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SC more expensive than NC, VA, GA, TN? Seems unlikely.
I wonder if they considered prevailing wages in these states in addition to the COL? It would make sense that people in NC, VA, GA, and TN were paid more, thus lowering the percentage of their income allocated for "living". Poverty is a bigger issue in SC than any of those places.
To be fair though Virginia ranks pretty good even considering that...
Oregon makes zero sense to me here.
It goes to what I say that average income only means something after calculating cost of living. The large majority of high income states are blue states but 11 of the 12 lowest COL states are red.
So yeah, Virginia after factoring COL and income has got to be be really high. I lived in Oregon and I think it's probably the hardest state to live well in, except Hawaii, considering the COL and lower wages.
But the very purpose of this index is to provide an apples-to-apples comparison.
Yes, the majority of New Yorkers may not have cars and live in small apartments, but isn't that precisely because it's prohibitively expensive to live otherwise?
That's why adjusting for "normal" living practices in a city doesn't paint an accurate picture of just how expensive an area is. For precision, it's important to compare a lifestyle/item that is exactly the same across every single city in the US.
We all know there are millions of ways in which someone could deviate from that baseline lifestyle in every city, so that's a moot point, but for the purpose of a hypothetical, it's very informative.
That's the concept, yes. And it's a useful data point.
But it's not quality of life. That's purely subjective. And having nearby businesses vs. a bigger house is considered an advantage by many. Local variables do matter.
To me, living in a 4,000 sf plywood palace with nothing nearby would be poor quality of life.
Charleston maybe? Even with that, Raleigh and Charlotte aren't much different, if at all in terms of COL.
We looked at a position for my husband in Charleston just a few years ago while we happened to be living in Denver, and eliminated it because the COL would actually be much higher for us, while the income offered was a lateral move. We said No Thanks. The price point of homes we were looking at was the same as what we owned in Denver, but the SC income tax rate was double that of CO. The whole of coastal SC is pretty pricey due to many very wealthy people who own second homes. That was the impression I got, anyway.
When I moved from Falls Church, VA to Kentucky some years back, I couldn’t believe how inexpensive it was to live in KY. The map shows KY at 90 and VA at 94.5 but I believe the difference is much greater depending on the locations you are comparing. So these state averages may not tell the whole story. There are some unbelievable bargains in KY if you shop around. Here is one - there is a nice paved lighted public parking lot on the perimeter of downtown Louisville where you can park all day for a dollar. We call it the dollar lot!
In downtown Louisville? It can be 20 bucks or more per day especially on Yum center even events. The cheapest lots I have seen are 5 dollar daily earliy bird specials.
What is the address of this dollar lot???? No way that is there today in 2016
State income taxes.
Property taxes
Cost of housing, especially Portland.
But are housing costs high outside of Portland?
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