Anyone else live in a low cost of living area?

[Soror]

It is pretty darn COL here. No, we don't have the same amenities as a city but we have other things- like quiet- the forest out my door- privacy etc. I struggled for awhile wondering if we were in the right place. There is so much I love about the city but the things the city can't replace are the most important to me. We do have lower income but with the lower COL we still live well. . As it is we have more opportunities than I have time(even when I complain that I can't always find exactly what I want). 

 

I don't think it helps to vilify either side, that just makes me sad(seems a common occurrence both ways). I can see why people would want to live all kinds of places that are not personally appealing to me.

 

I just back from vacation visiting some pretty large cities. We enjoyed our visits so much but are also happy to be home. I decided last year after vacation that either I decide to bloom where I'm planted and stop thinking the grass is greener OR get off my butt and do something to change it. I decided to pick the first option, no place is perfect but I love my home in my rural area.

Edited June 4, 2016 by soror

[Tita Gidge]

I thought I lived in a low cost of living area. I just looked it up and we are in a high cost of living area. I guess growing up near DC skewed what I thought it should cost to live. We live here because we went to grad school here, DH finished before I did and got a job locally 20+ years ago. His company has been bought out three times, but they let us stay here, which makes us lucky, I suppose.

 

Me, too.

I googled my city + city data and we score 98.4 of 100. 

 

We moved from a city in a different state that scores 197.

 

So naturally this place feels low COL to us! My state scores 90 of 100 for cost of living.

 

I know more transplants than I do native locals, but the few born-heres I know really resent the influx of transplants, typically coming from CA, IL & NY. They say (we) are driving up the COL. We're one of the fastest growing states, in terms of population. I sympathize, but it's working out well for us LOL.

[Soror]

I just googled the closest city to me and it has a score of 83 out of 100. Most things were actually close to 100 but housing was 51, which really brought down the average. Of course cheap housing really helps, I know we are able to do so much more then we would otherwise because we own our house.

[DawnM]

Oh wow.  The cost of living index in my particular suburb is 170%.  I had no idea.  The cost of living in the greater city area is about 90%. 

[regentrude]

city data index for my town is 79.1

[ktgrok]

I moved from a 122% to a 96%. However, that 96 included a 69% housing and I just don't think that is accurate, not unless you are including really bad places to live. 

 

We have a 3/2, 1,400 square feet home and it is worth about $160,000. But it's in horrible shape and needs a lot of work and the school system isn't great at all. Lots of foreclosed homes in my neighborhood. The little "park" in our community is a death trap of sharp metal and fire ants, plus graffiti. My sister lives in a nice  but not gated neighborhood, also a 3/2, home is maybe a bit smaller or the same size. Lot is small, but has a pool and a few feet of  yard beyond that, a nd is worth about $290,000. 

Edited June 4, 2016 by ktgrok

[Sun]

I see that on TV (HGTV shows).  I always think man I can't believe a tiny shack costs half a mill. 

 

New listing I saw in my area today: $675,000 for 1300 square feet. No basement. Small lot. Kitchen has new formica counters, but the cupboards are from the 1940s. Bathrooms look like they were updated in the '80s. The kicker? It will almost certainly sell in a couple of days for over listing price due to multiple offers. 10% over is typical at the moment.

[regentrude]

Median house price here is $375, 000!

 

but you're in an absolutely gorgeous place!

[ktgrok]

Median house price here is $375, 000!

 

 

Wow. What is the average square footage and lot size, I wonder? I mean, is that for a 5 bedroom with 20 acres, lol?

[DawnM]

Median house price here is $375, 000!

 

 

Where we moved from the median home price is currently $725K

 

Where we are now the median home price is $550K.  That is just for my small suburban town though, you can go 10 miles away and it is much different.

[Joyofsixreboot]

Our area ( rural IN) is low COL but good jobs require a long drive, schools are meh, arts & entertainment take some doing. Cheaper groceries, housing, sports & lessons for the kids are plusses. Today spent $200 for people's groceries and I bought good stuff.

 

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[catz]

I do not believe for one minute that materialism has any thing to do with how high COL is in a particular area.  I live urban, but many of the families I know choosing to live urban are living in smaller, older, and simpler homes with less actual STUFF for a shorter commute and tend to devote more money to things like education and activities for their kids.  And want to live close to diversity, culture, and things like school options.

