so -- important factors in an era when employers and the government are doing less and less to ensure smooth sailing into retirement.

So with that in mind, I'm planning a little experiment. In the next day or so, I'm going to compare A.G. Edwards' list to Black Enterprise's most recent list of the Top 10 cities for African-Americans to see whether the best cities for black folks to live are among the best -- or worst -- places in the country for building a nest egg. I hope to have this wrapped up soon so you can see the results.