can we settle this cost of living debate by providing examples of cost of living cities? i’ll go first

HCOL: San Fran, NYC, LA
MCOL: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver
LCOL: Columbus, OH, Pheonix, etc.

does that sound right?

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SF and NYC is VHCOL
and LA would be HCOL

likesmart

A2 in nyc = 70k. This is pre adjustments that are coming in January

Lmao y’all love this debate.

funny
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HCOL is only San Francisco and NYC as they are on a different tier of affordability from any other US city due to rent. LA and Seattle join MCOL.

likefunny

Chiming in here is well. LA is not at the same level as SF, salaries and housing much higher in Bay Area my friends.

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It doesn’t make sense to group them into only 3 categories: L, M, and H. — think about the wealth classes: poverty, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, wealthy, ultra-wealthy

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True. And if you think about it this way, then probably only New York and San Francisco are truly high cost of living. They’re just in their own tier

DMV is HCOL

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Ok so who’s putting together a public excel spreadsheet with all the data?? Hmm?

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Phoenix is LCOL? Erm nah.
Is this talking about the whole country or just large metro areas? If you’re talking about the whole country then very very few large metro areas would fall into LCOL.

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Ummm….

What about Boston?

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HCOL for sure.

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Miami?

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DC - HCOL

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What about Seattle?

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No state income tax, which can be a ~10% difference than HCOL

What about Space City?

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As someone who has lived in multiple cities that you would consider “MCOL” the salary changes by 2-7K for the same role at the same company.

There are multiple reasons for an increase or decrease between cities - that were explained to me by HR for each of my moves - BESIDES how much rent or milk or whatever costs. Sometimes, turnover has been high b/c someone high up left or they are starting a new team or maybe everyone just wants to move here (lookin at you Denver). Just say the city and skip the HCOL/MCOL crap.

helpful

i fully support this. the purpose of this post was because i wanted to gauge exactly wtf people meant when they were saying LCOL, MCOL, and HCOL because it’s pretty subjective

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I consider any state with an income tax to be HCOL

Where would Las Vegas fall?

Maybe upper ends of LCOL

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I'm in Atlanta and I agree with classifying it as MCOL.

Just use a cost of living calculator online...

San jose?

Barcelona?

Philadelphia?

MCOL

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