 

I thought whoever way back said Minneapolis was cheap was interesting.  I do understand that perspective.  I live in the Twin Cities area.  I know people who think it's cheap (ie Coastal folks) vs. those who think it's expensive (pretty much anyone else).  I have not shopped for real estate in other areas for a long time but the Twin Cities has affordable suburbs/neighborhoods and less affordable.  Our pretty normal sized (slightly more than 2000 sq ft) 3 bedroom urban home would likely sell for around 500K.  If I drove an 90 minutes, the same house might be under 200K.  I do admit I have a hard time wrapping my mind around living in a cheap area given a neighbor's nice but not large or amazing house just sold for 650K and we pay out a small fortune in property taxes annually.  The coastal transplants love to swoop in and buy property and think it's a heck of deal.  LOL. 

 

But again, in no way do I think paying more for a house, groceries, or property taxes is a sign of materialism.

 

Interesting ranking of COL in North American cities.

https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index/north-america

[EmilyGF]

I don't live in a low COL place compared to many places, but I was raised in Silicon Valley, then lived in New Jersey, Boston, Silicon Valley-ish, and now in a midwestern city. It feels low COL comparatively. We pay $300 more per month here for a 4-bedroom house than we did for a 900-square foot 2-bedroom in CA.

 

Emily

[Tsuga]

LOL - compared to my small rural town with a median household income of 32k this is still much higher COL.

Yes but not everyone can live there--you live in a college town IIRC. Jobs are not available for lots of people making your salary. And there are zip codes in Seattle where the median income is 38k and the average house still costs twice what it does in Dallas.

[Tsuga]

Wow. What is the average square footage and lot size, I wonder? I mean, is that for a 5 bedroom with 20 acres, lol?

1000 sq ft property and 2000 sq ft living space here, a "fixer" (appliances, floors, walls, all but roof original 1950s) is over .5m

 

Price goes down about 75k for every 30 minutes you add to your commute. 1.5 hrs away my sister has more property (acre) + 3k sq ft for half the price.

 

But she and her DH added together spend about 5 hours in the car every day they work to get to the city with middle class salaries.

[Carrie12345]

I'm technically in a low COL area.  It isn't as low COL for us as it could have been if we had waited a few years.  Today, I could by my house's comp for somewhere in the ball park of 50% of what we paid in 2005.  Our area hasn't really recovered from the bubble burst.

 

I do not consider myself materialistic, but there's no pretending I don't spend a lot of money, especially on homeschooling.  And the simple act of having 5 kids raises our expenses.  Most of the places we go are 30-60 minutes or more away, and my car has to climb mountains for every trip, so it is important to me to have a very reliable, and obviously large-ish, vehicle, which isn't cheap.  My taxes aren't outrageous compared to where I come from, but I don't consider them low, and they're always inching up.

 

We came to this area not so much to save money, but to get more for our money.

[regentrude]

Yes but not everyone can live there--you live in a college town IIRC. Jobs are not available for lots of people making your salary.

 

Huh? Did I say everybody can or should live here?

I merely mentioned it to show why, coming from an area like this, we would consider Dallas a  higher COL.

I know that Seattle is particularly expensive. I get it.

Edited June 5, 2016 by regentrude

[Wheres Toto]

I'm in a very HCOL area.  Our 750 square foot bungalow built in the 1940's and needing quite a bit of work would go for $275,000.  Part of that is our specific town, it wouldn't go for as much in any of the neighboring towns.

 

We didn't actually make the decision to live here.  At least I didn't. I grew up here, was always able to find decent paying jobs here (when I worked) and I still have a lot of family here.  So it's more that I never had a reason to move elsewhere.  

 

Dh also grew up here but he did go to school and work in various other states.  He often talks about the nice, large house he had in North Carolina and how cheap it was compared to houses here.  He also lived in San Diego so that brings some comparison too.  But, the majority of jobs in his current industry are around here, his elderly parents live here, and he also has a lot of family here.   He already owned our house when we got married and we haven't had any good reason to move.

[barnwife]

Materialism and consumerism aren't that relevant to hcol vs lcol.  Haven't you ever seen "Hoarder's", there's the whole spectrum on there, maybe more poor folks because the rich are more likely to avoid that spotlight.  Or compare an under control frugal tightwad hoarder type, vs the "my stuff doesn't own me" tiny house type.  Obviously it's easier to avoid a consumerist mentality if you're space constrained, but that's not the only way to live economically.  

 

What is relevant is consumption (in raw $$$).  Almost by definition a high cost of living area equals more consumption, right? THE reason that most hcol areas are expensive is the limited real estate, it's CHEAPER to lay out new roads and utilities outside DFW or Des Moines then it is to tear up the streets and dig the tunnels needed in a city designed before sewage treatment, electricity, automobiles, air conditioning, insulation etc.  The "sustainable city" is a joke, more sustainable than another city maybe, but the current campaigns to attract hip young professionals are not any more sustainable than Levitown was.  

