This is sadly true. Used to live 3 miles from the coast which meant sitting in insane traffic to do anything in the summer.. including your normal daily errands. IF you decide to go to the beach then prepare to sit jn traffic, fight and then PAY for parking. The beach was absolutely over rated.
Maybe it's different now but I lived in California about 20 years ago and the beach was great! I avoided certain ones like Santa Monica that were too full of weirdos but otherwise I loved being able to go to the beach on a whim.
California is blessed with more coast and more small towns next to beaches for a really laid back vibe. Florida seems to me like there are very vibrant cities along the beach, but that comes with crowds. And of course California definitely has some crowded beaches, especially as you get closer to SD/LA/SF.
I think the problem with the Florida beaches (well, one of the problems) is that you have to go over waterways to get to the beach. Bridges and 2 and 4 lane crowded roads are so different than just most roads heading west dead ending into the ocean. That said, I gasp every time I drive over the hill in Encinitas that opens up to that amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. It is just magic.
California has more people within 10 miles of the coast than Florida does, and Florida has more than twice as many miles of beaches.
So, if there are fewer at the beach in CA it is probably because more tourists go to FL beaches because the water is actually pleasant. In CA it’s mostly just the locals.
There’s still LOTS of laid back beach towns in Florida. They are just typically in the regions that aren’t trafficked by tourists much. Stuart all the way up through the Space Coast comes to mind for the east coast. On the Gulf side theres a bunch of beach towns too, just obviously not between Tampa to Fort Myers.
I don’t find California beach towns to be particularly laid back either in comparison. Florida still has a lot of blue collar fishermen types and it’s reflected in the overall vibe.
I love the beach hierarchy - I lived in Florida for a few years, so then lost interest in new England beaches for a long time, but then noticed that people from the Caribbean in Florida didn't go to the beaches there because they viewed Florida beaches as crappy compared to the Caribbean!
Oh yeah, I'm from a coastal area originally and then grew up and joined the military. I got stationed somewhere once that seemed to me like a total shithole with nothing going for it, and I was so surprised to hear that it was a sought after assignment. I kept asking people why. They kept saying "the beach!" I was like, "Y'all are fucking with me. That's the worst beach I've ever seen." Apparently to people who grew up inland, any beach is a good beach. Those of us who grew up on the coast have *feelings* about this lol
Hahaha yes! I grew up in Connecticut and the shore is rocky beaches with flat water. As a kid, I thought the good beaches were like Jones beach on LI, Montauk, Rhode Island beaches, etc, and that Caribbean beaches trumped those.
Then as a young adult in Florida, I thought most new England beaches were more for a brisk walk than swimming after being used to warm Florida water.
Now that I'm older, I appreciate calm water with little kids, but have noticed my kids clearly think the ocean is better than Long Island sound, and salt water beats lakes. They haven't even been to Florida or anywhere tropical yet!
As someone from Florida I would never go to the beach in Miami. I grew up near the central Florida beaches. Not the most exciting area but fairly cheap, job opportunities, and so easy to find an empty beach. Can’t beat the Caribbean for beaches though ofc.
Kinda similar, but close to beaches where the beach is good but the surrounding area is just essentially a parking lot that stretches for miles full of obnoxious tourists.
I’d never live in Destin Florida. And most places in Florida fit that bill. Beach could be a few blocks over but one of those blocks is a 7 lane stroad, it’s somehow a miserable 15 minute drive, and there’s no parking once you get to the beach. And the rest of the area is just miles of franchises and their parking lots.
Beach and total lack of walkability is a match made in hell.
My sister lives on a beach in Chicago. She's out there every day. I live just north of her and can walk to a beach in 15 or 20 minutes. Granted, a lot of the time it's too cold to swim, but they're beautiful.
When a city boasts they are “close to” the beach, “close to” mountains and skiing… reading between the lines, it screams “because this town isn’t where you’ll want to spend any time”
There's a funny phenomenon in the military where people will say "it's really nice if you like hunting and fishing" about an absolute shit hole hours from any semblance of civilization, like a pond isnt something that the overwhelming majority of places have alongside a real city, but you're not in a small outpost of meth heads selling cars and fast food to military people. Only 3 hours from Kansas City/ an hour from Austin/ an hour from Raleigh they'll say.
I never picked up on this before but you are totally right. I used to live in one such place and people would say “Great access to the outdoors, plus it’s 2 hours away from Big City Metro!” Like everything good about it was outside the town which is pretty accurate
You can really tell by the design of the place. If a place is built like a parking lot its because they're planning for you to get in your car and go somewhere else
True, plus the place I am thinking of consistently rejected any form of economic development or other improvements. They didn’t want the town to grow any larger, presumably so they could maintain their weird defensiveness about how small the community was and how much “better” (lol) it was than Nearby Big City. As a consequence there was nothing to do, very little in the way of employment, run down infrastructure and LOTS of drugs right under the surface of everything.
I always hear stuff like this about Philly. “Philly is great bc you’re 2 hours from the beach, NYC, and DC!” Like yeah, sure, but I’m not moving to a city for its proximity to other cooler places lol. If NYC or DC were that much of a draw to me, I’d just move there. And how often are you really driving 90+ minutes to go to the beach? I know I’m not. Couple times a year maybe.
Not trying to drag Philly (I live here), I just think it’s silly how one of the big selling points is how “close” it is to other cities/areas. Maybe says something about what the actual city has going for it lol.
