Good old affordable Pittsburgh (McKees Rocks, Millvale: insurance, student loan, how much)

[subdivisions]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

I have always wanted to go to Colorado Springs. Seems like the lifestyle out that way would be great considering they are into outdoor sports and health. Is it a nice place?

I hated it with a fiery passion, and the day I left that pit for Pittsburgh was one of the best days of my life.

I'm pretty sure the OP would love it, because it's all "good school district" suburban sprawl as far as the eye can see. Dunno whether you can get a 4-bedroom house there for what the OP wants to pay (probably not), but you definitely couldn't get my house there unless you wanted to pay half a million dollars and live on the one "historic" block left in the city that hadn't been razed to put in more beige McMansions.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

[Aqua Teen Carl]

Originally Posted by safak

And alot of those places pay higher wages. Although alot seem to pay lower 'low end' wages, the middle class on up jobs , like engineers or pt/pharmacy type fo stuff certianly aren't on the higher end.

I think this is part of Pittsburgh's "dirty little secret". I've posted about this before, wages in this area are very poor in comparison to similar sized metros across the country. This is part of the reason why so many employers have positions open in the area, they can pay very low which dramatically improves their bottom line. Why outsource to India when you can outsource to Pittsburgh?

You will save on real estate here, no doubt about it. However just keep in mind that your wages are going to be pretty piss poor so you might not actually get a bargain by moving here.

[jay5835]

Originally Posted by subdivisions

I hated it with a fiery passion, and the day I left that pit for Pittsburgh was one of the best days of my life.

I'm pretty sure the OP would love it, because it's all "good school district" suburban sprawl as far as the eye can see. Dunno whether you can get a 4-bedroom house there for what the OP wants to pay (probably not), but you definitely couldn't get my house there unless you wanted to pay half a million dollars and live on the one "historic" block left in the city that hadn't been razed to put in more beige McMansions.

Yet your ID is "subdivisions." Interesting.

[gg]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

You will save on real estate here, no doubt about it. However just keep in mind that your wages are going to be pretty piss poor so you might not actually get a bargain by moving here.

It is shocking how many companies pay $10 an hour for hard labor around here. I made that as a kid 30 years ago!!! Have a look at jobs being posted. Seems $10 an hour is market rate for even people like plumbers/electricians/mechanics and so-on. How can people survive on that?

Of course that is quite a contrast to teacher's salaries around here.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

It is shocking how many companies pay $10 an hour for hard labor around here. I made that as a kid 30 years ago!!! Have a look at jobs being posted. Seems $10 an hour is market rate for even people like plumbers/electricians/mechanics and so-on. How can people survive on that?

Of course that is quite a contrast to teacher's salaries around here.

$10/hour isn't all that difficult to survive on, especially if you don't have any kids or student loan debt (which hopefully someone working in "hard labor" doesn't also have a college degree). That wage is about 1,200 a month after taxes give or take. I know people renting for under 400/month in this area, and certainly finding something in the 400s or 500s is not difficult.

In fact, this is probably a large factor in why Pittsburgh is considered affordable. A person making $10/hour can not only afford their own apartment without roommmates, but can actually hope to buy a house in a decent neighborhood here; that is absolutely impossible in a lot of metros.

[BrianTH]

So a couple useful resources. First, the BLS compiles pretty sophisticated wage data and publishes comparisons for larger metros using that data. Here is the latest version:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ncspay.pdf

You can dig into their data further if you have a specific job or industry in mind:

http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbl1558.pdf

I think it is a fair to say that salaries are a bit lower in Pittsburgh than most larger metros, but I don't think it is true that tends to cancel out the cost of living advantage.

A second resource worth keeping in mind is this analysis of local property taxes in comparison to other larger metros:

Pittsburgh's Future: Are Property Taxes High in the Pittsburgh Region?

In a nutshell, it shows that although Pittsburgh property taxes are on the higher side as a percentage of home value (although not the highest), they are more middling in terms of a percentage of income. In other words, the fact that homes are relatively cheap here is mostly cancelling out the relatively high tax rates, which leaves all the other economic benefits of lower-cost homes.

[Aqua Teen Carl]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

It is shocking how many companies pay $10 an hour for hard labor around here. I made that as a kid 30 years ago!!! Have a look at jobs being posted. Seems $10 an hour is market rate for even people like plumbers/electricians/mechanics and so-on. How can people survive on that?

Of course that is quite a contrast to teacher's salaries around here.

I graduated college and got a job with FedEx Ground doing IT work. I was paid a whopping $11 bucks an hour with no PTO or benefits and student loans were just about to kick in. It was impossible to build up any savings and I would actually go backwards financially once the loans kicked. Thank God I didn't get sick.

In order to get a respectable wage I had to jump from job to job to get a little bump in pay. This gets your the dreaded "job hopper" label on your resume, but Hell if you actually want to have a real career there is no other choice. Then of course there's my girlfriend who gets $20k less than the lowest national average for her job (30k for a job who's average is from 50-70k).

How about my best friend who has a Masters Degree but makes 35k with no benefits or his girlfriend who also has a Masters but makes 32k? If you can swing 40k here you are doing pretty damn good.

[BrianTH]

Here is a quick example of how you could use that BLS wage comparison to draw some conclusions about combined wage and COL comparisons.

I am going to use Portland, OR because I sorta know it (my brother lives there), and it is very close in size to Pittsburgh. According to the BLS data, Portland salary is at an index of 105, whereas Pittsburgh is at 95.

Next I will use this calculator, which is based on a fairly comprehensive COL database:

Cost of Living comparison calculator

Putting in $105,000 for a hypothetical salary in Portland, I get an equivalent salary of $86,375.15 in Pittsburgh. That's lower than the $95,000 that the BLS data would imply, so on average the lower cost of living in Pittsburgh more than makes up for the lower average salary as compared to Portland. You could also do this the other way around: $95,000 in Pittsburgh is equivalent to $115,484.60 according to the COL calculator, so the implied $105,000 from the BLS comparison suggests Portland, on average, doesn't pay enough extra salary to make up the COL difference.

I might note the COL calculator breaks down the comparison by all sorts of categories. Not surprisingly, by far the biggest difference is housing, and other stuff is more of a mixed bag (food tends to be a little more expensive in Pittsburgh, medical services and clothing a little more expensive in Portland, energy costs are higher in Pittsburgh (no surprise there either), and so forth).

[hnsq]

Pittsburgh is unbelievably affordable. Wait until you try to buy a 2br/2ba 800 sqft townhouse that is a 30 minute commute outside of Washington DC for $350,000 then come back and be grateful for Pittsburgh!

[gg]

Originally Posted by hnsq

Pittsburgh is unbelievably affordable. Wait until you try to buy a 2br/2ba 800 sqft townhouse that is a 30 minute commute outside of Washington DC for $350,000 then come back and be grateful for Pittsburgh!

They make more in DC and when you buy a home, you don't have that whopping tax that eats away at any profit you make on your home. Buy a $200K home in Pittsburgh and pay $7K or more a year in taxes. You make no return on your investment here.

People need to consider the whole picture. It is very hard to have a nest egg in our region because taxes eat you alive and the only people making great wages for working 180 days are teachers.

It isn't all that great. As property values increase in our region taxes will rise even more because the millage rates are so high. Governments won't lower taxes, so we are stuck with what we are stuck with.

10 bucks an hour and you can live here. Sure, but don't think about living in an okay home without gunfire on the streets.