So, we're planning a cross country move in the next year or so. Looking on the web at cost of living calculators seems like a pointless endeavor. I'm seeing a 30%+ swing from one site to the next. Is there a way to get a realistic COL comparison? would I have to get local supermarket sale papers to compare the cost of items we buy, find gas prices, energy rates, etc? There's got to be a better way. Is there?
Pretty much anything near the coast or in the NE will be more noticeably expensive than Flint. Real estate and property tax info for your target area can be found on Realtor, Zillow, Redfin. Fuel prices on Gasbuddy. Energy providers often advertise their rates online. Local sales and income taxes can be googled. Supermarket chains often have their weekly circular posted online. It takes a little work; how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?
MIT's Living Wage Calculator is probably what I'd recommend and just compare two different locations in two different tabs.
I don't think there's a single best tool for this as different situations play havoc with this sort of thing.
https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator
There seem to be a number of online calculators for such comparisons.
I just did a similar exercise here.
#1 Rent/mortgage, utilities, and taxes. Of the 3 here, Utilities are the toughest. You can get a good idea of cost per KWH, water/sewer, etc. What is a little harder is the actual consumption. you can get a little bit of idea from the number of heating days/cooling days but you can't know how efficient the home is. Sometimes if it's a city utility, you can get some historical information. I always budget high here.
#2 Insurance: this is a quick one. Just call your insurance broker and they can give you an estimate.
#3 Groceries: The packaged goods are really pretty much the same where ever you are at (Except HI and AK). If it's too much at the local store, Buy it through one of the online places. It's the meats, produce, and dairy that get you. You can get an idea of that based on grocery ads.
#4 Gas: Easy...Gas Buddy
#5 Misc: Look at what you enjoy and see how much it is there.
What I've found is outside of 1 and 2, the rest is not too terribly different outside some of the major metro's where there are additional real estate costs baked in. (IE the west coast)
I'd love to find one that actually works worth a damn.
Everyone I've tried either limits SE Michigan to Detroit only, or just one or two choices. The problem with that is within a 5 mile radius of Detroit you can find single family homes from $80K to well over $2m. Also insurance, both home and auto can double by a change of Zip code, again within just 5 miles of each other. Now, that's Detroit, maybe some other areas have less variability, but I would assume at least similar issues exist. That almost instantly makes any cost of living comparison I've seen basically useless unless you have intimate knowledge of not just where you are now, but where you are looking at going. And if you had that, you'd be creating the comparison tool, not using it.
I dearly want to be proven wrong and be able to change my view on this topic.
Housing seems like the biggest differentiator, so I'd focus most of the effort there. A gallon of milk costing $1 more doesn't really make much difference compared to a house that might be 6 or 7 figures different (and is financed at 4% or more).
Look at median income and median home price for your current location and the next one. If it's going to cost 50% more for an average home in the new location, but average income is only 10% higher, then your money obviously isn't going to go as far.
At this point, I don't think there is a good example of this other than doing all the legwork yourself. Basically figure out all your COL currently--record every dollar that you spend for 2 months (really 2 years), then start figuring out what it would cost at the new location. One thing that I didn't take into account, which I should have, was job perks that aren't available everywhere like a free/inexpensive gym, or a subsidized cafeteria--that has nothing to do with COL for an area, but it has everything to do with YOUR cost of living. Or, I figured that I'd just ride my bike to the train station so I wouldn't have to worry about parking. That doesn't work when it is raining, turns out that it rained a lot more than I anticipated. That was $2 a day. It worked out to about $20 a month that I needed to pay for parking--not much, but it does add up.
I'm also still waiting for the alleged 12% COL difference between northern NV and WV to materialise. Yes, property in WV is much cheaper (we went from 1ac to almost 4ac for 75% of what we sold our house in NV for) and gas is almost a buck a gallon cheaper. OTOH insurance has gone up across the board and the less I'm complaining about the heating cost the better.
BoxheadTim said:I'm also still waiting for the alleged 12% COL difference between northern NV and WV to materialise. Yes, property in WV is much cheaper (we went from 1ac to almost 4ac for 75% of what we sold our house in NV for) and gas is almost a buck a gallon cheaper. OTOH insurance has gone up across the board and the less I'm complaining about the heating cost the better.
I think the COL calculators tend to assume apples to apples for things like housing. So if you lived in a median house in NV, then a comparison would be a median house in WV. It sounds like you've got 400% more property for 25% less money, which should offset a whole lot of insurance and utility costs.
The biggest expenses for most families are housing, transportation and food (maybe child care if you've got kids). If those things are significantly different from place to place, then the total COL will likely reflect those differences.
Adrian_Thompson said:I'd love to find one that actually works worth a damn.
