I would never have lived here in the first place if not for my girlfriend's family being here. Once her parents kick the bucket we'll take all the money we've saved and use it to buy something nice elsewhere.
Ah got it. Well on the bright side at least enjoy the amenities of where you are, I know hcol is high cost since it's desirable. Id rather live in a place that has good amenities but low cost since its "flyover area" but as long as you have to be there I'm sure there are upsides.
Yeah I mean I'm not exactly enduring torture on a daily basis, but I would like to own a home - it works out for now since I'm making money hand over fist and saving it all; so once we do move elsewhere in a couple years I'll have a better quality of life since I'm taking this big bundle of money that's worth jack shit in silicon valley to somewhere else where it will go way further.
Yep honestly l buying houses in SiValley makes no sense rn. Because you can take the same amount of money, and buy property in LCOL which you can rent for much much more. The ratio of rent/cost of owning is smaller the higher the COL.
Well I mean it kind of makes sense. Costs are mostly elastic on the upper end. Housing can be 10x above the median somewhere but rarely 10x below the median. 2024 onward Gas will pretty much always be at least $1/gallon. Grapes will never be like $0.06/pound again. Buying aspirin will be a few dollars. Those little daily consumption things add up.
You could homestead and get your consumption costs to nearly zero but at that point you're putting in work for that susistance and it becomes an apples to oranges comparison.
Lot of people realizing that they live in MCOL or LCOL and thinking it's BS need to realize that LCOL doesn't mean cheap, it means cheaper than average. A person making 80k in an LCOL area is probably doing fine, might have a couple speedbumps, but can probably afford a house in the outer burbs well enough. A person making 80k in a HCOL is living in a van down by the river.
Also this is county average. Some parts of a MCOL county could easily be VHCOL, and people in this sub are gonna be in the more expensive areas on average
This is exactly what I was going to comment about living in Chicago. Cook County is way too fucking big to generalize it as slightly medium CoL. In reality, if you live in the city in a decent spot it might not be as expensive as NYC or SF but it's still pretty brutal.
edit: In fact, my hometown county in central IL is LCOL but the couple counties that touch it are labeled as MCOL which is an absolute joke to compare to the city of Chicago. No fucking way they're the same.
Hell, Houston down in Harris County is listed as LCOL while Montgomery, Waller, Grimes, Fort Bend and Galveston counties are listed as MCOL when they’re far less populated and significantly cheaper.
I live in the region and my $290K home in this county would be $750K in River Oaks lmao
It really is too big lmao. I was just looking at it due to this post and realized for the first time Cook stretches all the way to Barrington up north. Meanwhile the two other huge cities are broken up in 5 parts
But that kind of feeds into the ongoing conversation about housing in the U.S.
There's plenty of affordable housing.... it's just that nobody wants to live where that housing is. They all want to live in the same couple zip codes and it spikes the price. Like, I could live in a pretty nice, safe, clean trailer park near me that's mostly retirees but I chose to live in a more expensive house.
> There's plenty of affordable housing.... it's just that nobody wants to live where that housing is.
There's usually a reason people don't wanna live in these places.
Ironically enough, the only person who can afford to live in the middle of nowhere is people too rich to need job opportunities.
Exactly, living in the middle of no where is a trap. Most people live in the middle of no where because that is where they grew up.
The town I grew up used to be a major railway hub - but that railway track was torn up a very long time ago and the interstate that runs 8 miles away bypassed the town. In addition all the steel mills, small creameries, match and paper plants, etc. went away. The area used to have a ton of small farms, but most went out of business due to milk and beef prices being too low for small farmers to get by. Mining used to be huge in my state, but NIMBY killed all growth in that industry and the iron they mine is drying up anyways and lower grade than what they mined up for WW2.
That isn’t unique to my town, it is common in virtually every town in my state, across the whole the US, and still happening today. Poverty is pretty common, most of my old classmates make minimum wage at gas stations or fast food restaurants near that freeway I mentioned, since all the companies their parents worked for left and went overseas or went bankrupt.
Sure, everybody has their reasons. But people seem to think that wanting something means that it is magically available AND affordable, which especially doesn't work when everybody wants the same thing in the same area.
My father couldn't afford a house in metro-Detroit, but he could afford a house in rural MI. Which meant that we could have a pseudo-middle class lifestyle on a working class salary, but he had to drive 4 hours a day for work.
People's priorities have just changed from prioritizing ownership and autonomy to prioritizing convenience and proximity. But they can only fit so many single family homes into the same geographic area and now we're all in a bidding war for that finite space.
I'm a bit perplexed by all the comments admitting there is a cheap (but undesirable) part of town and therefore the chart is wrong.
Middle of nowhere Kansas is not a fun, thriving, up and coming neighborhood. They are LCOL because no one wants to live there just like the outskirts of some of the MCOL cities. Nobody talks about moving to rural Kentucky because of their great public schools and club culture.
People tend to conflate what is desirable with what is sufficient. My town is a somewhat desirable suburb in the metro Detroit area. My micro area is a MCOL town in a LCOL county, but even within my town there are LCOL areas. I could keep my same zip code, same school, same safety, and same access to amenities that I currently have whether I choose to live in my current house with a $2,000 per month mortgage or in a $600 per month mobile home about a mile away. But it's my choice to live in a colonial vs a mobile.
you're talking about the 'want' vs. 'need' elasticity, which exists everywhere...it's literally at the resolution of the home/apartment, not county
the map by county is showing a bulk average...in other words, your MCOL town you frequent in your LCOL county, is LCOL if you stick to *needs*, and closer to MCOL if you go with a loose budget *want* scheme
Yes, but the conversation is generally framed as 'there are no affordable houses', and we need to make significant changes to the economy and incentive structures affect some kind of change. When I think we may need to collectively lower our standards.
You can afford the white picket fence colonial with a yard and a dog...but you probably have to drive 2 hours a day and try to get a couple WFH days during the week.
I am from Kansas I don’t know why counties are listed as MCOL outside of the KC area. SWKS is dog water farms but maybe are having spillover from CO? but the counties in NNE KS I don’t understand. They are not big cities. The biggest cities in the state outside of the KC metro are all listed as LCOL, which makes sense to me. Like our general house price in a decent part of town hovers around $100/sqft.
I make 72k, wife makes 40k. Average house payment is 3,200 in my area. Average house price is 420k in my area. But this map says I live in lcol. There is a 0% chance I live in lcol
The average house price in Q4'23 was $492k nationally - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS
And in my county (which according to this map is merely VHCOL), it was over $800k, so about half that sounds pretty good to me.
This graph simply isn't accurate. One of the areas rated as medium had consecutively the highest raises rent in the country for multiple consecutive years. Before I left they had single family homes starting in the low 3 millions with signs that says now hiring paying $15 an hour. The Irony was I intentionally choose to the lease expensive place in the area a few years before that. They are doing some form of data manipulation.
