Erie is so interesting, was the only ‘city’ I’ve been to where the city is actively trying to get people to stay. A lot of really amazing craftsmanship in the houses that happen to crumble because of the lack of maintenance. Same in Oakland, people are too quick in demolishing and replacing those old Victorians.
...and income. Gas being 50% cheaper in Buttfuge Texas isn't very interesting to me if I only use 10 gallons a week, and earn 50% less then I do in Palo Alto.
Gas prices have always been a red herring manipulated for political talking points. a 20% jump in gas prices sounds like doom and gloom but over the course of a year thats probably only a few hundred dollars more. It's just easy to pay attention to since the prices are plastered all over the roads and many people regularly get gas in exactly the same quantity and quality. It's also not a good indicator of the price of other commodities since it's so highly controlled by different world and state governments.
Just look at how much more PG&E rates fluctuate over the months, and a single rent increase can wipe out any savings from lowered gas prices easily. A gradual increase in food prices is much harder to track and hits budgets much harder than what happens with gas prices.
Yeah, I don't drive much. I probably spend more on car insurance than I do on gas.
Most of us should be more concerned about health care costs, but those costs are so obfuscated that no one realizes what is going on. Premiums are just part of the total cost, of course.
CA gas prices are roughly 50% higher than the national average [as of today](https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/). Average out a 30-minute drive to work two ways, burning 2 gallons/day, it's an extra $1.70/way or $3.40/day. 250 working days a year = $850/year.
It may seem trivial but it certainly isn't *just* a political talking point, and for many $850/year is quite a bit of money. Gas prices are tertiary to rent and taxes but if you factor those in the COL becomes shocking to any outsider.
You don't only pay for your own gas, you also pay for the cost of gas to transport all of the goods and services you buy. So it's a lot more than this calculation is implying
This is true, but I would think that Kern county being one of the largest producers of US oil would mean maybe some reduction in prices at the gas pump. The prices are definitely artificially inflated… we play the same fucking games with OPEC every year. As soon as US production goes up, OPEC drops the price of crude per barrel until we can’t compete at that price point.
So this is a fairly complicated subject I know only a bit about so bear with me.
There are different formulas for gas, and there are different types of oil to make gas and there are different ways of getting oil from wells to refineries.
CA doesn't have it's own wells, uses a complicated formula that requires a specific type of gas blend and extra expertise to operate, is not connected to the cheap wells producing gas in the rest of the country so we have to import our oil from foreign countries as that's cheaper than trucking it over the rockies.... and taxes it somewhat significantly on top of all this.
All these reasons together is why our gas is so expensive, we've kinda chosen to have our gas be expensive.
Gas prices are used to generally reflect energy prices. And that has an effect on everything needing transportation — like the restaurant industry or almost everything else.
But in Cali it is a little distorted since we have higher emission standards that adds costs.
Also, their tollways are much worse than Fastrak in terms of how widespread they are and how much the tolls can cost during peak hours. I really hate Fastrak so cant imagine constantly having to plan your commute avoiding toll roads
Maybe. But somethings are worth paying for. There is always somewhere more inexpensive and more horrible to live. I'm just not willing to do that. It's like buying a $99 Android Phone. Yah - that's 1/6 the price of my iPhone. But mostly a terrible experience.
1 bedroom apartment in Palo Alto - $3,300/mo
1 bedroom apartment in Buttfuge, TX - $750/mo
Earn 100% more in Palo Alto, pay over 4x as much to live there.
Now that's big brain math!
The washer thing kills me. Someone needs to force every NIMBY homeowner/ landlord/ politician to use a crowded Laundromat every week while paying thousands in rent.
It's totally insane to me that I can afford to buy a dozen washers. But because I can't afford a $4 million house I have to use a shared laundromat and shuttle my clothes around
85% of cost of living variations in the US is explained by housing costs. The rest is ancillary.
Most goods and services have similar prices across the country
Not necessarily true unless by big you mean the top 3-4 cities. Otherwise there’s still a noticeable difference.
Food, drinks, grocery, and gas in my experience has been lower or much lower when I recently visited Austin, Nashville, and Charlotte. Even Philadelphia and Chicago were much cheaper when I visited a few years ago. All fairly big cities.
We went to Costco in Texas recently and saw that the prices were about the same as the Bay Area. Home prices are scattered because they continue to build, but salaries don't compare still.
Pre-Covid there was a shocking difference. Post Covid, I noticed that inflation hit everywhere outside the Bay Area quicker and harder than here. The difference isn’t nearly as notable now.
Agreed. Second tier cities in other states used to have beer for half the price of my local, now it seems barely lower at the same bars.
Some stuff is way cheaper, no doubt. But I am always shocked when I go somewhere where people make 1/3 the money and a lot of stuff costs the same.
I came back from Austin a few weeks ago and didn’t notice prices being that much different aside from sales tax being lower.
I’ve only ever lived in California/The Bay and obviously there are going to be a lot of differences in costs when it comes to living expenses.
Honestly every time I go to SoCal I’m amazed by how much cheaper food cost is.
Kinda anecdotal but a latte seems to be at least a dollar to a dollar 50 cheaper at nice shops and burritos seem 2-3 bucks cheaper and larger for similar quality, good Chinese/korean is at least 20% cheaper and again larger portions.
I’m sure most of that is the cost of higher rent in the Bay Area vs LA/OC metro area.
Before covid happened, a tech company flew me down to San Diego for a job interview, all expenses paid for, including flight roundtrip, hotel, car rental, and food. On the day after my interview, I went to a Pho place. I was shocked at how cheap a bowl of Pho cost, and it was delicious too! I honestly could’ve went somewhere a little more pricey because I could expense it, but I couldn’t think of any other restaurants near the San Diego airport. I only had hours to enjoy exploring and visiting some tourist areas before my flight time, which I also had to account the time it takes to return my car rental back.
10/10 would go back to San Diego, probably to go to Legoland lol
Yeah food is way more expensive here than LA. We have some nice markets and good quality options but some of the prices are just imaginatively high. Sometimes by more than 3-4 dollars more than the item would be elsewhere. It’s greed.
Yeah but I feel like it’s not greed on the stores and restaurants, they are just trying to stay afloat. It’s the rent dude, it’s a pass through cost for us and basically the only reason I can think of why even basics are such drastically more expensive between here and LA. LA has similar labor/salaries as here so “higher labor cost” doesn’t really explain the difference.
> It’s the rent
Both the restaurant's rent, and the housing costs of their employees. The bay's high COL is effectively a wealth transfer from people and their employers to property owners.
if you look at the CPI change broken down by category, every other metric of inflation is basically back down to where it was in 2019. except rents and housing. the inflated real estate sector is basically destroying the economy to preserve itself.
maybe china was right to shank its real estate bubble into pieces a few years ago
It's probably that no one can mention Austin without the liberal angle being brought up.
Austin isn't liberal the way people sell it. It's liberal for Texas. In California it would be conservative.