Everyone I've tried either limits SE Michigan to Detroit only, or just one or two choices. The problem with that is within a 5 mile radius of Detroit you can find single family homes from $80K to well over $2m. Also insurance, both home and auto can double by a change of Zip code, again within just 5 miles of each other. Now, that's Detroit, maybe some other areas have less variability, but I would assume at least similar issues exist. That almost instantly makes any cost of living comparison I've seen basically useless unless you have intimate knowledge of not just where you are now, but where you are looking at going. And if you had that, you'd be creating the comparison tool, not using it.
I dearly want to be proven wrong and be able to change my view on this topic.
This is what I've found. Even worse, some places when I type in Fenton won't even show Flint (20 minutes north), but will only show Detroit (an hour south). From growing up in Detroit and now living in Fenton, that's a silly situation to force me into.
I think the answer is to compare things like grocery store, fuel prices, taxes, etc. manually and compile my own COL. From what I've looked into thus far, I think the COL is about the same for everything, except housing. I think that's where the XX% difference is coming from.
pres589 (djronnebaum) said:MIT's Living Wage Calculator is probably what I'd recommend and just compare two different locations in two different tabs.
I don't think there's a single best tool for this as different situations play havoc with this sort of thing.
MIT as in Mass Institute of tech? If not, do you have a link?
DrBoost said:pres589 (djronnebaum) said:MIT's Living Wage Calculator is probably what I'd recommend and just compare two different locations in two different tabs.
I don't think there's a single best tool for this as different situations play havoc with this sort of thing.
MIT as in Mass Institute of tech? If not, do you have a link?
http://livingwage.mit.edu/
STM317 said:I think the COL calculators tend to assume apples to apples for things like housing. So if you lived in a median house in NV, then a comparison would be a median house in WV. It sounds like you've got 400% more property for 25% less money, which should offset a whole lot of insurance and utility costs.
The problem with COL calculation is that the variance in price is different for different type of stuff. Housing tends to vary the most, food & fuel next, but other stuff (cars, electronics, etc) hardly vary at all. This means that any COL comparison has to have a model for how much of a given type of stuff you are going to be buying, so it's only valid if that model matches you.
In reply to codrus :
Agreed. The number of different situations is nearly infinite. Any calculator is just going to be a guide at best.
But things like wages, taxes and housing prices are fairly easy to find data for compared to things like utility costs or insurance quotes for a specific zip code. That's convenient, because those probably have the largest impact on COL.
I would think heating and cooling costs would be hard to figure out unless you have past bills for years,
And it really matters the house you are moving into , as far as heating / cooling.
Then things like property taxes , school taxes , car registration ,
STM317 said:DrBoost said:pres589 (djronnebaum) said:MIT's Living Wage Calculator is probably what I'd recommend and just compare two different locations in two different tabs.
I don't think there's a single best tool for this as different situations play havoc with this sort of thing.
MIT as in Mass Institute of tech? If not, do you have a link?
http://livingwage.mit.edu/
Thank you
As someone who did this a few years ago I will say that while COL Calcs can help understand how much pain to expect, they don't tell the whole story.
Our cost of living went up 30% moving from Lancaster, PA to Flagstaff, AZ. Pretty much all of it was housing. (A quick check of a few COL Comparisons shows our housing went up between 30% and 65%)
What a lot of cost of living calculators don't capture is how limited housing supply and metropolitan area can impact COL.
In Flagstaff, you either live within city limits and are paying $250k+ for a housing with crappy neighbors, no garage, and dated interior. That's is if your lucky. Most people pay $325k+ to live within city limits. Or you live outside of town and pay $200k to live in a former vacation cabin. Drive 15 minutes down the road and youre hauling water, burning propane or pellets, and "off-grid."
In Lancaster, by comparison, there are tons of little towns, all with different housing markets, subdivisions galore, old homes, new homes, multiple school districts all within an hour's drive of your workplace. With more housing supply there is less demand, so none of this putting in an offer to get rejected because an investor is battling you for a house.
Higher populated areas of the west are better story, where at least you have a few more options, but isolated mountain town living can get pricey quick, especially when there is a college in town.
DrBoost, where is your destination?
Adrian_Thompson said:I'd love to find one that actually works worth a damn.
Everyone I've tried either limits SE Michigan to Detroit only, or just one or two choices.
Try this? http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/26/locations
I like the Budwieser scale. That is, ask locals what they pay for a Bud bottle beer in an average bar on an average day.
A living wage calculator is not a cost of living comparison.
It just tells you how easily you could live someplace if you were making the minimum necessary to meet the living wage. It tells you that places like Ohio or Tenessee are cheap places to live, and California is expensive. Not necessarily the increase in wages necessary to match your current salary. The MIT LWC in that regard takes a bit more work.