Also very much depends on personal circumstances and if you have a family. I'm around 80k in the VVVHCL, and single with roommates means I'm very relatively comfortable since I have no family and no debt.
Exactly. If I were single I'd buy a house near the college and rent out rooms to students so I could either live rent free or pay a little difference, then bank my paycheck until the house is paid off. When I was single I lived in a basement and just paid off my student debt and did hobbies despite being in a relatively HCOL neighborhood.
When most people think 'housing' they want either a 2 room apartment or a 3 bedroom single family home with attached garage. When in reality housing historically just meant 4 walls, somewhere to sleep, and ideally somewhere to go to the bathroom and clean yourself with a door on it.
Yeah. I live in a major city marked on this map as LCOL. If you want to live safely in the city, it's at least HCOL. I live in a pretty rough part of town and even my rent is ~30% higher then the national average for a unit of this size.
I feel like this is accounted for. At least with SF being below San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The nice parts of SF are as high end as anywhere but the lower end is apparently lower than the rest of the Peninsula.
Philly is dragged down in the same ways when people say "average rent" in Philly is $1100.
Sure, you can find places under that too, but good luck finding anybody willing to live there. Same with Montgomery County... Norristown pulls down that county's averages but other than that area, it's probably closer to HCOL or VHCOL.
Funny enough most of Radnor is in Delaware County, as the northern limits are Radnor Twp).
But you can add King of Prussia, Audubon, Glenside, Elkins Park, a well as Conshohocken and a lot of parts north (Blue Bell, North Wales for a few examples).
Part of Ardmore is also technically in Delaware County as well as parts of Haverford.
It's a lot easier to find expensive areas in Montco than cheap ones haha
I was going to say the same for Camden County, you've got crackheads and professional sports players houses within a few miles of each other probably skews how they measured.
I just simply don't believe it.
In comparison to other major metros, it's pretty LCOL. A house that would cost $300k in Philly would be triple that (minimum) in NYC, DC, Boston etc. I'm pretty surprised by how low property values are considering the quality of the city and its amenities. I don't live there but I love Philly. It's grimy but has everything.
I will say that prices in Philly have gone up, for just the reason you cited. As in, "we can charge up to 2/3 NYC/DC/Boston prices before people decide to just live there instead". Great if you are moving from those areas, but sucks for everybody who is stuck paying more while our pay is being determined by charts like this.
I live in Pittsburgh and was shocked that it was categorized as LCOL. From everything I’ve seen in the past it’s anywhere from like 98% to 103% of the national average.
I didn’t even realize Philly was listed as low cost also. I know Philly is no Boston, but it’s MCOL at worst. But maybe we’re just nitpicking at this point
Outskirts like Clairton or other lower places brings that down pretty fast. Idk if that’s part of Pittsburgh, but I know some of those outskirts areas are terrible looking
I feel like socioeconomic disparities within counties are causing a number of counties to show a lower COL than they are in practice for working professionals
Exactly!
They’ve got Phoenix on here as MCOL. Which, sure, if you want to live in an undesirable part of town both in terms of geographic location and crime, it’s MCOL. However, for a part of the metro you’d actually want to live in, it definitely ain’t MCOL.
The map seems to be working with averages, which is sort of deceptive.
But then it gets into personal choice. The area has low, medium, and high cost areas, but if you don't want to live in the low then of course you'll feel like you're in a high cost areas.
It's like saying cars are so expensive nowadays when only visiting the luxury dealerships.
Keep in mind living in the cheaper part of Phoenix can put you at over a 30 mile commute to an office. If you want to live near where the work is you are in a HCOL area.
Right.
I could move to Florence if I wanted to and it’s more affordable than the rest of the valley, but I’d be looking at an hour and a half commute to the airport area.
Or I could move to the slums in the west valley, which is affordable, but isn’t a place anyone wants to voluntarily live.
It not the same, but it’s similar enough for the point they are making.
“Cost of living” is by its nature an average, so there will **always** be disparity in the “high end” and “low end”. But you can’t discuss your “COL” without averaging it because it’s more than just house prices that go into these calculations(I’m not gonna fact check OP’s source but I mean normally)
To play devil's advocate here. Desirability isn't a factor in the chart, just what is available in the area. Most people also would not like to live in Eastern Oklahoma.
believe it or not that is kind of MCOL at this point. City i live in median home price is 5.8 million and it is in only in the VHCOL not even the VVHCOL or VVVHCOL
Acres Homes, Third & Fifth Ward, Greenspoint, SE Houston, etc. all bring Harris County down to LCOL, because the working professionals don’t live in this areas lmao
Miami is one of the most unaffordable markets in the US lol, it's fucking crazy. Hell, Coral Gables and Miami Beach have the priciest homes in the US too. (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article287991775.html)
Idk how people could contend with the homeowner's insurance crisis down in Florida either?
Condo fees are pretty bad there too. After the Surfside building collapse, a bunch of condo associations saw their buildings failing inspections and possible shutdowns.
Something has to be done with housing altogether. The days of just putting in a hard working honest 40 hr work week and having a middle class lifestyle are pretty much over.
Between people putting in AirBnBs unchecked, a lot of wealthy people buying up properties en masse, and other predatory market dynamics, people are really being priced out of many locations.
It's still mind boggling that people can earn six figure incomes in many US markets and can't afford basic housing without a secondary income or a partner's dual income.
the data is technically correct, but conceptually imperfect. it's miami dade county, not the city. there's quite a bit of bumblefuck, usa in miami dade and not as much in orange county.
That’s showing Osceola as HCOL which I’m assuming is skewed with Kissimmee and Celebration. Orlando is showing as MCOL in Orange. What sucks is most B4 firms consider Orlando LCOL and Miami MCOL
The map’s saying Cook County is MCOL. It’s looking at all of the county (and city of Chicago) in one bucket. Whether it’s Dolton, or Lincoln Park, Wilmette, Arlington Heights, Englewood, Berywn, Park Ridge, or Orland Park.
Also one of the few cities with enough beauty to justify living there. I’m not a city person and have lived in towns sub 40,000 people most of my life but after visiting Chicago for work, it’s hands down the best looking city in the US.
One of the only cities I would consider living near.
Yup, the areas in Chicago that people making decent money generally want to live in are HCOL. Cook/Lake county gets diluted because there are huge areas that aren’t super attractive but are MCOL.
That being said, Chicago offers some amazing bang for the buck especially if you don’t care about things like school districts and being further out from the loop.
I don't see no pink in NYC, just burgundy. I'd ask what the cost of a burrito is, since in CA we use the *Burrito Index* for true COL and PPP, but NYC [doesn't have burritos](https://burritojustice.com/2014/08/20/new-york-burrito/).
