REVIEW: Websites that help you decide where to live
Much research has gone into various factors that help you decide where to live. Our article '14 Things to Consider' points out key issues while our 'Best of the Best' article gives you access to some existing data but wouldn't it be easier if someone could figure everything out for you. Well there are two websites that pro port to do just that: Sperling's Find Your Best Place and Find Your Spot. Both these sites are free so they are worth taking a look at. They both use a similar process of gathering your likes and dislikes and then directing you to places that best meet your needs. While the overall approach is the same the actual process is different.
Sperling's Find Your Best Place
Sperling's presents about 50 factors such as Low Sales Tax, Climate, Low Health Costs , Low Violent Crime Rate, etc. and asks you to rate 
each on a 10 point scale or to just ignore the factor altogether. At any point you can have the results calculated. You are then presented with a list of the top 30 matches. Your are also shown how each city scored in each category. This is very helpful in seeing where the weighting occurred in order to come up with the placement results. It also lets you easily compare 30 different cities on a number of different factors. When you click on the city name you are presented with a detailed statistical analysis of the city in such areas as Crime, Demographics, Housing, Health, Economy, etc. Each of these categories has multiple subcategories and shows you how the town compares to the national average. If you like getting hard information about a town you cannot beat the information that is provided. Find Your Spot on the other hand never shows you any statistical information. Sperling's gives you the statistics but does not give you the editorial descriptive narrative that Find Your Spot does. It also does not give you a direct link to access any of that information. The Sperling's database is used by a large variety of sites especially those associated with financial institutions and magazines including CNN, Money Magazine and MSN. The Sperling website also contains a number of lists for such things as Most Expensive Places to Live, Hurricane Hotspots, Best and Worst Cities for Sleep, etc.
Find Your Spot
Find Your Spot presents you with a series of statements like 'I don't mind a long cold spell - it can be brisk and bracing' or 'I enjoy fine opera or ballet performances' and you are asked to respond to the 
statement with one of five choices from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree'. You are required to register in order to take the quiz but there is no obligation to buy anything and no credit card information is collected. At the end of the quiz you are presented with a list of places that best meet your responses. Each town or city has lost links to access a variety of information including viewing jobs, finding a new home, realtors, houses for sale and a multi page report on the city or town. Since the site requires you to register, when you return to the site it remembers you and you can either re review your results, go back and modify some of your answers or take a whole new quiz.
Summary
We found both of these sites to be very enlightening. The need to make choices and rank you consideration of a variety of different factors is very helpful in trying to clarify what is really important to you. We also found that both these sites presented places that we probably would not have though of on our own. While we would not necessarily recommend that you take one of these quizzes and then automatically move to their top suggestion, the experience and results are very helpful in making this important decision.
