Cost of living

US data layers federal public-domain sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities (RPPs) for state/metro multipliers; Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) for median wages; HUD Fair Market Rents for 2-bedroom housing costs; Census American Community Survey for median household income, life expectancy and commute; FBI Uniform Crime Reports for crime rates; Visual Capitalist's annual "salary needed to live comfortably" report for the top featured cities. Country data uses Numbeo's Quality of Life Index (NYC=100 baseline) cross-referenced with CEO World rankings and OECD Better Life Index.

Three different bars. Living wage (single adult, MIT methodology) is the bare-minimum income to cover food, housing, transport, healthcare, and basic essentials in a given metro — no savings, no discretionary spend. Median household income is what a typical household actually earns there (Census ACS). Comfortable salary is what's needed to cover the basics plus retirement contributions, restaurant meals, vacations, and discretionary spending — substantially higher than the living wage. The affordability gauge plots your salary against all three.

The federal poverty line is a 1963 formula based on three times the cost of a minimum food diet. It hasn't been updated to reflect modern housing, healthcare, or childcare realities, and it's a single national number — useless for comparing cities. CPI has its own gaps for cost-of-living estimation: it assigns less than 25% weight to housing rent (assumes most Americans own their homes), and it largely ignores out-of-pocket health-insurance premiums. Using BEA RPP × HUD FMR × MIT-style wage formulas instead gives a localized, modernized estimate.

It's a model, not a quote. Real-life costs depend on family size, school choices, commute pattern, healthcare needs, lifestyle, and household-specific factors that no aggregate index captures. Treat the numbers as directionally correct (higher RPPs really do mean costlier housing; higher median wages really do mean better job markets) and within roughly 5–10% of the average resident's experience. Don't use any single line item as exact.

Six axes that capture lived experience beyond raw cost: after-tax purchasing power (median household income minus state+local income tax, vs. the national household median), housing space (square footage per dollar of monthly rent — same budget rents very different homes in SF vs. Sacramento), cultural density (restaurants and arts/entertainment establishments per 1,000 residents), parks & green space (Trust for Public Land's ParkScore), job market (a composite of unemployment, 1-year job growth, and labor-force participation), and climate comfort (% of days with mean temp 50–80°F, from NOAA NCEI normals). Each axis is normalized 0–100, higher is better, with the 40-city peer median overlaid in green for context.

Annual leftover = gross salary − federal income tax (2025 brackets, standard deduction) − state + average local income tax (Tax Foundation effective rate at the local median earner) − FICA (Social Security 6.2% + Medicare 1.45%) − household-scaled essential costs (MIT single-adult living wage × BEA RPP × household multiplier). Filing status defaults to "married filing jointly" when the household has 2+ adults, else "single." The default basis is the metro's BLS OEWS median individual wage; entering a salary above swaps the basis. The breakdown card shows each line so the math is visible. What's not modeled: itemized deductions, 401(k) / IRA / HSA contributions (which would reduce taxable income), Child Tax Credit, EITC, mortgage-interest deduction, property tax, sales tax, healthcare premium tax credits — these vary too much by individual situation. The goal is a realistic floor, not a tax return. The number can go negative in expensive metros at modest salaries — that's accurate, not a bug.

Take-home subtracts an estimated state + average local income tax from your input salary. Federal tax is deliberately excluded because federal rates don't change between metros — including them would just inflate every number by the same amount and obscure the local difference. The state effective rate uses the rate paid by the local median earner (sourced from Tax Foundation tables), which approximates a typical worker within ~1pp. For high-tax states with city-level taxes (NYC, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore), the city portion is included.

It uses each metro's typical 2-bedroom rental as a price-per-sqft benchmark (HUD FMR rent ÷ Zillow/HUD median 2BR sqft) and projects that rate onto your monthly budget. So $3,000/month in San Francisco is about 800–900 square feet (roughly a 1BR or small 2BR), while the same $3,000/month in Memphis or Oklahoma City rents 2,000+ square feet (a comfortable 3-4BR). Real listings vary, but the order-of-magnitude difference is real and consistent with what you'd find on Zillow, Redfin, or Apartments.com on any given week.

Toggle the comparison card to Buy total and it switches to purchase prices. We use the metro's Zillow Home Value Index (median home price across all home types) and a typical sale square footage (Census ACS housing characteristics + Zillow listings) to compute a $/sqft rate, then project that onto your purchase budget. Example: $800,000 in San Francisco buys about 850 sqft (a 1BR condo), while the same $800,000 in Sacramento buys 2,500+ sqft (a four-bedroom house with a yard). The numbers are metro-wide medians — central neighborhoods cost more, suburbs cost less — but the relative gaps between metros are robust and match what real listings show.

v1 ships with the 10 cities from Visual Capitalist's "comfortable salary" report plus 30 of the largest US metros. Adding all 3,144 US counties (the MIT Living Wage scope) is on the roadmap and well-supported by the data layer — once the dataset is integrated, every county will get the same dashboard treatment.

Three cohorts. Top-20 quality-of-life: Numbeo's top 20 by Quality of Life Index, cross-referenced with CEO World and OECD rankings (Luxembourg, Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Austria, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, US, Estonia, Qatar, Japan, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Oman). BRICS bloc: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa — the major emerging-economy bloc, useful for international career and lifestyle comparisons. Popular American retirement destinations: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Portugal, Italy, France, Thailand, Malaysia, Colombia, Greece, Philippines — the cohort most commonly chosen by US retirees abroad (sourced from International Living's annual ranking and the State Department's Social Security overseas-payee data). Cost-of-living and property-affordability sub-indices capture the cheaper-living draw even when the headline Numbeo QoL score is lower; that's the whole reason these markets are attractive to retirees with US dollar incomes.