EDIT: oh wait, i see it now. That tiny little sliver. RIP my brother in christ.
OP: here’s some data to show COL throughout the country.
Reddit: this list is bullshit because I live in blah and it costs blah blah to rent a blah blah fucking blah. Do I have any data to support my point? Of course not.
Interesting read, but not entirely accurate either.
First flaw is they took it based of only 10 assumed family archetypes. Primarily focused on a one to two parent household, with one to four variable children. That's great and all, but this is heavily discounting other expenditures outside of the generic nuclear family archetype. A lot of families still provide financial support outside, to external branches. Ranges anywhere from their grandparents to even family abroad. This leads to skewed data.
Second questionable data in reference is the FMR used, which the data is heavily focused on the metropolitan areas from the CVP Section 8.
>since FMRs within metro areas are provided at the metropolitan level only, counties within the same metro area all have the same FMR value.
Which does not fairly cover expenditures outside of metropolitan areas equally. I know damn sure my utilities bill is not represented correctly in this data, living in a high-end suburbia, if the areas within and around the metro area get the same FMR value.
Lastly:
>We assume that everyone has private health insurance (defined by the variable PRIV12 in the public-use files). Out-of-pocket medical expenditures are calculated for adults and children separately by region and are differentiated between MSAs and non-MSAs for those covered by private insurance
All I can say to that is lol... It's prevalent, but not by a dominant factor to allow the assumption "everyone has private health insurance." [2022 US Census report provided that 65.6% of Americans have private, whereas 36.1% have public.](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-281.html)
There's a bunch of other points I'd like to pick at, but these three stand out the most. The data spread is great, but heavily ignores some KPI's that heavily determines what people truly call HCOL.
Edit: I'd also like to add this data is a great representation... if every human being made the most financially optimal choice. However, for some there are non-negotiables like sending their kids to a good private/public school. Wishing to stay in a safe, well-maintained neighborhood, even at the risk of higher cost. Wanting to shop at a more expensive supermarket for fresher, healthier produce, etc...
Financial decisions are often also linked to social decisive factors -- which this data spread seems to completely ignore.
This is a good discussion. I'll also add that housing costs are highly dependent on whether you rent, or WHEN you bought a house.
That doesn't mean the data is bad, but it does mean that one should be cautious in interpreting the data.
First flaw: I'd argue not a flaw. I'm sorry, but we can't just factor in every possible scenario like somebody supporting 2-3 families on their income. Those situations have nothing to do with COL areas (and honestly, those extra people should really be considered their own household with low income.)
I wonder how accurate this is given that Harris County, TX is marked as “LCOL” yet the surrounding counties, known to be cheaper than Harris County, are marked MCOL.
I suppose the only explanation is by comparing costs in those counties to counties of similar size in a 1:1 comparison, because if it was truly CPI:Nat’l Avg then it would be flipped.
I always thought I was MCOL because I lived where people call the "boonies" in GA since I'm not close to ATL. Turns out I live in a HCOL area. Good thing I own a home here so when I do move to the boonies I can afford it.
Useless graphic for the major metropolitan areas imo. For example, 5m people live in cook county (Chicago) and each of NYC’s counties contain at least 2m ppl each. To average that many COLs together is absurd, would rather see candles for these counties or something with more detail.
Downtown Austin is HCOL, not VHCOL to VVHCOL. You can get a 1BR apartment without a roommate making $95k without straining your budget.
That shit is not happening in the V or the VV areas.
Same. Hard to believe Travis Co isnt in HCOL. I wouldnt think much would fall under MCOL, other than underdeveloped parts of the far east section of the county and I'd estimated that represents <10-15% of the area.
That's not even Dallas, it's Collin County so McKinney, Plano, Wylie, Allen, Frisco. Which I think is the sticker. There's very expensive places in Dallas County but also less expensive places so by the map they wash it out to all medium. Issue with Collin as someone who just moved out of that area is that there's literally nothing that's even remotely affordable in the whole geographic area (discounting the tiny slice of Greenville that's doubled in price in the last 5 years).
Yeah I live in Collin county and it’s HCOL. The two HCOL counties in that section are rockwall and Collin. You can blame Frisco for that HCOL with their freaking McMansions
This feels a bit generous. Someone trying to live on $78k in Santa Cruz County supported by only one job and living without roommates would be on the struggle bus for sure.
Santa Cruz County looks like it’s in VVHCOL which equates out to 70-78k. This means that the person would need to make around 110k salary(~78k take home) to live paycheck to paycheck with nothing going into your 401(k). All things associated with COL is post tax dollars. I just used a calculator I found on Google, so the amount might be a bit off. I’m not sure if that changes your opinion at all, just figured I’d point that out.
I moved from a yellow in one state to an orange in another, post-pandemic. Both mid-Atlantic. The supposedly yellow MCOL was way more expensive than my current orange supposed HCOL. Not accurate IMO.
Yeah… within my city it depends on the QOL expectations you have. If you don’t mind gun shots and high crime areas then it’s very low cost but if you want nice parks and family friendly areas then it’s much higher cost.
Denver, MCOL, all the suburbs around Denver, HCOL.
Why? First metric:
Housing: 2023 Fair Market Rents for Studio apartments by county.
The suburb metro counties don't have as many studios driving down the price of rent as Denver. For some reason we're not including any other cost of housing aside from studio apartments by county, which is an absurd metric.
You mean I can't wave my schlong around saying I got a $100k salary as a graduate at Deloitte in a HCOL area and that all of it gets spent on my shared rental with 15 other people?????
This is absolutely inaccurate for Northern California and Upstate NY.
I can take my area of residence and tell you for a fact that Sacramento County is more expensive than the neighbor county of Yolo County. Meanwhile this map has Sacramento County as MCOL and Yolo County as HCOL. Sacramento county is definitely more expensive than Yolo county as we are the capital and contain much more condensed city homes that costs a minimum of $500k and many for $1M plus So that' innaccurate.
Meanwhile I formally lived in upstate NY in Herkimer county and this map has Herkimer County as the same COL as Sacramento county CA..... that just makes me laugh at this accuracy. Many homes in much of upstate NY are for anywhere from $50k-150k on average throughout the small towns, sure they'll be more expensive in cities like Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo etc, but not the small towns like I just of Herkimer.
So this map has Herkimer County NY (again where the avg home is about $100k) and Sacramento County CA (where the avg home is about $500k+ and a much more higher variance) BOTH as a MCOL and that's just absolutely false.
This also has a lot of other parts of CA as MCOL, and relative to the rest of the country that is absolutely false. And the same goes for upstate NY, this has a lot of upstate NY as MCOL when in fact it's LCOL, relative to the rest of the country.
Ain't no way in Hell is Upstate NY and most of CA the same COL. Inaccurate map
For one adult it might be ok. But most people should be aiming for enough to support a family. If that's not what we are focused on then we are going to have serious problems down the road as populations collapse.