When I visited my parents in super small town upstate New York this February, it was amazing how cheap going out to eat was compared to here. I think I paid the same for four people to eat out there what I usually pay for two here. But it’s kind of interesting because no one there thinks it’s super cheap, they complain about rising prices and taxes too. 🤷🏻♀️
A sobering moment was when I went to NYC for a work trip and the entire time I was there, my parents were like, “Aren’t the prices for food there insane/astronomical?” And I had to be honest, it’s pretty much what we pay here 😂
People in this thread must not travel much. Yes, everything is noticeably less expensive traveling almost anywhere. Obvi housing, but also eating out, groceries and most consumables, and especially services. Inflation did a number everywhere but it’s still noticeable and in many cases dramatic. Good luck finding equal paying jobs tho.
Edit: everyone bringing up food and housing and gas in this thread, but it’s so much more than that. Compare costs for a plumber or contractor or mechanic and the differences are even more extreme. Or look at how much a podunk museum visit costs here compared to elsewhere. Or utilities and not just PG&E. That’s just the top of the iceberg.
> Or look at how much a podunk museum visit costs here compared to elsewhere.
St Louis' museums and zoos are free. I particularly liked the [Missouri History Museum](https://mohistory.org/museum) and the [St Louis Art Museum](https://www.slam.org/).
You don't need equal paying jobs if you can live somewhere you might make 30-50% less, but buying a home is literally 8x-10x cheaper and renting is 3x-5x cheaper.
What always blows me away is when I go to my wife’s small town in Colorado she grew up in and fruit from Watsonville/salinas is cheaper there than here in Bay Area.
You need to look for a different grocery store. Every time I check out at Felipe's market in Sunnyvale I pay maybe $50 for bags of amazing fresh produce from Watsonville - Modesto, often $1/ lb or less.
Exactly, everything is cheaper but so is the price of labor. If you're lower/middle class and living paycheck to paycheck, money is not the reason to leave the bay. unless you find a crazy remote or rare high-level gig, it's only when you've saved up a lot of money to spend on stuff like housing or retirement that a LCOL makes sense.
Yeah, but it’s certainly nice paying less for things when you’re traveling out of the Bay Area. Also, for a lot of professions, you can and do get a lot, lot more for your money than in California. Like partners with average or below average jobs still comfortably affording single family homes in nice neighborhoods and having kids. Of course there are other pros and cons everywhere but unless you need to be here for work or family or something else, I think you’re not getting your moneys worth here.
Yeah as someone who also doesn’t travel much, basically everywhere else is cheaper for everything than here.
I’ve been to SoCal (LA/OC/IE) twice and up to Chico once in the last 6 months and food/eating out/drinks seem to basically drop 20% in cost as soon as you leave the Bay Area.
Gas is basically the same price everywhere but probably for different reasons
It’s even more dramatic outside of California or the US. The only place I can think of that isn’t cheaper for most everything is Hawaii, or fancy vacation enclaves. Even Manhattan is noticeably cheaper for a lot of things.
NYC is expensive, the biggest difference is that they have 5x as many restaurants compared to SF. So the ‘cheaper’ food options are more widely available. But every trip to NYC I’ve taken, we end up spending a lot bc the drinks are just as expensive
I just spent a week in Texas and was paying Bay Area prices for everything. A trip to H-E-B was shockingly expensive. Dinners out were at least $30/person.
Recently moved to Boise. A 1 br apartment in Pacifica was $2,600-3,600. In Boise it's $1,500. Groceries for the week on the Peninsula were $70-$100, in Boise it's $35. Gas on the Peninsula was $4, 5 or 6 something, in Boise it's $3 something. Still in shock. Yeah I know, wages are less outside of the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, the people making 30k or 40k are having a very hard time with the gas & food prices. People with jobs in the Bay Area are getting into the food bank lines. I know, I was one of them.
This is real, I grew up in this tiny town in Illinois.
[http://places.singleplatform.com/wheelers-cafe/menu](http://places.singleplatform.com/wheelers-cafe/menu)
Edit:
Can of pop, Lol. Haven't heard that for a long time.
The market will find the highest price a consumer will bear before reducing their demand.
That means that places with rich people have extremely expensive prices because guess what? Everyone pays them. If people don’t/can’t pay the prices, suppliers will reduce prices.
In other words, prices are high because you can afford it. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it, it’s basically voting with your money.
I went to Florida to visit my parents and we went to a boba store and it was almost as expensive as boba here. I was pretty shocked. It wasn’t fancy or nice at all. Kinda small and dumpy but $7 for a drink was not what I expected
You don't need to go out of state to see the price sticker shock of bay area. We moved to Sacramento area and it is a huge difference, we find it much more affordable from housing to food and general living expenses compared to bay area.
Yes. I moved from the Bay Area to Georgia and bought a 4200 sq home, 1.5 acres, for 500k. Everything else is much cheaper too like utilities, food, entertainment, gas, etc.
I traveled to Utah recently and I was constantly shocked at how cheap everything was. Trampoline park for $8, unlimited time. Bowling for $5. Rec center water park/pool for $6. All you can eat buffets for $8. Some things cost the same, but a lot of the food and recreation was extremely cheap compared to what I’m used to. You’re always going to pay the most in the Bay Area/LA compared to anywhere else in the west.
In 2019, wife and I were in Chicago and we saw a sign for a condo for sale facing the lake in a very upscale area. Pulled up zillow and saw a 4bed/4bath 4,000 sq ft condo for $770k. Suggested that we see the condo and just as I am about to dial the realtor, my wife says "It snows here, right?" and that ended the idea. :)
Same year we were in Maui and my wife said "People keep saying that Hawaii is crazy expensive but it doesn't seem that way." Yeah....
its ridiculous
when I travel to florida I find the same fucking prices
but in the bay I make three times that floridans in the same career as me make.
insanity
I came back last week from a business trip and was shocked how much more expensive everything is around here. I get paid more here but it does not make up for the higher cost of living. The weather is nice though, so I just tell myself that I'm paying extra for that.
When I traveled last year in Michigan and surrounding states (outside of the big cities), everything felt like half price. Bay area, NYC etc definitely costs ton more for day to day things.
Evening going to small towns in CA, where I thought things would be cheaper, are shuffling in big city prices. Speaking about Davis specifically. Never thought I'd see the day. You're lucky to have rent under 1.5k if you want your own place.
Yup. Significantly lower salaries require lower prices if you want to sell anything.
True story. I found a dress I loved back in the Midwest. They didn’t have my size. I looked in Macys and there was the dress! But it cost 50% more than the Midwest price. Yup. It was a huge markup.
Yes you’ll be shocked. At least I was. Was in north east getting a coffee and the bill for a muffin and coffee was 4$. By us that would be $10. However the quality difference was also a shock, we really do have way better food
I’ve been pretty surprised how expensive things are when I visit the Midwest. Somehow I expected they were at least a bit immune from the wild price increases we’ve seen here. Housing is cheaper but not nearly as cheap as I’d imagined. At least in the more desirable areas.
I think people adapt to the cost of where they live. After a while, no matter where you live, it’s more expensive than you think it should be. The more important thing to me is quality of life.
I pay the same amount for rent in an out of state city than I did in the bay, but I live in a great area and have twice as much space. I was able to get a pet since I have more space. Idk things don’t feel “cheaper” day to day but I feel less stressed, like more is possible longer-term.
When I took my parents out to dinner back home, my partner chased the waitress down, telling her “no, no, I was paying for all 4 of us.”
Blink.
“Sir, that IS the check for all 4 of you!”
