NJ versus KY living costs. Lets compare... (Lexington, Hartford: sale, rent)

[ladyalicia105]

I just want to comapre the living costs here compared to Lexington. Ill tell you what I pay or at least an estimate and you tell me what you pay...

Gas for heating my house and water heater and appliances on a 1600 square foot home 97 a month
Electric for central air and pool filter 200 a month
Sewage 25 a month
Water 65 a month
Home phone 65 a month
Internet 55 a month
Cheapest cable available 65 a month
4 cell phones, only one a smartphone is 200
Car insurance for 2 older vehicles 175
Housing, my house is 3 bedroom 1 and 1/2 bath 1600 sq foot 20 years old and can sell for probably 250, 000 in this crappy market. At one point it was worth 425,000
A 5 bedroom 3 bath house on 1/4 acre would be around 700,000

NON SALE prices on basic food:
Milk 4 a gallon
Bread 3 a loaf
Cereal 4 a box
Steak 5- 10 a pound
Box of butter 4 a box
Cigarettes 8-9 a pack!!!
Eggs 3 a dozen
Chicken 1.29 a pound
American cheese 3-4 a package
A 2 liter bottle of soda is 2.00!

Fresh veggies and fruits are so expensive , if you want to eat healthy, youll break the bank. And seafood is ridiculous. The cheapest is 6 dollars a pound.

[Crazee Cat Lady]

Originally Posted by ladyalicia105

I just want to comapre the living costs here compared to Lexington. Ill tell you what I pay or at least an estimate and you tell me what you pay...

Gas for heating my house and water heater and appliances on a 1600 square foot home 97 a month
Electric for central air and pool filter 200 a month
Sewage 25 a month
Water 65 a month
Home phone 65 a month
Internet 55 a month
Cheapest cable available 65 a month
4 cell phones, only one a smartphone is 200
Car insurance for 2 older vehicles 175
Housing, my house is 3 bedroom 1 and 1/2 bath 1600 sq foot 20 years old and can sell for probably 250, 000 in this crappy market. At one point it was worth 425,000
A 5 bedroom 3 bath house on 1/4 acre would be around 700,000

NON SALE prices on basic food:
Milk 4 a gallon
Bread 3 a loaf
Cereal 4 a box
Steak 5- 10 a pound
Box of butter 4 a box
Cigarettes 8-9 a pack!!!
Eggs 3 a dozen
Chicken 1.29 a pound
American cheese 3-4 a package
A 2 liter bottle of soda is 2.00!

Fresh veggies and fruits are so expensive , if you want to eat healthy, youll break the bank. And seafood is ridiculous. The cheapest is 6 dollars a pound.

I would think being right by the ocean, that seafood would be way inexpensive!
Let's see, there are only three in my family(that could influence power/water bills)
And instead of a 1600 square foot house, we live in a 1200 square foot townhome...
we don't have gas, we have electric central heat and air.
Gas - n/a
Electricity~average $140....can be as low as $80 or as high as $190
Sewage - $30 - 40 month
Water - $40-50 month
Home phone - $9.00 (We use Vonage)
Internet -$70.00 (but we use what I think is the most expensive in the city - or close to it, you can get much less expenisve plans and providers.)
Cheapest Cable available - (0 for cable - $7 a month for netflix)I quit using cable awhile back, just use the internet and Netflix (and regular broadcast tv) to watch television anymore.(Cable in Lexington usually runs in the $60 - $70 range I believe - you can get satellite for that a bit cheaper from what I have seen advertised.)
Cellphones - 2 smart phones, $75 a month
Car Insurance - $70 month for one older car (2006 Chrysler Seebring)I'm old though lol, so I have cheaper rates.
Housing - I rent a townhome, so I don't own the residence

Milk runs about 2.95 to three dollars a gallon
Bread runs anywhere from a dollar to three dollars a loaf from the Grocery depending on what bread you buy.
Probably most often I use Roman Meal which is around 2.75 to 3.00 a loaf.Sometimes, I splurge and
eat the really fantastic bread from Great Harvest Bakery which is pure heaven, but pure heaven comes at a price! $4 to 5 dollars a loaf)
Cereal is usually 2 to 3 dollars a box depending on what kind you buy
Steak - I am not sure of the regular price, I only buy it when it's on sale, lol! (every week somebody has it on sale though!)
Butter- three dollars a pound for real butter (Land of Lakes)
Cigarettes - I don't smoke, so I have no idea! The people I work with complain about the costs all the time, so I reckon it must be pretty expensive anymore.
Eggs - 1.50 to 2 dollars a dozen
Chicken - probably the same as in New Jersey, I am not sure, I only buy it when it's on sale, so it's always 99 cents a pound or less.(Once again it's always on sale at one of the local groceries.)
American Cheese - slightly under $3 if you buy the American cheese that kids like, it's $5.00 a pound though if you like the American Deluxe kind - which is the kind I really like a lot.
Soda -It's probably about the same, I don't buy a lot of soda and when I do buy it, I always buy from a sale, it is always on sale...so I usually can get it about 5 to 6 dollars per case. (Two liters go on sale all the time for 1.00 to 1.50 each.)