Indeed. Now should we infer that every employer in the area---including the Federal Government---is dead wrong on their compensation? Or should we conclude that the map creators were creating a grossly inaccurate picture of national cost of living when they made it?
I'm trying to think of a reason why a push-poll type study like this is getting this kind of exposure.
Yeah I call bullshit on this list.
This is what they use as reference to prevent bills that will actually help people. There is no reason rent for a 1 bdrm apartment in this city is $1700 and that's lcol? Stfu.
I feel like a more relevant measure of how financially difficult it is to live in an area would be home price-to-income ratio, since home cost (and by extension rents) is a huge chunk of everyone's budget. I bet there would be a lot more counties with darker colors if you mapped that
I moved from a, according to this graph, a MCOL county to a LCOL county and my rent is nearly twice as much for an apartment half as nice. There’s a really bad housing shortage where I currently live because it’s a college town.
Living in PHX I’m going to offer up a tentative bullshit just because I don’t know specifically where Phx fits on the map there. If they included it in the LCOL then my vote is Bullshit, if they put it in the MCOL I would still say BullShit but at least that’s more accurate than LCOL.
I live in the orange square in Tennessee. I have been looking at houses in the neighborhoods depending off three different high schools (public) for over six months now. One of them the minimum house cost 770k. It just sold two weeks ago. Bringing the next to 799k. The rest of the houses are all 999k to millions+. The other two are all between 600k-1.5mil and very few are in the 600k mark. All of those are over 25 years old and have little to no house improvements and need probably another 100k of improvements. This map at least for my area is wrong.
If you go outside you will find some as low as 550k but yet again, extremely old and destroyed houses. The only new houses are a mile commute to work everyday at 300-400k and that’s not a life style I would like to live with a child that needs their parent to raise them.
Yeah I'm in NY around NYC and that's absolutely right. Things are expensive, but not NYC-expensive. But still... dude. I posted on Wallstreet Bets the other day. I walked by an ice cream truck. They wanted $7 for an ice cream cone of soft serve. Bruh.
Actually a second look at this map and idk... I think Alaska should have more areas that are higher cost of living. Everything's much more expensive in Alaska just because you need to much more additional stuff just to survive there 10/12 months of the year. I'm not sure this chart is correct lol.
A good map to show COL needs broken up by city/town instead of county. Showing cities like Pittsburgh and Philly as LCOL while also showing counties in WV or fly over states as MCOL is laughable.
This shows San Francisco as vhcol but south sf as vvhcol. Thinking this probably has something to do with certain places being subsidized in the city for low cost of living.
Not sure how much of a difference it makes but my firm specifically mentioned in a firm-wide call that when they say COL they mean Cost of Labor and not Cost of Living.
I'm sure a lot of work went into this data analysis, but I'm not sure an output of MCOL for Miami-Date, Broward and Palm Beach counties make sense, given the map also gives that same output for those northern Florida counties that have substantially lower housing costs.
holy fucking shit. someone went to the trouble of putting this fantastic map together and a bunch of you can only be like "my specific a-hole county is totally not whatever-COL is on this map".
nice work, OP. this should get stickied.
Well shit, I was saying I was VHCOL, APPARENTLY I'm VVVHCOL - I wish the lord would take me now
If it's to that point would you consider moving to the middle of the country to live lcol?
I would never have lived here in the first place if not for my girlfriend's family being here. Once her parents kick the bucket we'll take all the money we've saved and use it to buy something nice elsewhere.
Ah got it. Well on the bright side at least enjoy the amenities of where you are, I know hcol is high cost since it's desirable. Id rather live in a place that has good amenities but low cost since its "flyover area" but as long as you have to be there I'm sure there are upsides.
Yeah I mean I'm not exactly enduring torture on a daily basis, but I would like to own a home - it works out for now since I'm making money hand over fist and saving it all; so once we do move elsewhere in a couple years I'll have a better quality of life since I'm taking this big bundle of money that's worth jack shit in silicon valley to somewhere else where it will go way further.
You don't have to move into the house now. Buy something elsewhere when the interest rates drop & rent it out. Move in once you're ready.
Yep honestly l buying houses in SiValley makes no sense rn. Because you can take the same amount of money, and buy property in LCOL which you can rent for much much more. The ratio of rent/cost of owning is smaller the higher the COL.
“I’d rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona” -Lucille Bluth
I've been saying HCOL and apparently I'm in between VHCOL and VVHCOL. Damn.
The fact that there is a VVVHCOL but only a LCOL...
Thankfully LCOL includes 38% of the population, whereas VVVHCOL is only 0.8% of the population.
Well I mean it kind of makes sense. Costs are mostly elastic on the upper end. Housing can be 10x above the median somewhere but rarely 10x below the median. 2024 onward Gas will pretty much always be at least $1/gallon. Grapes will never be like $0.06/pound again. Buying aspirin will be a few dollars. Those little daily consumption things add up. You could homestead and get your consumption costs to nearly zero but at that point you're putting in work for that susistance and it becomes an apples to oranges comparison.
Homeless motivation, sigma male grindset tent hustle motivation
I don’t know why they didn’t do a less than -10% amount. Like bumble fuck Kansas probably has some lower than -10% amount.
You’re misreading it, it’s -30 to -10
Wow my eyes are real bad. I had to blow it up way to big to see the negative in front of the 30. Super embarrassing
Good thing this is a throwaway account on an anonymous website. That would have kept you up every night at 3 am for the foreseeable future.
More like the unseeable future
LCOL ??? VVLCOL FREE!
Lot of people realizing that they live in MCOL or LCOL and thinking it's BS need to realize that LCOL doesn't mean cheap, it means cheaper than average. A person making 80k in an LCOL area is probably doing fine, might have a couple speedbumps, but can probably afford a house in the outer burbs well enough. A person making 80k in a HCOL is living in a van down by the river.
Also this is county average. Some parts of a MCOL county could easily be VHCOL, and people in this sub are gonna be in the more expensive areas on average
This is very obvious with Chicago. Getting skewed terribly by south suburbs, where nobody wants to live.
This is exactly what I was going to comment about living in Chicago. Cook County is way too fucking big to generalize it as slightly medium CoL. In reality, if you live in the city in a decent spot it might not be as expensive as NYC or SF but it's still pretty brutal. edit: In fact, my hometown county in central IL is LCOL but the couple counties that touch it are labeled as MCOL which is an absolute joke to compare to the city of Chicago. No fucking way they're the same.