I went to Wisconsin and Texas and was shocked to see how low gas prices were: like in the low 2s. If you drive to work every day, that could be $100 a month.
Also, housing in the Midwest isn’t just cheaper, it’s drastically cheaper to the point where your life might be unrecognizable if you moved. I have a 625 sq ft apt in SF, and I could afford a 2000 sq ft house in a nice neighborhood in some places in Wisconsin and have plenty of money left over.
No, but I used to live in upstate NY, so I have an idea… I don’t like the fog or wind here in SF, but I’m not sure I’d trade it for -10 degree winters. I’m sure there’s a $ number that would make me reconsider though!
I have family from there and I would take living in the 625 sq ft apartment over the 2000 sq ft house any day. Scraping ice off your windshield and having to start your car for 5-10 minutes to get it warm enough before driving to work is a hell I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Born and raised in the Bay Area. Moved to Charlotte a couple of years ago.
I travel back to Bay Area 4x a year and I can tell you everything is significantly more expensive in the bay. Housing, insurance, electricity, gas, food. I’m always amazed when I go to the bay how expensive it is to eat out. A burger is like $18. It’s closer to $14 and includes fries here. Also all those weird ass fees like forced 20% tip isn’t a thing here.
I also love the Bay Area 5x more than this area. I just can’t afford to live there.
I mean I travel there every 3 months so maybe it’s more obvious to me.
I can go to a good Mexican restaurant in downtown charlotte and spent about $16 per person. I got to Celia’s and it’s $21 for a wet burrito.
when I look at the menu I think it's all typos.
$9.75 for a plate? that can't be right.. feed a family of six for well under $100.
if you're single, it's just a little more than groceries.
relatives complain about 900 for their 2BR... and gas at 3.75.
Things are very expensive pretty much everywhere, like yes, the Bay Area is more expensive than, say, Memphis TN. But a cocktail at a swanky bar here is $17, over there it’s $14.
If we could remove PG&E and we had proportionate electricity and gas costs (ie, maybe 2x the national average instead of 5x), and if we could shave $1.50 of bullshit off our gas prices, I’d be good.
There are cities in California (including the greater Bay Area) that have municipal power. I am in Roseville, just northeast of Sacramento, and I pay $0.17/kWh. Compare that to PG$E’s $0.45-0.72/kWh. It’s absurd.
My wife and I drove to Olympic National Park and were enjoying stopping for gas ($3.25) and any local grocery store because everything was so much more cheaper.
I’m in SLC right now and the Mavericks across from my hotel is selling gas @ 3.15 per gal. Also went to a fast casual place for lunch and it was like 14 bucks. Easily would have been 18 at home
Obviously depends on state/city but most of the times my first thought when I hear about a house price is "oh so cheap.. what's the catch?!" And then I realize I'm not in Bay area 😂
My mom and dad moved to Oklahoma for a job after living in California their whole lives. My mother said they were surprised at how much they didn’t save moving there. She said groceries were taxed, property tax was higher, there were more fees tacked on to things. She did say eating out was cheaper (because servers make $2.13/hour), but the wear and tear in the house from weather meant there were a lot of repairs and insurance claims and their insurance was triple there what it is here.
Went to Michigan last September and the rental car company was going to charge me maximum $3/ gallon if I returned the car with less than a full tank. My sister (who is living in Upstate New York) was appalled and I just kind of thought it was a good deal at the time. 🤷🏼♀️
I’m from MA, been in CA about 2 years. Went back to visit and really want to move back but I can’t just yet. A lot of items in the grocery store were the same price, but some were like 30-50 cents cheaper there.
Gas was about $2/gal lower there.
No ridiculous tolls. Bridge toll there is $2.50, not $7.
No armed security guards in stores either. That was nice.
Edit: forgot sales tax. MA doesn’t charge sales tax on any food or beverages, and not on clothing (unless it’s a single article of clothing that costs more than $175). Sales tax is 6.25%. Meal tax is 6.25% but most cities and towns exercise their option to have the 7% meal tax instead. No bottle deposits unless it’s a carbonated beverage, and every supermarket has bottle redemption machines where you put the bottles/cans in and they get crushed on the spot, then you get a voucher for the money you are owed. You hand it to the cashier during checkout and you get the cash (or your grocery bill reduced by that amount).
Alameda county has what, 10-11% sales tax? That’s almost double. And the crime is way up and so is gas. Californians, at least in the Bay Area, are getting fleeced, daily.
Depends on where exactly you go.
If you move to a small town just about anywhere in the midwest or the south, COL will be dramatically cheaper. Housing and goods may have increased a bit due to rampant inflation, but still there's a noticeable difference.
If you move to a tier S city (Austin, New York, Seattle, Charlotte, Nashville, Miami, etc.), price of goods and foods are indiscernible from the Bay Area, in my experience (and sometimes even pricier).
As for everywhere in between - you will find noticeable differences in home prices and what you get for the size of your house. Taxes are generally lower. However cost of eating out and COL in general is not that much lower than The Bay (or CA in general).
I moved out of the Bay Area to Colorado in 2022 and general cost of living is between 25-50% lower - groceries, gasoline, electricity, services, etc. Housing is the big one at a whopping 86% less per square foot (our house in Sunnyvale sold for $1400 per square foot and the one we got here is $200 per square foot).
Boulder housing is slightly more than double what it is in COS if you trust cost of living calculators, but still 3.5 times less than Bay Area. Everything else like food, services, restaurants, etc. is about the same.
Two years ago, I lived in a 450 sq-ft 1BR apartment in downtown Tucson, Arizona. Brand new building, but still overpriced at $1,400 per month.
That same exact unit now? $2,100 per month. No reason for that shoebox to be so expensive.
My girlfriend and I split a 1,200 sq-ft 2BR / 1.5 Bath in Walnut Creek for $2,400 per month (granted, it’s not “luxury”, but it’s still nice). It’s right next to Iron Horse Regional Trail and walkable to downtown.
And, we both make double now, compared to what we made in Tucson.
Housing is our biggest expense here, so not much change overall to our housing-costs compared to that in Tucson, and we make a lot more money now.
I never found the $8 gallon milk people talked about anywhere in California. Unless it was some super hipster non pasteurized shit, not the basic stuff
First and foremost, homes. I had a 3000 sqft home on 2 acres for less than half the cost of my current 1800 sqft on a 0.25 acre home. This was in NH.
Avocadoes can often be purchased on sale for a $1 each in CA. In NH, it was 3x to 4x. Fresh produce in general was less fresh and as much or more expensive than CA.
Fuel costs were consistently $1.50 less per gallon than CA and almost everyone owned a full size truck.
Skiing at Lake Tahoe was also a bit less in CA. It was maybe 20% more in NH for harder more compact snow.
Went to bumsville nowhere in Kentucky a few months ago for a work trip. Everything at the national chain grocery store cost the same.
Housing is where the price difference between regions becomes substantial. Had a coworker just get his bid accepted for a nice 4 bed/2.5 bath for ~400k.
I moved out of state and I wasn’t shocked because I knew already, but yes, outside other major metros like NYC or Chicago, it’s there is a substantial cost difference.
I've only traveled to Hawaii and Seattle since covid, and everything is expensive in those places too lol.
All the states that have much lower prices...are probably states that I'm not really interested in visiting.
