On Tuesday, I blogged about one group’s state-by-state national scorecard of financial health (released this week), and it got me thinking: Why do more people not just move to where the jobs are? It seems like a no-brainer if you live in an economically depressed area to simply go somewhere with better opportunities.
Of course, there are many personal factors that tie us to the places we live, be it school districts, social circles, or parents in need. But for those of us who are not tied down, for some reason it can still be difficult to make the call of whether to pack it up and move to another state.
Then I found BestPlaces.net’s Cost of Living Calculator, a neat website that analyzes the government’s data about salary and cost-of-living averages in thousands of places, both major cities and smaller towns.
Say you make $45,000 and live in Alexandria, Va., but you’ve always dreamed of moving to San Francisco — which is right up there with New York as one of the country’s most expensive cities. How much more would you need to make to afford the same standard of living?
According to the calculator, you would have to find yourself a job in San Francisco that pays $61,145 just to maintain your current lifestyle. That’s nearly a 36 percent raise. Not only that, but housing is 55 percent more expensive in San Francisco on average than in Northern Virginia. In fact, San Francisco is more expensive in every category analyzed, from utilities to transportation to food.
This calculator doesn’t take taxes into account, but we’ve blogged previously about another website that can help you sort it out on that front.