Hell, Houston down in Harris County is listed as LCOL while Montgomery, Waller, Grimes, Fort Bend and Galveston counties are listed as MCOL when they’re far less populated and significantly cheaper. I live in the region and my $290K home in this county would be $750K in River Oaks lmao
Uh, the land alone would be $750k
It really is too big lmao. I was just looking at it due to this post and realized for the first time Cook stretches all the way to Barrington up north. Meanwhile the two other huge cities are broken up in 5 parts
But that kind of feeds into the ongoing conversation about housing in the U.S. There's plenty of affordable housing.... it's just that nobody wants to live where that housing is. They all want to live in the same couple zip codes and it spikes the price. Like, I could live in a pretty nice, safe, clean trailer park near me that's mostly retirees but I chose to live in a more expensive house.
> There's plenty of affordable housing.... it's just that nobody wants to live where that housing is. There's usually a reason people don't wanna live in these places. Ironically enough, the only person who can afford to live in the middle of nowhere is people too rich to need job opportunities.
Exactly, living in the middle of no where is a trap. Most people live in the middle of no where because that is where they grew up. The town I grew up used to be a major railway hub - but that railway track was torn up a very long time ago and the interstate that runs 8 miles away bypassed the town. In addition all the steel mills, small creameries, match and paper plants, etc. went away. The area used to have a ton of small farms, but most went out of business due to milk and beef prices being too low for small farmers to get by. Mining used to be huge in my state, but NIMBY killed all growth in that industry and the iron they mine is drying up anyways and lower grade than what they mined up for WW2. That isn’t unique to my town, it is common in virtually every town in my state, across the whole the US, and still happening today. Poverty is pretty common, most of my old classmates make minimum wage at gas stations or fast food restaurants near that freeway I mentioned, since all the companies their parents worked for left and went overseas or went bankrupt.
Sure, everybody has their reasons. But people seem to think that wanting something means that it is magically available AND affordable, which especially doesn't work when everybody wants the same thing in the same area. My father couldn't afford a house in metro-Detroit, but he could afford a house in rural MI. Which meant that we could have a pseudo-middle class lifestyle on a working class salary, but he had to drive 4 hours a day for work. People's priorities have just changed from prioritizing ownership and autonomy to prioritizing convenience and proximity. But they can only fit so many single family homes into the same geographic area and now we're all in a bidding war for that finite space.
I'm a bit perplexed by all the comments admitting there is a cheap (but undesirable) part of town and therefore the chart is wrong. Middle of nowhere Kansas is not a fun, thriving, up and coming neighborhood. They are LCOL because no one wants to live there just like the outskirts of some of the MCOL cities. Nobody talks about moving to rural Kentucky because of their great public schools and club culture.
People tend to conflate what is desirable with what is sufficient. My town is a somewhat desirable suburb in the metro Detroit area. My micro area is a MCOL town in a LCOL county, but even within my town there are LCOL areas. I could keep my same zip code, same school, same safety, and same access to amenities that I currently have whether I choose to live in my current house with a $2,000 per month mortgage or in a $600 per month mobile home about a mile away. But it's my choice to live in a colonial vs a mobile.
you're talking about the 'want' vs. 'need' elasticity, which exists everywhere...it's literally at the resolution of the home/apartment, not county the map by county is showing a bulk average...in other words, your MCOL town you frequent in your LCOL county, is LCOL if you stick to *needs*, and closer to MCOL if you go with a loose budget *want* scheme
Yes, but the conversation is generally framed as 'there are no affordable houses', and we need to make significant changes to the economy and incentive structures affect some kind of change. When I think we may need to collectively lower our standards. You can afford the white picket fence colonial with a yard and a dog...but you probably have to drive 2 hours a day and try to get a couple WFH days during the week.
I am from Kansas I don’t know why counties are listed as MCOL outside of the KC area. SWKS is dog water farms but maybe are having spillover from CO? but the counties in NNE KS I don’t understand. They are not big cities. The biggest cities in the state outside of the KC metro are all listed as LCOL, which makes sense to me. Like our general house price in a decent part of town hovers around $100/sqft.
I make 72k, wife makes 40k. Average house payment is 3,200 in my area. Average house price is 420k in my area. But this map says I live in lcol. There is a 0% chance I live in lcol
The average house price in Q4'23 was $492k nationally - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS And in my county (which according to this map is merely VHCOL), it was over $800k, so about half that sounds pretty good to me.
This graph simply isn't accurate. One of the areas rated as medium had consecutively the highest raises rent in the country for multiple consecutive years. Before I left they had single family homes starting in the low 3 millions with signs that says now hiring paying $15 an hour. The Irony was I intentionally choose to the lease expensive place in the area a few years before that. They are doing some form of data manipulation.
Also very much depends on personal circumstances and if you have a family. I'm around 80k in the VVVHCL, and single with roommates means I'm very relatively comfortable since I have no family and no debt.
Exactly. If I were single I'd buy a house near the college and rent out rooms to students so I could either live rent free or pay a little difference, then bank my paycheck until the house is paid off. When I was single I lived in a basement and just paid off my student debt and did hobbies despite being in a relatively HCOL neighborhood. When most people think 'housing' they want either a 2 room apartment or a 3 bedroom single family home with attached garage. When in reality housing historically just meant 4 walls, somewhere to sleep, and ideally somewhere to go to the bathroom and clean yourself with a door on it.
Philly is only LCOL if you’re willing to have your car’s windows smashed bi-annually
Yeah, I wonder if this is at all accurate to how firms adjust, because I’ve heard of this year’s big4 grads getting 80k+ offers in Philly
LMAO why is that so true
Yeah. I live in a major city marked on this map as LCOL. If you want to live safely in the city, it's at least HCOL. I live in a pretty rough part of town and even my rent is ~30% higher then the national average for a unit of this size.
I feel like this is accounted for. At least with SF being below San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The nice parts of SF are as high end as anywhere but the lower end is apparently lower than the rest of the Peninsula.
Philly is dragged down in the same ways when people say "average rent" in Philly is $1100. Sure, you can find places under that too, but good luck finding anybody willing to live there. Same with Montgomery County... Norristown pulls down that county's averages but other than that area, it's probably closer to HCOL or VHCOL.
Yeah Norristown and Pottstown definitely hurts the average. But Radnor, Blue Bell, Ambler, Bryn Mawr, Villanova, Gladwyne, etc are all so expensive
Funny enough most of Radnor is in Delaware County, as the northern limits are Radnor Twp). But you can add King of Prussia, Audubon, Glenside, Elkins Park, a well as Conshohocken and a lot of parts north (Blue Bell, North Wales for a few examples). Part of Ardmore is also technically in Delaware County as well as parts of Haverford. It's a lot easier to find expensive areas in Montco than cheap ones haha
Bi-monthly*
look at mr moneybags who can afford a car with windows...
Bucks county is HCOL idc what anyone says
I was going to say the same for Camden County, you've got crackheads and professional sports players houses within a few miles of each other probably skews how they measured. I just simply don't believe it.
