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The United States has been through a lot over the past several years. Ravaged by a pandemic and political division, it's been a tough time to be an American — and an expensive time as well. Gas prices are at their highest in decades, and the housing market recently experienced a boom that highly favored sellers. While real estate is finally starting to cool down, the high cost of living persists in many states. Some regions, like Hawaii and California, remain consistently high, while others like Texas are just getting used to their reputation of no longer being affordable in some regions. When determining the cost of living in a particular area of the U.S., many factors come into play, including food, housing, healthcare, and transportation. Major cities tend to have the highest costs of living, as do states located in the Northeast, along the Pacific Coast, and non-contiguous states. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via The Ascent, the average American's monthly expenses are $5,111. That number could both stun a Mississippian and cause a Californian to roll their eyes, thanks to the varying cost of living throughout the nation.
Hawaii is a truly magical place and popular tourist destination. Anyone who's been there knows how the islands can cause you to fall in love with the idea of staying forever. But for those who actually DO live in Hawaii, they pay a pretty penny to do so. The cost of living in this state is nearly twice the national average, with almost everything from housing to food costing more than anywhere else. According to Kauai Hawaii, a two-bedroom apartment in Honolulu is $3,500. Groceries also average about 50% more than the national cost due to the fact that most things need to be shipped to Hawaii. However, Hawaii does have a bright side besides the literal sunshine. It has the 4th lowest poverty rate in the U.S. despite its high cost of living, with a median household income of $118,223. This is significantly higher than the island's living wage of $107,702.
New York is about as far from Hawaii as you can get, but it ranks almost equally high when it comes to the cost of living. According to World Population Review, New York is the second most expensive state in the U.S., and New York City is the most expensive city in the nation. Housing in New York will cost you, on average, 2.3 times the national average. When it comes to New York, location really matters. The state average for a two-bedroom apartment is approximately $1717. However, you can expect to pay $5,874 for a similar unit in the city. A large percentage of NY residents are not able to purchase a home based on their income, making this state the one with the lowest rate of homeownership in the nation. New York is an incredible place full of diversity and opportunity, as well as history and entertainment that is life-changing. Unfortunately for native New Yorkers, however, home is where the bank account is pretty unhappy.
California has long been a destination for dreams — home to both Hollywood and some of the biggest tech companies in the world. Due partially to these opportunities, along with its temperate year-round weather, California has been a challenging place to live financially for a few generations. California also has the highest gas prices in the U.S. and the second-highest transportation costs. Million-dollar homes are the norm in some parts of California, and rent runs much higher than the national average in major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Unfortunately, California also has the highest rate of homelessness, according to the most recent study released by the Senate Housing Committee. Despite its expense, nothing quite compares to California — home to Yosemite, Disneyland, Hollywood, Lake Tahoe, and so much more. It's one of few places you can live in the U.S. and experience beaches, mountains, desert, and big cities all in your home state.
Back over on the east coast, Massachusetts is another state that has a fairly high cost of living. Currently ranking as the fourth most expensive state in the United States, the highest prices are found in Boston, with smaller areas a bit more affordable. According to Best Places, the average studio apartment price is $1299, which is higher than the national average of $949. Living in Massachusetts does have some benefits that some other states listed above don't have, including an incredible educational system. Some of the best schools are in Massachusetts, from elementary school through Ivy League. It's also home to a ton of American history and tourist destinations, making it a great place to show friends and family around. The metropolitan area also has an efficient transportation system, and in many portions of the state, you're all but guaranteed a white Christmas. Coming in as rather expensive but still more reasonable than California and New York, Massachusetts is doable for those with decent jobs and at least the state living wage of $121,414.
Editorial Note: Credit Karma receives compensation from third-party advertisers, but that doesn’t affect our editors’ opinions. Our third-party advertisers don’t review, approve or endorse our editorial content. It’s accurate to the best of our knowledge when posted. Thinking about your next big move? There are a lot of factors that go into deciding where you want to live. But if the most important thing to you is cost, then read on to see what states were the cheapest and most expensive in 2022, according to Credit Karma’s study. Credit Karma created a methodology to identify the cheapest states in 2022 using a variety of factors, including home value, average rent, overall cost of living, taxes and a few other specific cost-of-living indexes. (Click here for the full methodology.) Here’s a sneak peek of our rankings for the cheapest states to live in, ranked from cheapest to more expensive.
And the most expensive states are (in order of most expensive to cheaper) …
Read on to get more context on the study, including the factors we considered to determine the cheapest states.