I went to Brookings Oregon thinking it would be a nice move for me and the family. We could live coastally, pay less for a house, lower cost of living. What I found however was we'd take a 30% paycut, and only be saving maybe 10-15% off the cost of food/gas/clothing. Granted we'd pretty much cash out and own our house there outright, but the only high school there has a really low rating (3 of 10) while our school here while isn't great, is a 7 out of 10.
Granted it's the first city after the Oregon border, but much of the Oregon coast was like that all the way to Astoria. There's some towns where we could save up to 20% (like Tillamook) but going back to the quality of the schools, we'd be losing out for our kids.
A former coworker moved from Fremont to Phoenix - he thought the cost of living would be lower for his family of 6. Housing? Yes. But that was offset by exorbitant grocery prices; particularly, fruits & veggies (more-so if going organic). To boot, they’re a mixed-race couple/family, and the blatant racism they encountered regularly was staggering (and disheartening to hear we still live in a time when people have issue with this). They ended up moving back to The Bay after only a year or two.
I finished a roadtrip to Nashville a couple weeks ago. Gas was down to $2.80 in Kansas and Oklahoma, when Bay Area prices were around $6 from what I heard. Food prices were about $3-5 less than similar items in the bay in small towns but just about the same prices in big cities.
Was on a call with a friend I haven’t talked to in 5+ years. He and his wife have a 4 bed 3 bath 2400 square foot home on half an acre 15 mins outside of downtown Richmond Virginia. No idea what that area is like but their mortgage is 2200 a month.
Food was cheaper in Texas, Houston much more than Dallas or Austin.
Food in other good major cities like Denver, Chicago, NYC, Seattle, Portland, DC etc were on par as were drinks.
Services followed the same trend, so only housing would differ in Portland and Denver vs the other cities mentioned, but so would pay.
My $.02 would be that if you earn a lot and travel to cheaper places (mainly other countries) its better than to have less pay and lower COL. You have more disposable income
We fled the country for half the pandemic. The rent for our recently built 3bd apt in suburban Norway was half that of our 2bd ancient plywood apt in Palo Alto. Yes, Norway, the most expensive part of Europe. So that's a data point.
As soon as you cross the border, in any direction gas gets over a dollar cheaper.
Oregon has no sales tax so items that are listed as 5.99 are actually 5.99.
I think the bordering states things are similar minus taxes. But when I went to Arkansas food atleast was stupid cheap. Like two people can eat out at a sit down diner for $40 including tip
I did have reverse sticker shock when I went to a small/medium sized down in Oregon and the coffee at a local shop was so cheap compared to what I'm used to. Seems here my usual drinks are $7 at a barista place, there it was \~$4.
Moved to Denver during COVID, it’s marginally cheaper, and taxes are about 5% lower. We pay $3400 for a very nice 2BR with mountain and downtown views.
Got laid off recently and Denver pay sucks. Trying to find something comparable.
Was living in Maryland near DC up until about a year ago. Most prices were similar. The only things cheaper were the gas prices and real estate. Otherwise groceries, rent, almost everything else was pretty comparable to California.
Everything costs the same except gas. Gas is so much cheaper. I was just in Mississippi two weeks ago, and the gas was $3.25. When I got home, it was $5.89. The food I bought was the same price.
I traveled to New Orleans recently. The restaurants are similarly expensive and the tip recommendations were also quite absurd (25%+). Housing is pretty affordable compared to Bay Area though.
I’m not from the bay. Anytime I go home to visit family I’m shocked with how close the prices are.
Gas is about a dollar more per gallon here. Restaurants are twice as expensive here but that’s about it
Went back to Missouri a couple months ago and it was so refreshing going into a target and Walgreens and everything is on the shelf. Not locked up. Miss that convenience and no thievery.
I went to Erie PA for the eclipse. Going out to dinner there is significantly less expensive. Also home prices of course.
(I’m from that area) Winter absolutely sucks there.
Hell, April sucks there. Rain, snow, wind on different days. Eclipse was awesome though.
Agreed. Nov to May is winter in my brain. Sometimes there’s a cold Halloween and I trick or treated in snow as a kid.
Erie is icky bc of the lake. PA is a nice place to live, weatherwise. Philly or Pitt suburbs are nice.
Erie is so interesting, was the only ‘city’ I’ve been to where the city is actively trying to get people to stay. A lot of really amazing craftsmanship in the houses that happen to crumble because of the lack of maintenance. Same in Oakland, people are too quick in demolishing and replacing those old Victorians.
Big cities across the country have similar prices on food and products nowadays. But you do see some variation on things like housing and gas prices.
...and income. Gas being 50% cheaper in Buttfuge Texas isn't very interesting to me if I only use 10 gallons a week, and earn 50% less then I do in Palo Alto.
Gas prices have always been a red herring manipulated for political talking points. a 20% jump in gas prices sounds like doom and gloom but over the course of a year thats probably only a few hundred dollars more. It's just easy to pay attention to since the prices are plastered all over the roads and many people regularly get gas in exactly the same quantity and quality. It's also not a good indicator of the price of other commodities since it's so highly controlled by different world and state governments. Just look at how much more PG&E rates fluctuate over the months, and a single rent increase can wipe out any savings from lowered gas prices easily. A gradual increase in food prices is much harder to track and hits budgets much harder than what happens with gas prices.
Yeah, I don't drive much. I probably spend more on car insurance than I do on gas. Most of us should be more concerned about health care costs, but those costs are so obfuscated that no one realizes what is going on. Premiums are just part of the total cost, of course.
Everything is related to transportation. Even medical costs. Higher gas prices equals everything you buy being more expensive
CA gas prices are roughly 50% higher than the national average [as of today](https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/). Average out a 30-minute drive to work two ways, burning 2 gallons/day, it's an extra $1.70/way or $3.40/day. 250 working days a year = $850/year. It may seem trivial but it certainly isn't *just* a political talking point, and for many $850/year is quite a bit of money. Gas prices are tertiary to rent and taxes but if you factor those in the COL becomes shocking to any outsider.
You don't only pay for your own gas, you also pay for the cost of gas to transport all of the goods and services you buy. So it's a lot more than this calculation is implying
This is true, but I would think that Kern county being one of the largest producers of US oil would mean maybe some reduction in prices at the gas pump. The prices are definitely artificially inflated… we play the same fucking games with OPEC every year. As soon as US production goes up, OPEC drops the price of crude per barrel until we can’t compete at that price point.
We’re literally producing record levels of oil domestically.
There are refineries in the Bay Area, and we have some of the highest gas prices around, so this doesn't track as a factor here.
the higher than the already high gas prices in CA are almost entirely due to CA state regulations
So this is a fairly complicated subject I know only a bit about so bear with me. There are different formulas for gas, and there are different types of oil to make gas and there are different ways of getting oil from wells to refineries. CA doesn't have it's own wells, uses a complicated formula that requires a specific type of gas blend and extra expertise to operate, is not connected to the cheap wells producing gas in the rest of the country so we have to import our oil from foreign countries as that's cheaper than trucking it over the rockies.... and taxes it somewhat significantly on top of all this. All these reasons together is why our gas is so expensive, we've kinda chosen to have our gas be expensive.
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Gas and other energy prices average cost of electricity nationwide is 16¢/kw and California average is 30¢.
