What is the cost of basic items in Alaska? (Anchorage: house, rent)

[Kgalyen]

Yeah, Alaska's pretty big so it really depends on what location you're looking at.

[BarrowsBaby]

In Barrow cigarettes are $7 a pack, and gas is almost $5 a gallon

[Carhartts4me]

I've been in Alaska 20 years and was from Southern Cal. I routinely travel down to see relatives but live in Anchorage. All in all the cost of living in Anchorage is about even with Southern Cal except for gas, which is almost always cheaper than down there. Right now, 2.35 for unleaded. When Costco, WalMart and soon Target came to town, the prices dropped nearly the same as Calif. Houses are comparable to Calif too. But no sales tax and no income tax make it cheaper I think. Especially when buying a car! Plus at 130 bucks for two years registration for the car compared to a gazillion dollars in Calif.....well there you go. Plus where else do you have moose eating your trees and bears dumping your trash and Eagles in the hundreds just lurking about. I go to the dump every saturday and I kid you not, I counted 112 Bald Eagles in the trees just waiting for a snack. Does't sound all that good for America's bird, but my point is the wildlife is more than abundant. I have never seen any prejudice toward hiring lonly Alaskans, usually their is a shortage of skilled labor in most fields. Also, very little class distinction, a slope worker, Fed Ex pilot, Air Force Sergeant, steel worker, Walmart manager, a physician and 2 attorneys live on my street and they are white, black, samoan, chinese, and filipino.

[Carhartts4me]

One thing though, when ordering on the internet, they take you to the cleaners, unless you find someone who ships using the postal service. Priority mail is the way to ship EVERYTHING. UPS and Fed Ex.....whoa! Sky high.

[Angelrocks]

Whoa! And I used to complain about insurance & property taxes in S. Floirda!!! I never heard of anything like that before!!!


a gallon of milk is $8...a loaf of bread is $4


For that priice I may as well buy my own cow, and make my own bread! LOL j/k

[mal_flisk]

People do make their own bread, it's a little cheaper and definitely tastier.

[Rance]

And we drank fresh milk for years as a kid in Sterling. One of the old homesteaders always had dairy cows and sold farm fresh milk.

[rotorhead]

Theres an easy test for how much things are going to cost you in AK, it goes like this....

Ask one question...can I get there by road?

For most of the states population the answer is yes, and prices are not that much higher than in the lower 48 for non-perishables. When it comes to fresh produce, summertime presents a bounty in the form of the local farmers markets. In winter the vegetables even in the Anchorage area are almost past their prime when they get there, and go downhill in quality much faster than you would expect elsewhere. You are going to pay a lot more to ship stuff that you buy on the internet, and some things they basically won't ship at all (hazmat stuff like CO2 cannisters, flammables, etc.)

For most of the states area the answer is no, and you are going to pay through the nose to get anything at all shipped there, including yourself. When you live off the road system, everything MUST come in by barge, by snowmachine, or by air and that adds a lot to the cost of everthing you buy. If you are talking about perishables, you rule out barge and land transport so the price is as high as it gets and fresh produce and such go from being staples to expensive luxury items.

Keep in mind that when you pull that loaf of bread or head of lettuce out of the plane in a remote villiage, it's just the last step of the journey. Most items that end up in the bush are shipped first in bulk by sea from the lower 48 to ANC, then shipped to a regional hub like Nome or Bethel by jet airplane, then out to the villiages by Cessna or snowmachine (or by river on barges for bulk items like fuel, construction supplies, and some staples). For the rural villiages in the Fairbanks area the second leg can be by truck from ANC, but its the exception to the rule. I

It's no accident that the vast majority of the rural villiages are located on rivers or coastal waterways of some sort. Not only was boat travel a ubiquitous mode of transportation back in the pioneer days, but fishing and hunting on the water were often the primary means of support and substinence prior to the industrial age. Alaska's history and prehistory have always been inextricably linked to the bounty of the sea, either in the form of the salmon harvest or as the sole means of long distance travel prior to the air age.

[Kgalyen]

Well put, rotorhead!

[Western Man]

What about the cost of utilities? Electricity? Heating (is it electric? gas? propane?)? and so forth?