 

I know people who say public transportation is so wonderful because they don't have to own a car, which would be so expensive in their area, and then complain that they can't find a decent apartment, and a fixer upper is $400k, and a slightly polished up fixer upper is $600k.  Yeah, they're saving sooo much money (resources, karma, carbon credits?) over their former sinful driving lifestyle in more affordable areas.  

[Aelwydd]

Dallas is a low COL area!

 

Median home prices:

Dallas

$137,000

 

 

The median home value in Seattle is $564,300.

 

Median household income in Dallas:

 

 

Dallas

$59,530

 

 

 

Median household income in Seattle:

The Census ACS 1-year survey reports that the median household income for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Washington metro area was $71,273 in 2014.

 

And houses in Dallas are on average larger, it seems, though I couldn't find stats. It just looks like that browsing through Zillow and Redfin. Of course that's not analysis. It's speculation. Still!

 

As for suits, not many people in Seattle dress up but we do have a miniature finance industry and they wear suits. However, my point was to say that formal clothing is not more expensive (in my experience, in my size range) than quality casual clothing, provided you know where to buy. You cannot judge people's wealth or spending on clothing by their dress. Seattle women unbelievably spend more on clothes than women in other cities.

 

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/11/01/this-i-did-not-know-women-in-seattle-spend-hella-scrilla-on-threads

 

(I linked to the Stranger, beware the ads, sorry.)

 

Unbelievably, I say, unless you have ever shopped for a biking rain jacket, in which case you know that you basically have to camp out at Big 5 before a sale.

 

Dallas. My goodness. Dallas to me seems like the ultimate low COL area, with low

NO IT ISN'T. 56700 - 137000? That's the range of "crack house" to "meth house" in much of Dallas. Those houses in that price are usuaslly either in questionable or declining neigborhoods or an hour's drive from your workplace. (Or really anywhere you want to be. Somehow, the laws of physics dictate that it you're going somewhere in the Metroplex, it will almost always take you an hour to get there.)

 

I lived in the Metroplex from 1995 to 2000, then again from 2006 to 2015. Before we moved from Grapevine (suburb of Ft. Worth), we were paying $1600 / month for a 3 bedroom apt. That same apt is now more than 2k a month.

 

I've lived in northern VA, NC, TX, PA, and now MN, so I have a basis of comparison. It's just not accurate to label Dallas as a LCOL area.

[Aelwydd]

 

What is relevant is consumption (in raw $$$). Almost by definition a high cost of living area equals more consumption, right? THE reason that most hcol areas are expensive is the limited real estate, it's CHEAPER to lay out new roads and utilities outside DFW or Des Moines then it is to tear up the streets and dig the tunnels needed in a city designed before sewage treatment, electricity, automobiles, air conditioning, insulation etc. The "sustainable city" is a joke, more sustainable than another city maybe, but the current campaigns to attract hip young professionals are not any more sustainable than Levitown was.

 

I know people who say public transportation is so wonderful because they don't have to own a car, which would be so expensive in their area, and then complain that they can't find a decent apartment, and a fixer upper is $400k, and a slightly polished up fixer upper is $600k. Yeah, they're saving sooo much money (resources, karma, carbon credits?) over their former sinful driving lifestyle in more affordable areas.

I agree with much of your post. I've lived in rural areas and in big cities. I would say that the cost of roads, pipes, water treatment, electrical transmission lines, etc., is far more economically sustainable in urban areas versus rural, because the total cost is shared by far more users and covers a much smaller more concrete area.

 

For example, Minneapolis is currently exploring a plan to help a small town upstream to build a new water treatment plant. The old one currently in use is realeasing too many volatile chemicals into the Mississippi and this threatens not only our water supply here, but other communities big and small downstream. The small town cannot afford on its own to revamp the water treatment plant because its tax base is too small.

 

Since big cities need rural farms to help feed their populations, I think such a symbiotic relationship is a good thing. We help them with road, infrastructure, and other subsidies and they help us.

 

Now suburbs are just annoying, lol.

 

I would add a different perspective to public AND private transportation options. For me, having public transit means more freedom as I get older and can't drive anymore. It means when my family flies in they don't have to rent a car for us to do things together or pile 8 people into a Jetta. It means I don't have to drive in bad weather if I feel uncomfortable, or fight for parking downtown at a baseball game. It means not having to pay airport parking fees. It means that when I got into my car this morning and found a flat tire, I didn't have to wait for dh to throw on a spare and wobble down the highway to work. We walked 3 blocks over to a Car To Go and I got into work only a few minutes late.

 

So, while we definitely still need a car for multiple reasons, it's a great relief to have those additional options.