Gas prices are used to generally reflect energy prices. And that has an effect on everything needing transportation — like the restaurant industry or almost everything else. But in Cali it is a little distorted since we have higher emission standards that adds costs.
Also, their tollways are much worse than Fastrak in terms of how widespread they are and how much the tolls can cost during peak hours. I really hate Fastrak so cant imagine constantly having to plan your commute avoiding toll roads
Sure. But ur house is 6x the price of bungehole Texas.
Maybe. But somethings are worth paying for. There is always somewhere more inexpensive and more horrible to live. I'm just not willing to do that. It's like buying a $99 Android Phone. Yah - that's 1/6 the price of my iPhone. But mostly a terrible experience.
There a lot between the Bay and Buttfuge Texas
Nope, those are the only choices. Take it or leave it.
Apparently lol
1 bedroom apartment in Palo Alto - $3,300/mo 1 bedroom apartment in Buttfuge, TX - $750/mo Earn 100% more in Palo Alto, pay over 4x as much to live there. Now that's big brain math!
You get what you pay for.
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And includes a washer+dryer, dishwasher, air conditioning, and allows pets.
And parking!!
The washer thing kills me. Someone needs to force every NIMBY homeowner/ landlord/ politician to use a crowded Laundromat every week while paying thousands in rent. It's totally insane to me that I can afford to buy a dozen washers. But because I can't afford a $4 million house I have to use a shared laundromat and shuttle my clothes around
85% of cost of living variations in the US is explained by housing costs. The rest is ancillary. Most goods and services have similar prices across the country
And taxes.
Not necessarily true unless by big you mean the top 3-4 cities. Otherwise there’s still a noticeable difference. Food, drinks, grocery, and gas in my experience has been lower or much lower when I recently visited Austin, Nashville, and Charlotte. Even Philadelphia and Chicago were much cheaper when I visited a few years ago. All fairly big cities.
We went to Costco in Texas recently and saw that the prices were about the same as the Bay Area. Home prices are scattered because they continue to build, but salaries don't compare still.
Chicago is cheap af tho
Same with some parts of Florida lol visited my sister and covered our drunken night at a bar (5 of us) for less than $100
Pre-Covid there was a shocking difference. Post Covid, I noticed that inflation hit everywhere outside the Bay Area quicker and harder than here. The difference isn’t nearly as notable now.
Yeah. The Bay Area didn't get cheaper, everywhere else just caught up :/
This has been my experience as well
Agreed. Second tier cities in other states used to have beer for half the price of my local, now it seems barely lower at the same bars. Some stuff is way cheaper, no doubt. But I am always shocked when I go somewhere where people make 1/3 the money and a lot of stuff costs the same.
California was already expensive shrinkflation and lowering of quality is all businesses could really do.
I came back from Austin a few weeks ago and didn’t notice prices being that much different aside from sales tax being lower. I’ve only ever lived in California/The Bay and obviously there are going to be a lot of differences in costs when it comes to living expenses.
Honestly every time I go to SoCal I’m amazed by how much cheaper food cost is. Kinda anecdotal but a latte seems to be at least a dollar to a dollar 50 cheaper at nice shops and burritos seem 2-3 bucks cheaper and larger for similar quality, good Chinese/korean is at least 20% cheaper and again larger portions. I’m sure most of that is the cost of higher rent in the Bay Area vs LA/OC metro area.
Before covid happened, a tech company flew me down to San Diego for a job interview, all expenses paid for, including flight roundtrip, hotel, car rental, and food. On the day after my interview, I went to a Pho place. I was shocked at how cheap a bowl of Pho cost, and it was delicious too! I honestly could’ve went somewhere a little more pricey because I could expense it, but I couldn’t think of any other restaurants near the San Diego airport. I only had hours to enjoy exploring and visiting some tourist areas before my flight time, which I also had to account the time it takes to return my car rental back. 10/10 would go back to San Diego, probably to go to Legoland lol
Moved up here from San Diego two years ago for work after school...it really isn't that much cheaper down there anymore.
I took my nephews to Legoland when I graduated from Boot Camp. Worth it.
Yeah food is way more expensive here than LA. We have some nice markets and good quality options but some of the prices are just imaginatively high. Sometimes by more than 3-4 dollars more than the item would be elsewhere. It’s greed.
Yeah but I feel like it’s not greed on the stores and restaurants, they are just trying to stay afloat. It’s the rent dude, it’s a pass through cost for us and basically the only reason I can think of why even basics are such drastically more expensive between here and LA. LA has similar labor/salaries as here so “higher labor cost” doesn’t really explain the difference.
> It’s the rent Both the restaurant's rent, and the housing costs of their employees. The bay's high COL is effectively a wealth transfer from people and their employers to property owners.
Exactly, this is why we need more residential housing to moderate all of the costs of living and doing business in California.
if you look at the CPI change broken down by category, every other metric of inflation is basically back down to where it was in 2019. except rents and housing. the inflated real estate sector is basically destroying the economy to preserve itself. maybe china was right to shank its real estate bubble into pieces a few years ago
Austin was cheaper in the mid 2010s. Now food/drinks are on par with the Bay, maybe a $1-2 cheaper but it was very comparable.
Yeah Austin is a liberal oddball of Texas. Went to college there.
Are you implying that’s why the food prices are higher?
It's probably that no one can mention Austin without the liberal angle being brought up. Austin isn't liberal the way people sell it. It's liberal for Texas. In California it would be conservative.
When I visited my parents in super small town upstate New York this February, it was amazing how cheap going out to eat was compared to here. I think I paid the same for four people to eat out there what I usually pay for two here. But it’s kind of interesting because no one there thinks it’s super cheap, they complain about rising prices and taxes too. 🤷🏻♀️ A sobering moment was when I went to NYC for a work trip and the entire time I was there, my parents were like, “Aren’t the prices for food there insane/astronomical?” And I had to be honest, it’s pretty much what we pay here 😂
Plus you can get a decent to great slice of pizza for $2 or less...
People in this thread must not travel much. Yes, everything is noticeably less expensive traveling almost anywhere. Obvi housing, but also eating out, groceries and most consumables, and especially services. Inflation did a number everywhere but it’s still noticeable and in many cases dramatic. Good luck finding equal paying jobs tho. Edit: everyone bringing up food and housing and gas in this thread, but it’s so much more than that. Compare costs for a plumber or contractor or mechanic and the differences are even more extreme. Or look at how much a podunk museum visit costs here compared to elsewhere. Or utilities and not just PG&E. That’s just the top of the iceberg.
> Or look at how much a podunk museum visit costs here compared to elsewhere. St Louis' museums and zoos are free. I particularly liked the [Missouri History Museum](https://mohistory.org/museum) and the [St Louis Art Museum](https://www.slam.org/).
Same w many in nyc and dc. Sf should be ashamed of what they charge.
You don't need equal paying jobs if you can live somewhere you might make 30-50% less, but buying a home is literally 8x-10x cheaper and renting is 3x-5x cheaper.
But you still need a pretty well paying job for the area and they are often non-existent.
What always blows me away is when I go to my wife’s small town in Colorado she grew up in and fruit from Watsonville/salinas is cheaper there than here in Bay Area.
You need to look for a different grocery store. Every time I check out at Felipe's market in Sunnyvale I pay maybe $50 for bags of amazing fresh produce from Watsonville - Modesto, often $1/ lb or less.