Something simple that you can do is look at your zillow estimate and stats of your house (Zestimates have a consistent algorithm) then go to the place you're looking compare your Zestimate and details against what you could potentially buy in that new market. If it takes twice as much to buy the same house (or pay all the bills), then you'd probably want to aim for 50% increase in salary (which if your partner was working would be double you annual salary). Obviously, that doesn't work in some markets, but it's a good start towards realizing what you're going to be sacrificing to live on the best coast.
pheller said:As someone who did this a few years ago I will say that while COL Calcs can help understand how much pain to expect, they don't tell the whole story.
Our cost of living went up 30% moving from Lancaster, PA to Flagstaff, AZ. Pretty much all of it was housing. (A quick check of a few COL Comparisons shows our housing went up between 30% and 65%)
What a lot of cost of living calculators don't capture is how limited housing supply and metropolitan area can impact COL.
In Flagstaff, you either live within city limits and are paying $250k+ for a housing with crappy neighbors, no garage, and dated interior. That's is if your lucky. Most people pay $325k+ to live within city limits. Or you live outside of town and pay $200k to live in a former vacation cabin. Drive 15 minutes down the road and youre hauling water, burning propane or pellets, and "off-grid."
In Lancaster, by comparison, there are tons of little towns, all with different housing markets, subdivisions galore, old homes, new homes, multiple school districts all within an hour's drive of your workplace. With more housing supply there is less demand, so none of this putting in an offer to get rejected because an investor is battling you for a house.
Higher populated areas of the west are better story, where at least you have a few more options, but isolated mountain town living can get pricey quick, especially when there is a college in town.
DrBoost, where is your destination?
Arizona, ironically enough. Not sure of where yet. Phoenix has TONS of jobs, but would not be my first pick. Northern AZ attracts me, but seems like jobs outside of Phoenix are much more scarce.
Prescott is cool. Has many more amenities that Flagstaff, arguably better weather, too. Job market is improving, but its bread and butter is old people and rehab (addiction). It's growing fast, so housing is really decently priced for brand new units. It's beginning to feel like small town Southern California, which isn't all bad.
Phoenix has some nice areas, Cave Creek in particular. Downside is that all the jobs are in Tempe or closer to downtown. Phoenix is the type of place where you get a job, rent until your settled, then buy as near to your employer as possible. Sitting in traffic for an hour while its 120º is akin to being in a submarine a mile down or in space station. Hope that nothing fails or else you boil. Winter in Phoenix is awesome though, nothing quite like shorts and t-shirt in January. Summertime is "Exodus Season" in Phoenix, with everyone scattering for higher elevations on the weekends. Job market is strong too, with lots of employers offering competitive wages - even by California standards.
If I had to choose between Tucson and Phoenix, I'm not sure which I'd choose. Tucson has more history, for sure. It's a big city with small city feel in a lot of ways. Highest rates of unemployment in the state, though.
If I was looking for jobs in the Southwest, but wanted to be relatively close to a wide variety of amenities, housing, other jobs, outdoor opportunities, etc - I'd probably look real hard at Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indio. It's far enough away from LA and San Diego that it's housing is still reasonable - also there aren't any colleges to make for a massive influx of seasonal renters. It's got similar weather to Phoenix, but is more compact and closer to the mountains. An hour's drive will have you in Riverside. 2hrs will have at you at the beach.
Reno is another one to look at. 2 hours to Sacremento. 3 hours to most of the Bay Area. Nevada taxes are low. Housing is well priced. Carson City, Tahoe, Truckee provide cool weekend destinations.
Albuquerque is a tough one. I really like Santa Fe, and would prefer it over Flagstaff for a few reasons, but it shares many of Flagstaff's isolation issues. Albuquerque is a seriously cool city, don't let Breaking Bad fool you, and the relationship (and proximity) between ABQ and Santa Fe is pretty close (only about 45 minutes) but New Mexico as a whole is isolated. It's a long drive to Phoenix. It's a long drive to Durango or Pueblo or Amarillo (if you ever wanted to go there) and even a long drive to El Paso or Las Cruces. Unless you've got family and a big group of friends nearby, that sense of "we're out here on our own" can get to you. You do everything there is to do in the city, then the nearest town, the nearest 5 towns, then most of the stuff in the state, and before long you realize "we're either going to have to fly or drive a really long way to explore new places." That being said, the beauty of the southwest lends itself to quite a few years of backroad and ghost town exploring before you'll get bored.
If you are moving to save money, you are doing it wrong.
Move somewhere that you love (or think you love) and give it a throw. Worst case - move.
pheller said:A living wage calculator is not a cost of living comparison.
You can pull up two locations in the MIT Living Wage tool separately and then look at things like the cost of housing one location vs. the other. That's the reason I like their tool as it's quite inclusive vs. some of the others out there which don't show as much information.
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