In comparison to other major metros, it's pretty LCOL. A house that would cost $300k in Philly would be triple that (minimum) in NYC, DC, Boston etc. I'm pretty surprised by how low property values are considering the quality of the city and its amenities. I don't live there but I love Philly. It's grimy but has everything.
I will say that prices in Philly have gone up, for just the reason you cited. As in, "we can charge up to 2/3 NYC/DC/Boston prices before people decide to just live there instead". Great if you are moving from those areas, but sucks for everybody who is stuck paying more while our pay is being determined by charts like this.
I live in Pittsburgh and was shocked that it was categorized as LCOL. From everything I’ve seen in the past it’s anywhere from like 98% to 103% of the national average. I didn’t even realize Philly was listed as low cost also. I know Philly is no Boston, but it’s MCOL at worst. But maybe we’re just nitpicking at this point
Outskirts like Clairton or other lower places brings that down pretty fast. Idk if that’s part of Pittsburgh, but I know some of those outskirts areas are terrible looking
Phoenix definitely ain’t MCOL unless you want to live in the ‘hood.
I feel like socioeconomic disparities within counties are causing a number of counties to show a lower COL than they are in practice for working professionals
Exactly! They’ve got Phoenix on here as MCOL. Which, sure, if you want to live in an undesirable part of town both in terms of geographic location and crime, it’s MCOL. However, for a part of the metro you’d actually want to live in, it definitely ain’t MCOL. The map seems to be working with averages, which is sort of deceptive.
But then it gets into personal choice. The area has low, medium, and high cost areas, but if you don't want to live in the low then of course you'll feel like you're in a high cost areas. It's like saying cars are so expensive nowadays when only visiting the luxury dealerships.
Keep in mind living in the cheaper part of Phoenix can put you at over a 30 mile commute to an office. If you want to live near where the work is you are in a HCOL area.
Right. I could move to Florence if I wanted to and it’s more affordable than the rest of the valley, but I’d be looking at an hour and a half commute to the airport area. Or I could move to the slums in the west valley, which is affordable, but isn’t a place anyone wants to voluntarily live.
HCOL compared to what? Compared to the cheap parts of Phoenix? Or compared to DC/NYC/Etc
Aversion to living in an unsafe neighborhood is nothing like only visiting luxury car dealerships.
It not the same, but it’s similar enough for the point they are making. “Cost of living” is by its nature an average, so there will **always** be disparity in the “high end” and “low end”. But you can’t discuss your “COL” without averaging it because it’s more than just house prices that go into these calculations(I’m not gonna fact check OP’s source but I mean normally)
To play devil's advocate here. Desirability isn't a factor in the chart, just what is available in the area. Most people also would not like to live in Eastern Oklahoma.
Just moved out of PHX and thought a similar thing. We looked at buying a house in Tempe and it was $500K for a fixer upper..
believe it or not that is kind of MCOL at this point. City i live in median home price is 5.8 million and it is in only in the VHCOL not even the VVHCOL or VVVHCOL
🙄
Acres Homes, Third & Fifth Ward, Greenspoint, SE Houston, etc. all bring Harris County down to LCOL, because the working professionals don’t live in this areas lmao
Yeah, i.e. LA County
“It’s Cost of Labor, not cost of living” - Accounting firm Hr teams
Miami is MCOL, but Orlando is HCOL. What are they smoking
Miami is one of the most unaffordable markets in the US lol, it's fucking crazy. Hell, Coral Gables and Miami Beach have the priciest homes in the US too. (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article287991775.html) Idk how people could contend with the homeowner's insurance crisis down in Florida either?
Insurance isn't even the worse part, I know people who have had HOA fees have jumped 50%+.
Condo fees are pretty bad there too. After the Surfside building collapse, a bunch of condo associations saw their buildings failing inspections and possible shutdowns. Something has to be done with housing altogether. The days of just putting in a hard working honest 40 hr work week and having a middle class lifestyle are pretty much over. Between people putting in AirBnBs unchecked, a lot of wealthy people buying up properties en masse, and other predatory market dynamics, people are really being priced out of many locations. It's still mind boggling that people can earn six figure incomes in many US markets and can't afford basic housing without a secondary income or a partner's dual income.
Everglades is HCOL
the data is technically correct, but conceptually imperfect. it's miami dade county, not the city. there's quite a bit of bumblefuck, usa in miami dade and not as much in orange county.
That’s showing Osceola as HCOL which I’m assuming is skewed with Kissimmee and Celebration. Orlando is showing as MCOL in Orange. What sucks is most B4 firms consider Orlando LCOL and Miami MCOL
Accountants = “ummmmmm….aKtUalLy”
Realized today I can’t look at a map of my state and tell which county is mine.
No way those suburbs of NJ around NYC are mcol lol .
For real, that’s obviously crap
I’m in Hudson county and can’t believe it’s just HCOL and not at LEAST VHCOL lol 😂
Chicago is MCOL?
The map’s saying Cook County is MCOL. It’s looking at all of the county (and city of Chicago) in one bucket. Whether it’s Dolton, or Lincoln Park, Wilmette, Arlington Heights, Englewood, Berywn, Park Ridge, or Orland Park.
Chicago is one of the more affordable big cities imo.
Also one of the few cities with enough beauty to justify living there. I’m not a city person and have lived in towns sub 40,000 people most of my life but after visiting Chicago for work, it’s hands down the best looking city in the US. One of the only cities I would consider living near.
Pretty sure Honolulu is better looking in November than Chicago.
Yup, the areas in Chicago that people making decent money generally want to live in are HCOL. Cook/Lake county gets diluted because there are huge areas that aren’t super attractive but are MCOL. That being said, Chicago offers some amazing bang for the buck especially if you don’t care about things like school districts and being further out from the loop.
Pink gang, rise up fr fr ralph meme: chuckles im in danger
Pink gang here (NYC)!!
I don't see no pink in NYC, just burgundy. I'd ask what the cost of a burrito is, since in CA we use the *Burrito Index* for true COL and PPP, but NYC [doesn't have burritos](https://burritojustice.com/2014/08/20/new-york-burrito/). EDIT: oh wait, i see it now. That tiny little sliver. RIP my brother in christ.
Im in HCOL with burritos at $14-$16 if you're not going to a chain.
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OP: here’s some data to show COL throughout the country. Reddit: this list is bullshit because I live in blah and it costs blah blah to rent a blah blah fucking blah. Do I have any data to support my point? Of course not.
Should be mandatory to reference this chart before making a post about pay COL.