Overall cheapest and most expensive states to live in for 2022In our study, the lower the score, the cheaper the state. See the full list of how each state ranks in terms of cheapness:
Hawaii is by far the most expensive state, coming in last in almost every category in this study. There are a few reasons for this, but the primary factor is location, location, location. Hawaii is geographically isolated, and many goods must be imported across a huge distance, which is very costly. On top of that, real estate is expensive. The islands that make up the state are small, reducing supply, and demand is high for gorgeous property. Coastal states tended to be more expensive overall, while central and Southern states tended to be cheaper. Check out the map below: Oklahoma came in first largely because of its relatively low cost-of-living metrics, taxes and housing costs. States with the cheapest housing costs in 2022Redfin’s housing market data provided the estimated median sale price for homes in May 2022, and a data set from Apartment List showed the average monthly apartment rent for June 2022.
Credit Karma used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey to find the states with the lowest median monthly housing costs. These costs include items like mortgage payments, real estate taxes, insurance, utilities and condo fees.
A lot of the usual suspects make the list for most expensive states in terms of housing prices: Hawaii, California, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The same is true for the cheapest states. West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama show up repeatedly throughout the study with low costs. States with the lowest taxes in 2022The study methodology incorporated two types of taxes: property and sales. There are several states with no sales tax. They are …
Interestingly, a couple of states that tend to a have higher cost of living also have lower sales taxes, including the following:
There were a few surprises for sales tax. Some of the overall cheapest states, like Mississippi and Tennessee, had higher sales taxes. The states with the highest sales tax rates are …
One thing to note: Sales taxes can vary on the local level since municipalities can impose additional sales taxes on top of the state baseline sales tax. Instead of looking at the actual property tax rates, we looked at the median amount paid in real estate taxes for occupied units both with mortgages and without mortgages using data from the 2020 American Community Survey. This gives a better understanding of how much a person might expect to pay in property tax while taking into account the overall cost of housing in any given state.
For illustrative purposes, we’ve included a table below with the average effective property tax rates sourced from the nonprofit Tax Foundation. It helps explain how Illinois landed on the list above. Illinois has the second-highest average effective property tax, which offsets the below-average typical home values. Interestingly, Hawaii has the lowest average effective property tax.
States with the lowest cost-of-living indexes in 2022Credit Karma used the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center for the cost-of-living datasets. This study used the following cost-of-living indexes: Overall, grocery, transportation, housing, utilities, health and miscellaneous. The overall cost-of-living category combines and weights the other indexes. Here are the states with the highest and lowest overall cost of living.
Mississippi makes multiple appearances as the state with the lowest cost of living across a few indexes, including housing, transportation and miscellaneous. This helps explain why, according to our study, Mississippi ranks so highly among the cheapest states. Hawaii tops almost every index for cost of living as the most expensive state, except in terms of healthcare. That dubious honor goes to Alaska — likely because of the difficulty of getting supplies and doctors there. The table below allows you to sort by all the cost-of-living indexes included in this study.
Tips for choosing a place to liveChoosing a place to live is a highly personal decision, and there are a lot of factors that go into it besides purely financial ones. For example, maybe you live in a place with a high cost of living, but you’re also close to your friends and family. Or maybe you work in an industry that only exists in certain regions. Or maybe you just really love the school district your kids are in. If you’re trying to make a decision about where to live, you could try replicating this study in miniature with things you care about. For example, say you’re interested in California, Colorado and Virginia as potential options. You would add each state to the spreadsheet as rows, then add the things you care about in the columns. The variables could be anything — they could be factors with objective numbers, like the average cost of a house in each state or crime rates in the area you’re interested in. You could even use this article or the sources cited in it to help out with cost-of-living indexes. You could also include some more subjective variables, like proximity to family or access to hobbies. It would be up to you to decide how many points to give these “softer” categories. Once you have all the variables and their values added, give each one a score from one to 100, with 100 being the best and one the worst. Here’s an example.
Now it’s time to weight them according to their importance to you. For example, if you really care about taxes and don’t care too much about school quality, you would weight taxes more heavily. In order to weight the variables, just multiply the score by the weight as a percentage. Remember that your total weighting across all categories should add up to 100%, which in decimal format is 1.00. Take a look below.
Once you’ve done all the weighting, you just add up the weighted scores and see which one had the most total points. In the example above, California came in first place. Ultimately the decision is up to you. Some data and your heart could give you the answers you’re looking for. Compare the cost of living in two citiesOur cost-of-living calculator can help you see how much it’ll cost to live somewhere new compared to your current city so you can make an informed decision about your finances. Methodology
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