[ladyalicia105]

It seems the food values are pretty close. Its the housing/utilities that are awful here. I have an electric and gas budget. They break my bills up so I pay the same each month. I have to do it that way. My electric in the winter is super cheap. But in the summer I use more with my central air and pool filter and its around $500 bill a MONTH!! My gas bill heats my house so in the winter its about $300 a MONTH and very low in the summer. So a budget makes the bills more manageable and even all year.

Some cable packages in NJ are $200. Its so stupid. You get hundreds of channels. Im not a TV person. I like to read so I have the cheapest plan for my kids.

Home phone $9???? Holy mackerel! I have the cheapest phone plan and its in the 60s!

I misquoted my insurance. I only pay 9 months a year and then make one bulk payment. So the 170 is 9 months a year and then on top of that another 300 bulk payment

[Crazee Cat Lady]

Originally Posted by ladyalicia105

It seems the food values are pretty close. Its the housing/utilities that are awful here. I have an electric and gas budget. They break my bills up so I pay the same each month. I have to do it that way. My electric in the winter is super cheap. But in the summer I use more with my central air and pool filter and its around $500 bill a MONTH!! My gas bill heats my house so in the winter its about $300 a MONTH and very low in the summer. So a budget makes the bills more manageable and even all year.

Some cable packages in NJ are $200. Its so stupid. You get hundreds of channels. Im not a TV person. I like to read so I have the cheapest plan for my kids.

Home phone $9???? Holy mackerel! I have the cheapest phone plan and its in the 60s!

I misquoted my insurance. I only pay 9 months a year and then make one bulk payment. So the 170 is 9 months a year and then on top of that another 300 bulk payment

My Mother-in-law in Baltimore was telling me she would get gas bills for three and four hundred dollars.
She went on the budget plan also to lower the costs.
(Your Utilities might be a bigger because you have a larger family ~ there are just three of us, so that
is usually only one bath/shower a day for each person (sometimes two), I do laundry usually just once
a day (sometimes 2 loads, but usually just one), and I usually wait till the dishwasher is full before turning it on, so I usually only run it once or maybe twice a day.)

When we had cable, they had like hundreds and hundreds of channels, but most of them were just really dumb, and nothing we would really ever use or watch. We are all readers in my house, and we are all computer addicts I guess, lol... but nobody is a tv addict here. I watch more tv than anyone, but only follow a few shows...so the cable for us was a waste.

Yeah, I get the home phone so cheap because I have it though Vonage (their budget plan),
I have been a customer ever since they first came out. I am not sure what the local phone company charges. You should check out Vonage though, you never pay long distance and we have never had an issue with them.

Check rates online every once and awhile, sometimes you can find car insurance with a different
provider at significantly lower rates. I was paying like $110 a month to Hartford for Auto Insurance,
got the exact same deal at GEICO for $80 a month.(Sometimes its cheaper to buy online).

[Crazee Cat Lady]

Oh, you can get some great deals here on fresh fruits and veggies from the farmers at the Farmers
Market here in Lexington (there are actually several of them) when they are in season.

[ladyalicia105]

I saw a "cost of living" calculator online that has you put in the town where you live and where you want to move and your income. It will tell you if you will be better off, worse off or even, with the move. It says life is 30% cheaper in Lexington compared to how I live now.Thats great news!

[beilart]

Your utilities will be a bit higher than say mine since there are only 2 of us and you have kids. Also utilities are a bit higher in the bigger cities. My last water bill was 19.00 which is just city water since we have a septic. My sanitation bill is 45.00 every three months. My last electricity was was 180.00 but that is for 2 homes. One is 1600 sq feet total electric and the other is a 3 bedroom mobile home with the fridge running and the heat on. We also run 3 computers 2/7. Our grocery bill is about 100.00 a week for 2 but that is because we eat health foods most of the time. We buy bison at 8.00 a pound instead of ground beef so we don't have the fat content and that includes my herbal teas and gourmet coffees. Our property taxes are about 800.00 a year and will go down to about 500.00 next year when we turn 65. As it stands right now, if we really wanted to, we could live on 12K a year and that includes homeowners insurance, all utilities plus direc TV and internet service, all groceries, property taxes and gas and insurance for 2 vehicles. Plus I have a lake view on 3 sides of my home, no neighbors except for the summer people, birds, owls, tall trees, the forest, deer, and a whole host of other critters to call my own. What's not to love about Kentucky?

[ladyalicia105]

Sounds wonderful! And MUCH cheaper than Jersey.