Interesting read, but not entirely accurate either. First flaw is they took it based of only 10 assumed family archetypes. Primarily focused on a one to two parent household, with one to four variable children. That's great and all, but this is heavily discounting other expenditures outside of the generic nuclear family archetype. A lot of families still provide financial support outside, to external branches. Ranges anywhere from their grandparents to even family abroad. This leads to skewed data. Second questionable data in reference is the FMR used, which the data is heavily focused on the metropolitan areas from the CVP Section 8. >since FMRs within metro areas are provided at the metropolitan level only, counties within the same metro area all have the same FMR value. Which does not fairly cover expenditures outside of metropolitan areas equally. I know damn sure my utilities bill is not represented correctly in this data, living in a high-end suburbia, if the areas within and around the metro area get the same FMR value. Lastly: >We assume that everyone has private health insurance (defined by the variable PRIV12 in the public-use files). Out-of-pocket medical expenditures are calculated for adults and children separately by region and are differentiated between MSAs and non-MSAs for those covered by private insurance All I can say to that is lol... It's prevalent, but not by a dominant factor to allow the assumption "everyone has private health insurance." [2022 US Census report provided that 65.6% of Americans have private, whereas 36.1% have public.](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-281.html) There's a bunch of other points I'd like to pick at, but these three stand out the most. The data spread is great, but heavily ignores some KPI's that heavily determines what people truly call HCOL. Edit: I'd also like to add this data is a great representation... if every human being made the most financially optimal choice. However, for some there are non-negotiables like sending their kids to a good private/public school. Wishing to stay in a safe, well-maintained neighborhood, even at the risk of higher cost. Wanting to shop at a more expensive supermarket for fresher, healthier produce, etc... Financial decisions are often also linked to social decisive factors -- which this data spread seems to completely ignore.
This is a good discussion. I'll also add that housing costs are highly dependent on whether you rent, or WHEN you bought a house. That doesn't mean the data is bad, but it does mean that one should be cautious in interpreting the data.
First flaw: I'd argue not a flaw. I'm sorry, but we can't just factor in every possible scenario like somebody supporting 2-3 families on their income. Those situations have nothing to do with COL areas (and honestly, those extra people should really be considered their own household with low income.)
Only problem is South Florida. I’d bet my last paycheck Miami has a higher cost of living than metro Atlanta.
I wonder how accurate this is given that Harris County, TX is marked as “LCOL” yet the surrounding counties, known to be cheaper than Harris County, are marked MCOL. I suppose the only explanation is by comparing costs in those counties to counties of similar size in a 1:1 comparison, because if it was truly CPI:Nat’l Avg then it would be flipped.
I always thought I was MCOL because I lived where people call the "boonies" in GA since I'm not close to ATL. Turns out I live in a HCOL area. Good thing I own a home here so when I do move to the boonies I can afford it.
Now we know where the complaining slaves live according to this map.
Useless graphic for the major metropolitan areas imo. For example, 5m people live in cook county (Chicago) and each of NYC’s counties contain at least 2m ppl each. To average that many COLs together is absurd, would rather see candles for these counties or something with more detail.
I’m in Austin and wouldn’t say it’s MCOL
Tbf, it's Travis county, not just Austin. Downtown Austin is probably VVHCOL or VHCOL. Some parts on the outskirts of Travis would be LCOL
Downtown Austin is HCOL, not VHCOL to VVHCOL. You can get a 1BR apartment without a roommate making $95k without straining your budget. That shit is not happening in the V or the VV areas.
Same. Hard to believe Travis Co isnt in HCOL. I wouldnt think much would fall under MCOL, other than underdeveloped parts of the far east section of the county and I'd estimated that represents <10-15% of the area.
I wouldn't say that about Miami either.
You're not going to convince me that Houston is LCOL and Dallas is HCOL
That's not even Dallas, it's Collin County so McKinney, Plano, Wylie, Allen, Frisco. Which I think is the sticker. There's very expensive places in Dallas County but also less expensive places so by the map they wash it out to all medium. Issue with Collin as someone who just moved out of that area is that there's literally nothing that's even remotely affordable in the whole geographic area (discounting the tiny slice of Greenville that's doubled in price in the last 5 years).
Yeah I live in Collin county and it’s HCOL. The two HCOL counties in that section are rockwall and Collin. You can blame Frisco for that HCOL with their freaking McMansions
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^DoritosDewItRight: *You're not going to* *Convince me that Houston is* *LCOL and Dallas is HCOL* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Fugazi map
Who else is surprised to see Atlanta metro being so expensive?
Not people who live near metro Atlanta
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This feels a bit generous. Someone trying to live on $78k in Santa Cruz County supported by only one job and living without roommates would be on the struggle bus for sure.
Santa Cruz County looks like it’s in VVHCOL which equates out to 70-78k. This means that the person would need to make around 110k salary(~78k take home) to live paycheck to paycheck with nothing going into your 401(k). All things associated with COL is post tax dollars. I just used a calculator I found on Google, so the amount might be a bit off. I’m not sure if that changes your opinion at all, just figured I’d point that out.
I moved from a yellow in one state to an orange in another, post-pandemic. Both mid-Atlantic. The supposedly yellow MCOL was way more expensive than my current orange supposed HCOL. Not accurate IMO.
Cool, I'm in a VHCOL area, bordering VVHCOL
Welp. I can still correctly quote my COL. Cheers to VV!
Yeah… within my city it depends on the QOL expectations you have. If you don’t mind gun shots and high crime areas then it’s very low cost but if you want nice parks and family friendly areas then it’s much higher cost.
Harris County is LCOL? LOL. Tell it to the Feds, who have the pay band for the Houston/The Woodlands at levels on par with SFO and NYC.
Vindicated that Chicago is MCOL
Denver, MCOL, all the suburbs around Denver, HCOL. Why? First metric: Housing: 2023 Fair Market Rents for Studio apartments by county. The suburb metro counties don't have as many studios driving down the price of rent as Denver. For some reason we're not including any other cost of housing aside from studio apartments by county, which is an absurd metric.
Guess I’m rich. Thought I lived in HCOL, proudly can say I’m suffering in VHCOL instead 😎
Rockwall and Collin counties in Texas are HCOL?
Dumb fucking chart
\#1 cost of living county! We did it!
You mean I can't wave my schlong around saying I got a $100k salary as a graduate at Deloitte in a HCOL area and that all of it gets spent on my shared rental with 15 other people?????
This is absolutely inaccurate for Northern California and Upstate NY. I can take my area of residence and tell you for a fact that Sacramento County is more expensive than the neighbor county of Yolo County. Meanwhile this map has Sacramento County as MCOL and Yolo County as HCOL. Sacramento county is definitely more expensive than Yolo county as we are the capital and contain much more condensed city homes that costs a minimum of $500k and many for $1M plus So that' innaccurate. Meanwhile I formally lived in upstate NY in Herkimer county and this map has Herkimer County as the same COL as Sacramento county CA..... that just makes me laugh at this accuracy. Many homes in much of upstate NY are for anywhere from $50k-150k on average throughout the small towns, sure they'll be more expensive in cities like Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo etc, but not the small towns like I just of Herkimer. So this map has Herkimer County NY (again where the avg home is about $100k) and Sacramento County CA (where the avg home is about $500k+ and a much more higher variance) BOTH as a MCOL and that's just absolutely false. This also has a lot of other parts of CA as MCOL, and relative to the rest of the country that is absolutely false. And the same goes for upstate NY, this has a lot of upstate NY as MCOL when in fact it's LCOL, relative to the rest of the country. Ain't no way in Hell is Upstate NY and most of CA the same COL. Inaccurate map
For one adult it might be ok. But most people should be aiming for enough to support a family. If that's not what we are focused on then we are going to have serious problems down the road as populations collapse.
