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And here's how every metropolitan area with a population of at least 1,000,000 (in 2010) ranks:
$28.80 - Austin
$27.66 - Houston
$27.37 - Indianapolis
$27.34 - St. Louis
$26.92 - Detroit
$26.56 - Dallas/Fort Worth
$26.04 - Denver
$26.04 - Salt Lake City
$25.94 - Charlotte
$25.85 - Raleigh
$25.60 - Atlanta
$25.30 - Birmingham
$25.11 - Chicago
$25.09 - Minneapolis/St. Paul
$25.08 - Nashville
$24.98 - Tampa
$24.92 - Seattle
$24.84 - Kansas City
$24.74 - Phoenix
$24.73 - New Orleans
New York is rated very low because of its cost of living. However I wonder if this study takes into account that a car is in no way needed in the city. The vast majority of NYC households live without a car. A car is one of the biggest expenses we make besides housing, in NYC it would be dumb for a family to own two cars. You can walk and take transit everywhere faster than traveling in a car takes.
Also I would love to see if they adjusted for different professions. Certain cities might have larger amounts of professionals while some of the lower ranked cities have a higher percentage of blue collar or service workers. For example Las Vegas has a large portion of the population working in the service industry. I would find it more interesting if they took the average salary for someone with a four year bachelor degree in computer science and how that differs across different metro areas.
I don't know about these rankings. A lot of areas that do well in wage to COL rankings have sections that drive down the area average and are rundown, crime ridden and very cheap. But if you're moving to the area from a nice section of another metro , chances are you're not going to move to the cheapest and most run down sections.
Also, these rankings never seem to realize that the money spent for online purchasing is pretty much the same everywhere.
Also, these rankings never seem to realize that the money spent for online purchasing is pretty much the same everywhere.
There are a lot of factors that don't get taken into account in these studies, but the amount of money that one can save online on necessities shouldn't be one of them. Most people still need to go to their local grocery store for food and the majority of their "essentials". Outside of NYC and maybe a few other places, the cost of groceries/toiletries doesn't vary THAT much from place to place (i.e. in NYC groceries can be 30-50% higher than elsewhere, but the variance in most other cities is pretty small at 5-10% from my experience).
The main COL factors in any place are income, housing, taxes and transportation. Income and housing can be highly variable from city to city. Taxes can be as well. Transportation costs CAN be variable if you can/will use public transportation in one city vs. another where it isn't an option and you must have a car payment/insurance, etc., otherwise transportation costs are often somewhat static from city to city if you still need a car.
These studies can't accurately take all that into account however, as the ability to forego a car is highly individual to one's situation. For example, if you can afford to live and work in Manhattan, you most certainly don't need a car and that can be a substantial savings if you have a car payment. That's a lot tougher to do in MOST other cities unless you are comfortable staying within a very small radius of where you live & work. Public transportation just isn't where it needs to be for most people to ditch their cars altogether in most cities (although services like Uber/Lyft are making this more and more possible everyday vs. just a few years ago, but these services can really add up as well if you don't live in a pretty densely populated city and need to travel long distances).
Last edited by jkozlow3; 06-06-2016 at 09:26 PM..
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