Positioned to Succeed

Keeping your New Year's resolution is so much easier in this North Texas city

Austin Photo Set: layne_new years resolutions not to make_dec 2012

Your self-control isn't the only thing influencing your resolutions, apparently.

Photo courtesy of intuitiononline.com

No matter if you vowed to eat less, exercise more, or grow your savings in 2017, your location has a say in how successful you might end up being. One reason why most of us break our New Year's resolutions by mid-February is that we're simply not positioned to succeed. Unless you live in Plano, that is.

WalletHub took five common resolution categories — weight loss and fitness, financial, education and employment, relationships and family, and bad habits — and determined their rankings for the 150 largest U.S. cities. Combining those five areas resulted in the personal finance website's list of the best and worst cities for keeping your New Year's resolutions.

Not only is Plano ranked fifth overall, it's No. 1 for people looking to improve their bank accounts through financial and employment goals. WalletHub looked at stats like income growth and homeownership rates, along with debt ratios and the poverty level, when scoring the financial category. Education and employment took into account public school system ratings, high school dropout rates, median annual income, job opportunities and security, and the quality of local universities.

Obviously Plano did well, but it racked up extra credit for having the second-highest annual income (adjusted for cost of living) and one of the five best public school system scores.

The Dallas suburb also made the top 10 for bad habit resolutions, with low scores in binge drinking, drug use, and smoking. Dallas itself doesn't show up on the overall list until No. 40, with Arlington at No. 56, Irving at No. 62, Grand Prairie at No. 64, and Fort Worth at No. 67.

Your chances of actually becoming "the new you" this year are also good if you live in Austin, which came in at No. 9 overall. That's much better than Houston's No. 34, but ultimately not as good as Salt Lake City, Utah, which took top honors and was followed by San Francisco and Scottsdale, Arizona.

But let's all be encouraging to those living in Detroit, which hit nearly rock-bottom in every category to end up in last place. There's always 2018 to work toward.

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Dallas climbs back up in ranking of 'World's Best Cities' for 2025

Photo by Bryan Dickerson on Unsplash

Dallas had made a major leap back into the top 50.

Dallas has made a big rebound in its status among the top 100 best cities in the world, according to a prestigious new report by Resonance Consultancy.

The Canada-based real estate and tourism marketing advisors ranked Dallas the 55th best city worldwide for 2025 in its annual "World's Best Cities" list.

A ranking of 55 might not seem all that, but it represents a major rebound after Dallas plummeted to No. 73 in last year's report. (Let's ignore the fact that, in 2022, Dallas ranked No. 47.)

London held onto its crown as the No. 1 best city in the world for 2025, followed by New York (No. 2), Paris (No. 3), Tokyo (No. 4), and Singapore (No. 5).

The report quantifies the relative qualities of livability, "lovability," and prosperity for the world's top 100 cities with metropolitan populations of 1 million or more. New to the 10th anniversary edition, Resonance partnered with global market researchers Ipsos to include perception-based data into the rankings, surveying over 22,000 people in 30 countries worldwide to determine "the most desirable places to visit, live or work."

Resonance refers to its previous "World's Best Cities" reports and its 2024 "America's Best Cities" list – which ranked Dallas in the top 20 – when explaining the city's successes. The report praised Dallas' booming population, a thriving corporate economy, and its diverse culture.

"From 2021 to 2022, Dallas experienced the largest population increase of any U.S. metro area, with a net increase of more than 170,000 people, according to the Census Bureau," the report's author wrote. "Home to more than 10,000 corporate headquarters — the largest concentration in the U.S. — the city ranks No. 33 globally for Fortune 500 companies."

Elsewhere in Texas, Austin and Houston also earned spots on the World's Best Cities list for 2025, but only one made a similar rebound from the previous year's rankings. Houston moved up from No. 66 in last year's report to its current rank as No. 40. Meanwhile, Austin took its first tumble out of the 43rd spot (which it had occupied for two years straight) and now ranks No. 53.

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