20 Best Cities for Singles in their 30s

Published on May 10, 2023 at 2:45 pm by Ramish Cheema in Lists, News

In this piece, we will take a look at the 20 best cities for singles in their 30s. For more cities, take a look at 5 Best Cities for Singles in their 30s.

Dating in today’s age is quite different from dating in the past. While people before the internet age actually had to go out and meet people, today we have the luxury of sifting through countless folks available through a variety of different applications. Data from the Census Bureau shows that there are 127 million single people in the U.S., so it’s safe to say that there really are plenty of fish out in the sea. Building on this, what do these people think of the current dating market? Well, a survey from the Thriving Center Of Psychology ran a survey of 1,000 people to reveal some interesting insights. Its results show that 56% of the respondents believe that dating today is harder than in previous years.

At the cusp of this, it appears that high inflation has made it harder for people to go on dates. 26% of the respondents offer to split the bill on their dates, with a higher percentage of women (34%) looking to help out the other partner on a date. At the same time, 35% of the respondents reported that they are going out on fewer dates due to inflation, and interestingly, the statistics on stalking people might also surprise you. According to the survey, 65% of the women polled believe that stalking someone online is okay before going out on a date, while 34% of the men held similar opinions. It also revealed that almost a third of the respondents spent more than twenty minutes researching someone online. However, in what might be counterintuitive to what you’ve heard, 69% of the respondents were also perfectly happy with being single, as 91% of the 69% enjoyed their independence and a prudent 58% saved more money.

At the same time, dating has never been easier courtesy of the countless applications available that allow people to find a partner online. These applications have led to the firms that own and operate them having market capitalization in billions of dollars. For instance, firms like Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH), Bumble Inc. (NASDAQ:BMBL), and Grindr Inc. (NYSE:GRND) have market capitalizations of $8.9 billion, $3.73 billion, and $1 billion, respectively. The market is quite lucrative as well, with a research report from Grand View Market Research showing that the global online dating market was worth $9.65 billion in 2022 and will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.4% between 2023 and 2030 to sit at an estimated $17.2 billion at the end of the forecast period. The research firm adds that users aged between 18 years and 25 years are the largest portion as they account for 36% of the total market. Additionally, users aged between 25 years and 34 years will be the fastest growing segment in the market.

Adding these factors together, inflation is making dating hard but at the same time, the online market is expected to grow. At this point, you might be wondering how much an average American spends on dating. Well, Singles in America has just the data for you on this front. It shows that singles spend a whopping $117 billion on dating per year, which translates into $130 per month and $1,560 in a year. In short, most people spend the equivalent of buying a MacBook Pro on dating each year. Within the $130 spending estimates, the spending was equally distributed between in person dating, grooming, and clothes while the least was spent on dating applications (a fact that you’ll learn is quite important below). These estimates are from a 5,000 people survey, so the full figure will be much larger.

So, people spend $130 per month on dates, but is this a universal figure? An analysis by LendingTree shows that while one third of people in 2019 declined a date because of a lack of money, the data from 2019 is important for the current context as it reflects just how much inflation has changed things. This is because research shows that back then people spent $700 annually on dates. However, spending across age groups was different as those aged between 24 and 39 spent $696, and older folks between 40 and 54 spent $903.

Moving back to the amounts people spend on online dating, these are actually quite important for the billion dollar firms we’ve mentioned above. For instance, executives of Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH) shared during its fourth quarter of 2022 earnings call:

So we moved quickly, and we made changes to the team. And we pushed really hard over the next six months thinking about our product roadmap and where we want to take the business. It was important to lock a roadmap that everyone was aligned on. We focused on two key areas: experience for our daters on our platform and future areas for monetization. As we are laying out the product roadmap, we actually found some problems in the foundation that we had to prioritize and fix. So the team rallied quickly on focusing on that. Our emphasis has always been on the health of our ecosystem, given that these foundational improvements will lead to better user experience, enable further monetization.

. . .Lastly, we plan on broadening monetization to meaningfully unlock power users at Tinder. This is an area that we see a lot of opportunity. Last year, we acquired The League, which has a $1,000 weekly subscription. And we think there could be a demand for a high-price tier at Tinder, which is the largest pool of daters on the planet. We’re in the very early stages of testing the appetite for an ultra-premium subscription tier at Tinder. It’s too early to say when and if we’re actually going to launch this, but the possibilities are super intriguing.

With these details in mind, let’s take a look at the best cities for dating in America for people over 30.