Is there a site that helps you calculate the "cost of living" in a particular area?
Asked by
kelly (
1918
)
May 16th, 2010
I live in Illinois, I have heard it is “cheaper” to live in Wisconsin or Florida, or Missouri; but show me! Assuming the same life style; what are the confirmable items you can calculate to determine more or less expensive to live. For example the following can be confirmed for any local area: real estate taxes, sales tax (and on what items, i.e. some areas don’t have sales tax on food), auto registration fee, state income taxes, local income taxes, special area taxes (like for historic areas, mass transit districts etc), utility rates, electric, gas, water, sewer, trash, state gasoline taxes, insurance rates on cars and homes, rent rates, etc. Flutherites what else can we think of to calculate from third party confirmable sources. Realistically, food, clothes, appliances, autos, furnishings will all be pretty equal no matter where one lives.
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5 Answers
That helps a little bit if you are going from one major city to another. However, it isn’t entirely accurate in that is covers only metropolitan areas.
Also, I have found quite a bit of inaccurate information there. For instance, where can I get gas for $2.14/gallon in Seattle? It’s closer to $2.70–3.00 now. As for rents, I live a bit north of Seattle proper, so my rent is just over half of the average they show there.
I would’ve thought that the 9.5% sales tax we have here in King County WA would make things more expensive than Cheshire County NH which is not on the list there and about ½–⅔ the cost of the only NH metro area that site has but while certain things cost twice as much, other things are cheaper, so overall it costs us about the same here as it did back East.
My point is that you really can’t get accurate information from a website.
well, I think it depends on your lifestyle, your job, what you do for recreation, I am a 23 year old living in Milwaukee, WI, with my fiance rent 575 in an acceptable area, making payments in a new car, never cook, we can always afford take outs, etc, etc, BUT, we don’t have kids, and we don’t drink or smoke so that makes us save a lot, thank god we live very comfortable and we are very happy, besides where we live is so close to everything that eventough our car spends a lot of gas, we can almost walk for everything we need
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