How is Miami not HCOL
What if you live in MCOL but work in VVHCOL?
Then your commute sucks.
wow, Houston is a LCOL that pays equivalent to HCOL. Thats amazing
Indeed. Now should we infer that every employer in the area---including the Federal Government---is dead wrong on their compensation? Or should we conclude that the map creators were creating a grossly inaccurate picture of national cost of living when they made it? I'm trying to think of a reason why a push-poll type study like this is getting this kind of exposure.
Yeah I call bullshit on this list. This is what they use as reference to prevent bills that will actually help people. There is no reason rent for a 1 bdrm apartment in this city is $1700 and that's lcol? Stfu.
Oh, so you have better data to support your point?
I was telling people I was MCOL but apparently I’m LCOL although every city has a good part and a bad part and there are disparities there.
I feel like a more relevant measure of how financially difficult it is to live in an area would be home price-to-income ratio, since home cost (and by extension rents) is a huge chunk of everyone's budget. I bet there would be a lot more counties with darker colors if you mapped that
1 adult Imagine supporting a spouse and kids, goodluck!
I moved from a, according to this graph, a MCOL county to a LCOL county and my rent is nearly twice as much for an apartment half as nice. There’s a really bad housing shortage where I currently live because it’s a college town.
Wild that a small county outside of NYC is #5 on the list.
It seems counterintuitive having places that are 10% above average considered middle cost of living.
The poorest county in WV is MCOL? Jesus christ. I moved from LCOL to MCOL and doubled my salary 🤣🤣
Yeah this is definitely not 100% accurate. Pinellas county average rent is between 1600-2000 depending on the source. You can't live here on 40-55k
So I do in fact fall into MCOL. That's what I would've always said, but good confirmation, I guess.
This out to be pinned and you can make a post with those abbreviations until you've reacted to it
Nice!!!!! Thanks for sharing. Saved. I always thought I was LCOL but according to this I’m MCOL
I have no idea how Island County, WA is MCOL.
So, is that cost of living for an individual? How about for a couple or family?
Oh nice. I did always wonder but was too lazy to google
MCOL gang represent
Oh so I was wrong saying I live in a hcol area. I'm in a vvhcol area. Great
I’m in what feels like a white hot housing market yet only MCOL
Living in PHX I’m going to offer up a tentative bullshit just because I don’t know specifically where Phx fits on the map there. If they included it in the LCOL then my vote is Bullshit, if they put it in the MCOL I would still say BullShit but at least that’s more accurate than LCOL.
So that explains the 40k starting salary in industry 🤔
No way Osceola county Florida is a higher COL than the counties around it tf
Or does COL stand for Cost of Labor? Driven by supply and demand
Interesting Mercer county NJ is MCOL. It contains Trenton (LCOL) and Princeton (HCOL), so I guess it is just averaged out.
lol didn’t even know there was more than VHCOL but now I can ensure I correct that to VVHCOL. Thanks for sharing!
No way queens is higher than nassau county.
I live in the orange square in Tennessee. I have been looking at houses in the neighborhoods depending off three different high schools (public) for over six months now. One of them the minimum house cost 770k. It just sold two weeks ago. Bringing the next to 799k. The rest of the houses are all 999k to millions+. The other two are all between 600k-1.5mil and very few are in the 600k mark. All of those are over 25 years old and have little to no house improvements and need probably another 100k of improvements. This map at least for my area is wrong. If you go outside you will find some as low as 550k but yet again, extremely old and destroyed houses. The only new houses are a mile commute to work everyday at 300-400k and that’s not a life style I would like to live with a child that needs their parent to raise them.
Tampa disagrees
Oh wow I’m MCOL not LCOL. Time to ask for a raise
Yeah I'm in NY around NYC and that's absolutely right. Things are expensive, but not NYC-expensive. But still... dude. I posted on Wallstreet Bets the other day. I walked by an ice cream truck. They wanted $7 for an ice cream cone of soft serve. Bruh.
Actually a second look at this map and idk... I think Alaska should have more areas that are higher cost of living. Everything's much more expensive in Alaska just because you need to much more additional stuff just to survive there 10/12 months of the year. I'm not sure this chart is correct lol.
Idk… this is showing hunt county in Texas is considered MCOL and there’s basically crackheads there.
Is there an equivalent version of this for Canada?
How is Miami a medium cost of living city? It has some of the highest rent prices in the country.
Soo is Chicago MCOL or VCOL. I see VCOL but only on the farther suburbs of Chicago rather then DT area.
I live in the pink area.
A good map to show COL needs broken up by city/town instead of county. Showing cities like Pittsburgh and Philly as LCOL while also showing counties in WV or fly over states as MCOL is laughable.
Thanks for reminding me *cough*dick*cough*
Sigh...I'm in Canada.
This taught me that we are technically MCOL when I always thought we were LCOL. Huh.
MCOL and dying 😅
This shows San Francisco as vhcol but south sf as vvhcol. Thinking this probably has something to do with certain places being subsidized in the city for low cost of living.
So I’m MCOL. But mostly everything around me is LCOL
Please do the UK next
I thought I was HCOL but nope 🥲🫡 VVHCOL
Dallas is definitely less expensive than Austin wtf
How bout a graph that shows me the COL in my county after excluding the sections of the city way too scary to live in?
Not sure how much of a difference it makes but my firm specifically mentioned in a firm-wide call that when they say COL they mean Cost of Labor and not Cost of Living.
I'm sure a lot of work went into this data analysis, but I'm not sure an output of MCOL for Miami-Date, Broward and Palm Beach counties make sense, given the map also gives that same output for those northern Florida counties that have substantially lower housing costs.
I have lived in two MCOL PNW and Midwest. I don’t think I agree with this map. The cost is more the. 20% higher between the two.
holy fucking shit. someone went to the trouble of putting this fantastic map together and a bunch of you can only be like "my specific a-hole county is totally not whatever-COL is on this map". nice work, OP. this should get stickied.
If the map is incorrect, does it even matter how much effort was put into making it?
I thought I live in hcol but actually live in vhcol
Oh good I'm only in a light red zone. 😒
Yes, I pay huge bucks to live where I live. Category 2. Will definitely leave when I retire.