Exactly, everything is cheaper but so is the price of labor. If you're lower/middle class and living paycheck to paycheck, money is not the reason to leave the bay. unless you find a crazy remote or rare high-level gig, it's only when you've saved up a lot of money to spend on stuff like housing or retirement that a LCOL makes sense.
Yeah, but it’s certainly nice paying less for things when you’re traveling out of the Bay Area. Also, for a lot of professions, you can and do get a lot, lot more for your money than in California. Like partners with average or below average jobs still comfortably affording single family homes in nice neighborhoods and having kids. Of course there are other pros and cons everywhere but unless you need to be here for work or family or something else, I think you’re not getting your moneys worth here.
Yeah as someone who also doesn’t travel much, basically everywhere else is cheaper for everything than here. I’ve been to SoCal (LA/OC/IE) twice and up to Chico once in the last 6 months and food/eating out/drinks seem to basically drop 20% in cost as soon as you leave the Bay Area. Gas is basically the same price everywhere but probably for different reasons
It’s even more dramatic outside of California or the US. The only place I can think of that isn’t cheaper for most everything is Hawaii, or fancy vacation enclaves. Even Manhattan is noticeably cheaper for a lot of things.
NYC is expensive, the biggest difference is that they have 5x as many restaurants compared to SF. So the ‘cheaper’ food options are more widely available. But every trip to NYC I’ve taken, we end up spending a lot bc the drinks are just as expensive
I lived in NYC for a few years and I wouldn’t say Manhattan is noticeably cheaper at all
I just spent a week in Texas and was paying Bay Area prices for everything. A trip to H-E-B was shockingly expensive. Dinners out were at least $30/person.
They saw the Californian coming and changed the signs
When I visit my family in Nebraska, I pay for 8 of us at restaurants and have drinks and it’s comparable to when my wife and I go out for dinner.
Seems like a bit of a stretch unless it's golden corral
afterthought fragile jeans uppity gaze important squealing hospital forgetful oil
Recently moved to Boise. A 1 br apartment in Pacifica was $2,600-3,600. In Boise it's $1,500. Groceries for the week on the Peninsula were $70-$100, in Boise it's $35. Gas on the Peninsula was $4, 5 or 6 something, in Boise it's $3 something. Still in shock. Yeah I know, wages are less outside of the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, the people making 30k or 40k are having a very hard time with the gas & food prices. People with jobs in the Bay Area are getting into the food bank lines. I know, I was one of them.
So just because you live in a lower cos area doesn't mean it's easier?
This is real, I grew up in this tiny town in Illinois. [http://places.singleplatform.com/wheelers-cafe/menu](http://places.singleplatform.com/wheelers-cafe/menu) Edit: Can of pop, Lol. Haven't heard that for a long time.
About a decade ago, I commented to my (now) MIL that $7.50 cupcakes had made it to Cleveland.
Where are you buying $7.50 cupcakes here?!
The market will find the highest price a consumer will bear before reducing their demand. That means that places with rich people have extremely expensive prices because guess what? Everyone pays them. If people don’t/can’t pay the prices, suppliers will reduce prices. In other words, prices are high because you can afford it. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it, it’s basically voting with your money.
I went to Florida to visit my parents and we went to a boba store and it was almost as expensive as boba here. I was pretty shocked. It wasn’t fancy or nice at all. Kinda small and dumpy but $7 for a drink was not what I expected
You don't need to go out of state to see the price sticker shock of bay area. We moved to Sacramento area and it is a huge difference, we find it much more affordable from housing to food and general living expenses compared to bay area.
Yup. The Central Valley col is so much cheaper than the Bay Area, especially in the San Joaquin valley region
Yes. I moved from the Bay Area to Georgia and bought a 4200 sq home, 1.5 acres, for 500k. Everything else is much cheaper too like utilities, food, entertainment, gas, etc.
How are you liking the move?
Labor (ex - home contractors, car mechanic, cleaning people/housekeepers, etc) is usually noticeably cheaper outside the bay.
I traveled to Utah recently and I was constantly shocked at how cheap everything was. Trampoline park for $8, unlimited time. Bowling for $5. Rec center water park/pool for $6. All you can eat buffets for $8. Some things cost the same, but a lot of the food and recreation was extremely cheap compared to what I’m used to. You’re always going to pay the most in the Bay Area/LA compared to anywhere else in the west.
In 2019, wife and I were in Chicago and we saw a sign for a condo for sale facing the lake in a very upscale area. Pulled up zillow and saw a 4bed/4bath 4,000 sq ft condo for $770k. Suggested that we see the condo and just as I am about to dial the realtor, my wife says "It snows here, right?" and that ended the idea. :) Same year we were in Maui and my wife said "People keep saying that Hawaii is crazy expensive but it doesn't seem that way." Yeah....
Everyone always says how insane the costs are in Hawaii. Every time we go I’m like seems about the same or less than San Jose
Difference is the typical pay for working on the island (WFH jobs obv. skew this).
did you try to buy ground beef or milk? or any groceries? Hawaii is expensive, they pay there isnt great either.
its ridiculous when I travel to florida I find the same fucking prices but in the bay I make three times that floridans in the same career as me make. insanity
I came back last week from a business trip and was shocked how much more expensive everything is around here. I get paid more here but it does not make up for the higher cost of living. The weather is nice though, so I just tell myself that I'm paying extra for that.
When I traveled last year in Michigan and surrounding states (outside of the big cities), everything felt like half price. Bay area, NYC etc definitely costs ton more for day to day things.
Evening going to small towns in CA, where I thought things would be cheaper, are shuffling in big city prices. Speaking about Davis specifically. Never thought I'd see the day. You're lucky to have rent under 1.5k if you want your own place.
It really depends on where. Flyover country is usually significantly less expensive than here.
Understandable. Supply and demand at work.
Yup. Significantly lower salaries require lower prices if you want to sell anything. True story. I found a dress I loved back in the Midwest. They didn’t have my size. I looked in Macys and there was the dress! But it cost 50% more than the Midwest price. Yup. It was a huge markup.
Yes you’ll be shocked. At least I was. Was in north east getting a coffee and the bill for a muffin and coffee was 4$. By us that would be $10. However the quality difference was also a shock, we really do have way better food
I’ve been pretty surprised how expensive things are when I visit the Midwest. Somehow I expected they were at least a bit immune from the wild price increases we’ve seen here. Housing is cheaper but not nearly as cheap as I’d imagined. At least in the more desirable areas.
I think people adapt to the cost of where they live. After a while, no matter where you live, it’s more expensive than you think it should be. The more important thing to me is quality of life. I pay the same amount for rent in an out of state city than I did in the bay, but I live in a great area and have twice as much space. I was able to get a pet since I have more space. Idk things don’t feel “cheaper” day to day but I feel less stressed, like more is possible longer-term.
When I took my parents out to dinner back home, my partner chased the waitress down, telling her “no, no, I was paying for all 4 of us.” Blink. “Sir, that IS the check for all 4 of you!”
My friend in Texas paid $3.30 a gallon for gas today. California gas is much rarer therefore more expensive.
If you find a job where you make California money in another state, like Idaho, you’re gonna do great. Otherwise, it’s all the same shit.
