According to the richest.org website, Tokyo, Yokohama, and Nagoya in Japan; Oslo and Stavanger, Norway; Luanda in Angola have historically been the most expensive cities to live in the world.

Technically speaking, you'll always have a list like that to look at. Yet, any place can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be. You go to a country known to be cheap like India or Vietnam and spend in a day what an average Norwegian or a Japanese would spend in an entire month. You could live in Tokyo or Oslo for just the same amount of money it would take you to live in a small town in India.

Costs of living, expenses, etc., are relative terms. They differ from one person to the other. Yet, some places are generally expensive than others. The above mentioned cities including others such as Zurich, Paris, Moscow, Copenhagen, etc. , are all expensive cites in the world and have obstinately remained so for a long time.