CNNMoney.com has a tool on their site that allows you to see how far your salary would go in another city. Basically you type in your current salary and it tells you how much you would need to make in the other city to maintain the same standard of living.
I found it particularly interesting because while I knew that my hometown (St. Louis) had a low cost of living, I didn’t know that it was just about the bottom of the barrel. That is great for St. Louis lifers, but those looking to cross the state borders may be in for a shock.
Testing the cost of living tool
Just to give a reference point, I plugged in salary of $50,000 in St. Louis and compared other cities…
| If you moved from St. Louis to… | You would need a salary of… |
| Chicago | $63,000 |
| Denver | $57,000 |
| Los Angeles | $80,000 |
| Mobile | $51,000 |
| NYC – Manhattan | $122,000 |
| Salt Lake City | $55,000 |
| Seattle | $68,000 |
| Tampa | $51,000 |
| Tulsa | $48,000 |
I actually checked a few more cities than these and Tulsa was the only one that I found with a lower cost of living than St. Louis… How does your city stack up?
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My area wasn’t on the list, so I guess the next closest would be LA, which puts it pretty high on the list you provided. However, the area I live in actually has a higher cost of living than LA.
i live pretty close to NYC-Manhattan (20 mins away) and i would agree it has a high cost of living relative to the rest of the nation (have lived in Ohio and NC so i know first-hand). but one hard thing to quantify are intangible qualities that are “assets” for a particular area. for some, the convenience of having NYC amenities (shopping, entertainment, restaurants, Broadway shows, the NY Yankees, etc. etc.) is worth the extra cost. Or maybe it’s not particular to the city, but the fact that family lives close by (as it does for us) that is of non-quantifiable value. point being that dollar-valued “cost of living” is not the entire COST of living.
Pochax,
that is a good point – and how many people who live in manhattan have car payments to deal with?
Wow, that was super depressing. I mean, I knew what the results would be, but I didn’t think it’d be THAT bad. The only city I could find w/ a higher cost of living than my own was Manhattan, which had about a 30% higher cost of living. But considering my salary would be 3x higher in Manhattan for the same line of work, I could easily afford it. Even Orange County, CA had a significantly lower cost of living. Too bad we live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or moving would be a much more feasible option.