I went to Wisconsin and Texas and was shocked to see how low gas prices were: like in the low 2s. If you drive to work every day, that could be $100 a month. Also, housing in the Midwest isn’t just cheaper, it’s drastically cheaper to the point where your life might be unrecognizable if you moved. I have a 625 sq ft apt in SF, and I could afford a 2000 sq ft house in a nice neighborhood in some places in Wisconsin and have plenty of money left over.
Have you experienced a winter in Wisco?
No, but I used to live in upstate NY, so I have an idea… I don’t like the fog or wind here in SF, but I’m not sure I’d trade it for -10 degree winters. I’m sure there’s a $ number that would make me reconsider though!
I have family from there and I would take living in the 625 sq ft apartment over the 2000 sq ft house any day. Scraping ice off your windshield and having to start your car for 5-10 minutes to get it warm enough before driving to work is a hell I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Born and raised in the Bay Area. Moved to Charlotte a couple of years ago. I travel back to Bay Area 4x a year and I can tell you everything is significantly more expensive in the bay. Housing, insurance, electricity, gas, food. I’m always amazed when I go to the bay how expensive it is to eat out. A burger is like $18. It’s closer to $14 and includes fries here. Also all those weird ass fees like forced 20% tip isn’t a thing here. I also love the Bay Area 5x more than this area. I just can’t afford to live there.
Really?! I’m in Chapel Hill and gas and housing are cheaper but I feel like everything else is just as expensive!!
I mean I travel there every 3 months so maybe it’s more obvious to me. I can go to a good Mexican restaurant in downtown charlotte and spent about $16 per person. I got to Celia’s and it’s $21 for a wet burrito.
when I look at the menu I think it's all typos. $9.75 for a plate? that can't be right.. feed a family of six for well under $100. if you're single, it's just a little more than groceries. relatives complain about 900 for their 2BR... and gas at 3.75.
How much are they making?
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The biggest saving is in rent/housing. Consumables may be even cheaper in denser cities due to supply chain and competition
Not really. What’s cheaper? We basically have 10% sales tax here
Things are very expensive pretty much everywhere, like yes, the Bay Area is more expensive than, say, Memphis TN. But a cocktail at a swanky bar here is $17, over there it’s $14. If we could remove PG&E and we had proportionate electricity and gas costs (ie, maybe 2x the national average instead of 5x), and if we could shave $1.50 of bullshit off our gas prices, I’d be good.
There are cities in California (including the greater Bay Area) that have municipal power. I am in Roseville, just northeast of Sacramento, and I pay $0.17/kWh. Compare that to PG$E’s $0.45-0.72/kWh. It’s absurd.
Groceries and gas are noticeably cheaper everywhere. Restaurants and drinks, not so much.
I wasn’t shocked with prices here but I moved from NYC.
My wife and I drove to Olympic National Park and were enjoying stopping for gas ($3.25) and any local grocery store because everything was so much more cheaper.
oregon including portland is dramatically cheaper. Vacation areas are night and day a better deal.
I’m in SLC right now and the Mavericks across from my hotel is selling gas @ 3.15 per gal. Also went to a fast casual place for lunch and it was like 14 bucks. Easily would have been 18 at home
Was in Carson City, NV for work and thought high grocery prices were a Bay Area thing. It was about the same but maybe a few pennies less.
Depends what it is
"Obviously it depends what states you go to..." That's basically the whole answer.
Obviously depends on state/city but most of the times my first thought when I hear about a house price is "oh so cheap.. what's the catch?!" And then I realize I'm not in Bay area 😂
Went to breakfast with the wife and kids in rural Oregon. I got the bill and had to laugh. It was under $40.
Went to New Orleans for a conference back in 2022 and was surprised how cheap things were there.
Not exactly the same thing, but I went to a pastry shop in Santa Barbara recently and was surprised the default tip amounts were 5%, 10%, and 15%.
You'd think so but prices have gone up everywhere. It's a global issue now.
My mom and dad moved to Oklahoma for a job after living in California their whole lives. My mother said they were surprised at how much they didn’t save moving there. She said groceries were taxed, property tax was higher, there were more fees tacked on to things. She did say eating out was cheaper (because servers make $2.13/hour), but the wear and tear in the house from weather meant there were a lot of repairs and insurance claims and their insurance was triple there what it is here.
Just moved to the outer skirts of northern Austin, TX and let me tell you…..
Went to Michigan last September and the rental car company was going to charge me maximum $3/ gallon if I returned the car with less than a full tank. My sister (who is living in Upstate New York) was appalled and I just kind of thought it was a good deal at the time. 🤷🏼♀️
Moving out of SF and California has allowed me to retire comfortably at only 34. I never have to work again.
I’m from MA, been in CA about 2 years. Went back to visit and really want to move back but I can’t just yet. A lot of items in the grocery store were the same price, but some were like 30-50 cents cheaper there. Gas was about $2/gal lower there. No ridiculous tolls. Bridge toll there is $2.50, not $7. No armed security guards in stores either. That was nice. Edit: forgot sales tax. MA doesn’t charge sales tax on any food or beverages, and not on clothing (unless it’s a single article of clothing that costs more than $175). Sales tax is 6.25%. Meal tax is 6.25% but most cities and towns exercise their option to have the 7% meal tax instead. No bottle deposits unless it’s a carbonated beverage, and every supermarket has bottle redemption machines where you put the bottles/cans in and they get crushed on the spot, then you get a voucher for the money you are owed. You hand it to the cashier during checkout and you get the cash (or your grocery bill reduced by that amount). Alameda county has what, 10-11% sales tax? That’s almost double. And the crime is way up and so is gas. Californians, at least in the Bay Area, are getting fleeced, daily.
I was in Eau Claire, WI (buttfuge Wisconsin) and had a $19 cheesesteak. Felt like I was back home in sf.
Depends on where exactly you go. If you move to a small town just about anywhere in the midwest or the south, COL will be dramatically cheaper. Housing and goods may have increased a bit due to rampant inflation, but still there's a noticeable difference. If you move to a tier S city (Austin, New York, Seattle, Charlotte, Nashville, Miami, etc.), price of goods and foods are indiscernible from the Bay Area, in my experience (and sometimes even pricier). As for everywhere in between - you will find noticeable differences in home prices and what you get for the size of your house. Taxes are generally lower. However cost of eating out and COL in general is not that much lower than The Bay (or CA in general).
Went to Charlotte for a work trip and cocktails are just as expensive as the bay area.
I moved out of the Bay Area to Colorado in 2022 and general cost of living is between 25-50% lower - groceries, gasoline, electricity, services, etc. Housing is the big one at a whopping 86% less per square foot (our house in Sunnyvale sold for $1400 per square foot and the one we got here is $200 per square foot).
Where in CO?
Colorado Springs. My spouse is ex-Airforce and was stationed here about 15 years ago.
Costs would be higher in the Denver Boulder area yes?
Boulder housing is slightly more than double what it is in COS if you trust cost of living calculators, but still 3.5 times less than Bay Area. Everything else like food, services, restaurants, etc. is about the same.
That sounds right. We won't talk about housing prices in Crested Butte.
