It’s not as if we didn’t know that New Jersey is an extremely expensive state to live in. In fact, it is one of the most expensive in the country.

After all, you’ve got to be making plenty of money to survive here. With property taxes being what they are, home prices skyrocketing and just the overall high cost of living, it’s no doubt that New Jersey has to be home to some of the wealthier cities in the country.

Dorison Dr, Short Hills via Google Maps
Dorison Dr, Short Hills via Google Maps
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And for some reason, the ones that come to mind are Mendham, Upper Saddle River, Colts Neck, or Deal.

But according to worldpopulationreview.com, Bloomberg did a study that ranked the richest towns in the U.S. And the study says it’s none of the aforementioned. It’s actually Essex County’s Short Hills.

White Oak Ridge Rd, Short Hills via Google Maps
White Oak Ridge Rd, Short Hills via Google Maps
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This Bloomberg study took household data from 6,250 cities that were ranked based on their inflation-adjusted average household income. New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and California dominated the wealthiest cities list. And on the top 100 wealthiest towns list, the bottom the lowest yearly average salary was $200,000.

For comparison's sake, the median household income in the United States during the last census was $61,937. In Short Hills, the average yearly household income is $367,491

Beechcroft Rd in Short Hills via Google Maps
Beechcroft Rd in Short Hills via Google Maps
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America’s richest community, according to the study, has remained number one on the list for three years in a row. That is the Silicon Valley city of Atherton California, home of Eric Schmidt of Google and Cheryl Sandberg of Facebook. In 2017, the median annual income there was listed as $450,696.

Other New Jersey towns that made the top 50 list in this report are Upper Saddle River, Upper Montclair, North Caldwell and Glen Ridge, but those towns seem poor in comparison to Short Hills, having annual median salaries in the paltry mid to upper $200,000’s.

Check out the top 10 richest cities in the United States:

1️⃣ Atherton, CA ($450,696)

2️⃣ Scarsdale, NY ($417,335)

3️⃣ Cherry Hills Village, CO ($394,259)

4️⃣ Los Altos Hills, CA ($386,174) 

5️⃣ Hillsborough, CA ($373,128)

6️⃣ Short Hills, NJ ($367,491)

7️⃣ Highland Park, TX ($358,994) 

8️⃣ Darien, CT ($341,090)  

9️⃣ Bronxville, NY ($340,448)

🔟 Glencoe, IL ($339,883)

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco only.

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2021 NJ property taxes: See how your town compares

Find your municipality in this alphabetical list to see how its average property tax bill for 2021 compares to others. You can also see how much the average bill changed from 2020. For an interactive map version, click here. And for the full analysis by New Jersey 101.5, read this story.