Sex and the City: Manhattan -v- Manchester

To celebrate the opening of Sex and the City: the Movie, Confused.com thought it would be fun to compare home and car insurance for two Carrie Bradshaws – US Carrie and UK Carrie. The idea was to answer the question that’s on everyone’s lips: when it comes to insurance for a cosmopolitan-loving female journo, where’s the cheapest place to live – Manhattan or Manchester?

Disclaimer

OK, before going any further we’ll come clean: to get the best US insurance quotes, you need to supply a social security number, which is linked to your credit rating – and the better the credit score the better the quotes. Since Carrie Bradshaw is fictional and therefore has no social security number, the displayed US quotes are higher than need be. Therefore, please take the US findings with a heavy pinch of salt and bear in mind that this is all in the spirit of fun.

The Insurers

To search for home and car insurance, New York Carrie uses US online insurance comparison site, Insurance.com, whereas UK Carrie points her Apple laptop’s cursor at Confused.com. Details input into each search engine included:

	Manhattan Carrie’s details	Manchester Carrie’s details
Born:	31/01/66	31/01/66
Occupation:	Journalist (contributes to the New York Star and Vogue)	Journalist (contributes to the Manchester Evening News and Nuts)
Marital Status:	Single (seeing Big on the side)	Single (seeing Bez on the side)
Address:	One-bedroom apartment on New York’s Upper East Side	One-bedroom apartment in Manchester’s Canal Street area

As every Sex and the City fan knows, Carrie’s most prized possession is her shoe collection. In fact, it was revealed in one show she’s blown over $40,000 of her journalist wages on designer footwear. Add clothes and other belongings and we’ve set contents cover for her one bed New York apartment at $100,000 (or £50,000 for UK Carrie).

Manhattan Carrie’s address is 245, East 73rd Street – which doesn’t exist, so to get quotes we moved her to 250, a real address. Manchester Carrie stores her shoes in a single bedroom flat in Sackville Street, near the bars and nightlife of Canal Street, and ideal for her hook ups with other best pal, Manchester Stanford Blatch.

• Manhattan Carrie’s Lowest Quote using Insurance.com: $1548 p/a (£783 on 30/05/08)
• Manchester Carrie’s Lowest Quote using Confused.com: £239.69 (Homeinsurer.co.uk)*

Sex and the City nerds will know that Sarah Jessica Parker’s alter ego doesn’t have a car so we’ve given her a Mini. This was picked because: they’re just big enough to hold Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha (though Fendi bags would need to go in the boot… or should that be trunk?); any image-conscious girl would be happy to be spotted in one; and they can be bought on both sides of the pond making it easier to obtain comparable quotes.

Also, despite Carrie’s cosmopolitan-guzzling social calendar, to keep quotes down we’ve given her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she’s not had any driving mishaps in the last five years.

• Manhattan Carrie’s Lowest Quote using Insurance.com: $2784 p/a (£1409 on 30/05/08)
• Manchester Carrie’s Lowest Quote using Confused.com: £290.65 (Sheila’s Wheels)**

So come on Carrie, swap Manhattan for Manchester and put the cash you’d save on insurance towards your next Prada outfit or pair of Jimmy Choos – what are you waiting for? And if there’s any worry about getting homesick, just consider the following uncanny similarities between Manhattan and Manchester…

Manhattan	Manchester
Yankee Stadium	Old Trafford Stadium
Wall Street	Coronation Street
P Diddy	Morrisey
Statue of Liberty	Statue of Matt Busby
Mike Tyson	Ricky Hatton
J D Salinger	J K Rowling
Central park	Heaton Park
Friends	Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
Cosmopolitans	Boddingtons
Upper East Side	Moss Side

Note: Please remember that this is all in the spirit of fun, so if any real life Carrie Bradshaws happen to be reading this in Manhattan, please don’t emigrate to this side of the pond on the basis of the above calculations.

Find great car and home insurance quotes with Confused.com

*Data correct May 2008. Quoted for: no claims or losses in last 5 years; excess £200. Data provided by Confused.com.
**Data correct May 2008. Quoted for: excess £500; no offences or accidents in last 5 years; 5 years NCB. Data provided by Confused.com.