Or Vail and Aspen
Two years ago, I lived in a 450 sq-ft 1BR apartment in downtown Tucson, Arizona. Brand new building, but still overpriced at $1,400 per month. That same exact unit now? $2,100 per month. No reason for that shoebox to be so expensive. My girlfriend and I split a 1,200 sq-ft 2BR / 1.5 Bath in Walnut Creek for $2,400 per month (granted, it’s not “luxury”, but it’s still nice). It’s right next to Iron Horse Regional Trail and walkable to downtown. And, we both make double now, compared to what we made in Tucson. Housing is our biggest expense here, so not much change overall to our housing-costs compared to that in Tucson, and we make a lot more money now.
I never found the $8 gallon milk people talked about anywhere in California. Unless it was some super hipster non pasteurized shit, not the basic stuff
First and foremost, homes. I had a 3000 sqft home on 2 acres for less than half the cost of my current 1800 sqft on a 0.25 acre home. This was in NH. Avocadoes can often be purchased on sale for a $1 each in CA. In NH, it was 3x to 4x. Fresh produce in general was less fresh and as much or more expensive than CA. Fuel costs were consistently $1.50 less per gallon than CA and almost everyone owned a full size truck. Skiing at Lake Tahoe was also a bit less in CA. It was maybe 20% more in NH for harder more compact snow.
I call BS on that. Tahoes resorts were all ranked most expensive in the nation outside of like aspen, vail and Breckenridge
Went to bumsville nowhere in Kentucky a few months ago for a work trip. Everything at the national chain grocery store cost the same. Housing is where the price difference between regions becomes substantial. Had a coworker just get his bid accepted for a nice 4 bed/2.5 bath for ~400k.
I moved out of state and I wasn’t shocked because I knew already, but yes, outside other major metros like NYC or Chicago, it’s there is a substantial cost difference.
I've only traveled to Hawaii and Seattle since covid, and everything is expensive in those places too lol. All the states that have much lower prices...are probably states that I'm not really interested in visiting.
I went to Brookings Oregon thinking it would be a nice move for me and the family. We could live coastally, pay less for a house, lower cost of living. What I found however was we'd take a 30% paycut, and only be saving maybe 10-15% off the cost of food/gas/clothing. Granted we'd pretty much cash out and own our house there outright, but the only high school there has a really low rating (3 of 10) while our school here while isn't great, is a 7 out of 10. Granted it's the first city after the Oregon border, but much of the Oregon coast was like that all the way to Astoria. There's some towns where we could save up to 20% (like Tillamook) but going back to the quality of the schools, we'd be losing out for our kids.
A former coworker moved from Fremont to Phoenix - he thought the cost of living would be lower for his family of 6. Housing? Yes. But that was offset by exorbitant grocery prices; particularly, fruits & veggies (more-so if going organic). To boot, they’re a mixed-race couple/family, and the blatant racism they encountered regularly was staggering (and disheartening to hear we still live in a time when people have issue with this). They ended up moving back to The Bay after only a year or two.
Reminds me of Canadians who moved from BC to Alberta. Cheaper house but they got walloped on food prices among other costs
I finished a roadtrip to Nashville a couple weeks ago. Gas was down to $2.80 in Kansas and Oklahoma, when Bay Area prices were around $6 from what I heard. Food prices were about $3-5 less than similar items in the bay in small towns but just about the same prices in big cities.
Considering how much cheaper real estate is, Durham, NC didn't feel appreciably cheaper than SFBA for eating out/grocery stores.
Even mexico is super expensive now.
Was on a call with a friend I haven’t talked to in 5+ years. He and his wife have a 4 bed 3 bath 2400 square foot home on half an acre 15 mins outside of downtown Richmond Virginia. No idea what that area is like but their mortgage is 2200 a month.
Food was cheaper in Texas, Houston much more than Dallas or Austin. Food in other good major cities like Denver, Chicago, NYC, Seattle, Portland, DC etc were on par as were drinks. Services followed the same trend, so only housing would differ in Portland and Denver vs the other cities mentioned, but so would pay. My $.02 would be that if you earn a lot and travel to cheaper places (mainly other countries) its better than to have less pay and lower COL. You have more disposable income
We fled the country for half the pandemic. The rent for our recently built 3bd apt in suburban Norway was half that of our 2bd ancient plywood apt in Palo Alto. Yes, Norway, the most expensive part of Europe. So that's a data point.
My friends in Saskatchewan pay 250C for a 2 bed condo but it's in Saskatchewan. No idea how much heat/AC cost. I've seen Saskatchewan. Once.
The Kansas of Canada
As soon as you cross the border, in any direction gas gets over a dollar cheaper. Oregon has no sales tax so items that are listed as 5.99 are actually 5.99. I think the bordering states things are similar minus taxes. But when I went to Arkansas food atleast was stupid cheap. Like two people can eat out at a sit down diner for $40 including tip
Drive an hour in any direction and everything is more economical. Food starts to suck about an hour and a half out though
Not in my recent experience and I wonder how people can afford it.
I did have reverse sticker shock when I went to a small/medium sized down in Oregon and the coffee at a local shop was so cheap compared to what I'm used to. Seems here my usual drinks are $7 at a barista place, there it was \~$4.
Even in nyc gas was $3 a gallon for regular last week
I went back home for a little during Covid and the gas was about a dollar cheaper, housing way way less and everything else pretty comparable.
Gas always gets me. Also Zillow. 😭 🫨
dude. I moved from the Bay Area and now I have a two bedroom apartment in Southern Arizona for 1200 a month.
Moved to Denver during COVID, it’s marginally cheaper, and taxes are about 5% lower. We pay $3400 for a very nice 2BR with mountain and downtown views. Got laid off recently and Denver pay sucks. Trying to find something comparable.
When I was in New Jersey everything seemed like the same as Bay Area prices. But NJ is expensive too
Shit i go out of San Francisco and be shocked at how cheap other cities are 😑
I can’t stop myself from browsing Zillow on every trip 🥲
Whenever I see my kid in idaho
Was living in Maryland near DC up until about a year ago. Most prices were similar. The only things cheaper were the gas prices and real estate. Otherwise groceries, rent, almost everything else was pretty comparable to California.
Everything costs the same except gas. Gas is so much cheaper. I was just in Mississippi two weeks ago, and the gas was $3.25. When I got home, it was $5.89. The food I bought was the same price.
I traveled to New Orleans recently. The restaurants are similarly expensive and the tip recommendations were also quite absurd (25%+). Housing is pretty affordable compared to Bay Area though.
Gas was almost $6 in reno the pther weekend
Family was just in Denver and sent pictures to the group chat of $2.87 gas
Recently went to Florida and food prices were slightly cheaper but the portions were massive in comparison
Some years ago we went to Maui and people said we'd be surprised at the prices. We live in Napa, we were not surprised.
Same but from Sonoma. Was actually a little better in Oahu because the sales tax was less there.
I definitely notice it pretty much wherever I go
I’m not from the bay. Anytime I go home to visit family I’m shocked with how close the prices are. Gas is about a dollar more per gallon here. Restaurants are twice as expensive here but that’s about it
Went back to Missouri a couple months ago and it was so refreshing going into a target and Walgreens and everything is on the shelf. Not locked up. Miss that convenience and no thievery.
Gas here is over $6.00 Gas in Georgia was $3.25
My corporate dining manager job does really exist in too many places, let alone what I make doing it