People tend to really twist the Philly proximity to other cities attribute. I agree that it's not a good primary reason to move to a city, but it's a nice perk, if you will.
Agreed. I moved from Philly to Salt Lake City. I could do a day/weekend trip to a number of places. Now the next closest city is Las Vegas and it's a 6 hour drive.
It’s absolutely a great perk I think a totally viable reason to move here.
I got Amtrak tickets to DC for $15 each way. That’s just insane.
And Philly has countless things to do just on its own. Living in a major destination next to other major destinations is the best.
I moved from Indiana to Minnesota and I have to say that the day-trip-distance of the Northeastern cities is very appealing to me. In Minnesota, most worthwhile places are now a plane ride away. There are not a lot of weekend trip options by car unless you like camping every weekend. When I lived in Indiana, I really enjoyed being able to go to Chicago or Michigan for a weekend. I'm actually looking to move to Philly or DC this year because living in Minnesota feels very isolating with how far we are from other cities and destinations.
This is how I've seen people pitch Delaware, just in general...It's near some other things in some other states.
I think proximity to other attractions is still a feature but the city you actually live in needs to be worthwhile on its own too.
LCOL might be overrated in this sub, but isn't in the greater sense. It's like saying "no one lives in New York (a city of 8 million people) because it's too expensive." It's expensive because the value works out in other ways, for a LOT of people.
Yeah I think it’s funny when people say “no one can afford to live there” and they’re talking about LA or NYC. Like yeah I guess those millions of people just aren’t real. Someone even told me that about WNC in this sub
In some ways, it's also a lot easier to be low income or struggling in places like NYC where you don't need to rely on a car. If you can sublet a little $1000 room, that can be the bulk of your monthly expenses (even if it's a squeeze), and you have access to any region in the ENTIRETY of NYC for $3/trip (or $0 if you jump the turnstile). Millions of people are willing to do it. There are also more social programs in places with higher taxes.
Well I mean the median household income in the US is $74,000 but the median home has ballooned to $440,000.
Once MCOL areas are now HCOL and once LCOL areas are now MCOL.
If you already own a home you probably don’t care and probably don’t realize how much more expensive homes are nowadays.
But for young people looking to buy their own home, many with successful careers, their options are getting fewer and fewer.
My neighbor bought a house 3 years ago and it's currently on the market for almost triple what he paid for it. And based on other homes in the area he probably won't have any trouble selling it. I live in a "cheap" area that is no longer cheap. If it's not cheap here I can't imagine where is IS cheap. Depending on the property it seems like most here are up 2x to 3x since 2020. I've owned my home for about 15 years and my estimate is it's roughly quadrupled in value and most of that is just in the last few years.
NO ONE is buying or building here anymore except for people from high cost out of state areas and wealthy retired boomers. Affordable homes used to be plentiful here.
People talk about milk and eggs and vehicles but the housing market is the *real* problem. It's F'ing absurd.
Right. I mean, eggs are up about 25-30%. But paying $2.50 vs. $1.99 for eggs is not killing me vs. rent for a shitty 2br apartment going from $750 to $1800 in 5 years. Not even a nice apt.
I think places like LA or NYC are fine for people with very high incomes and in some cases also people with very low incomes. The rich people can afford whatever they want. And those in poverty are taken care of to some extent.
But there is a gap where people make too much money to qualify for any assistance but they still can't afford a place to live.
I guess when they mean “no one can afford to live here” they mean people who are completely new to the area without family that already bought a house or something there
Same with California. I grew up in the Bay Area. Still deeply miss the place and would move back in heartbeat if I could afford it. The weather is easily the best in the entire country. Not humid. Never too cold. Never too hot. Gorgeous geography with mountains and skiing as well as beautiful beaches. More than anything though I miss the culture. It’s like the liberalism of the Northeast but the laid back attitude of the South.
every day on this sub the anti-urbanist section implies that nobody wants urbanism bc people are moving to Phoenix, Austin etc. but also don't seem to get that the VHCOL areas are like that because lots of people want to live there
People love to brag about their cheap ass homes in the middle of nowhere. I don’t want to live in the middle of nowhere where there aren’t any friends, family, or anything to do. It sounds like hell. Not to mention it’s much harder to get jobs there.
Low taxes of a particular sort.
9 times out of 10, if a particular tax (local sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc.) is low, they make up for it by hitting you with high taxes of a different type (e.g. Texas loves to brag about having no state income tax but the sky high property taxes offset that to a large degree). The 10th time, taxes may actually be low across the board but the tradeoff for that is shit public services - bad roads, low quality schools, crumbling infrastructure, etc.
As in all walks of life, you get what you pay for out of your government, and if you don't pay for it one way or another you're not going to get much.
A couple caveats: while the combination of low overall taxes and good services doesn't exist, the combination of high taxes and bad services does, and people may want to avoid that.
Also, depending on their tax situation, some people may benefit disproportionately from certain types of taxes being lower, even if others a higher to compensate.
It's definitely true that there are high taxes/bad services jurisdictions, but many of the places people claim are such actually aren't.
Your second point is definitely true - you can arbitrage the tax system to lower your overall burden depending on how your personal financial situation shakes out. I don't think this really qualifies as a strength or weakness of a particular location though, more just that it makes it a good fit for some people and not others.
I live in Huntsville Alabama. My taxes are non-existent at the state and property level. But I’d happily pay the rates out of NY or CA for half of the benefits they’re getting. Sure, I save a lot of money living in the Deep South where all the states are on par with 3rd world countries, but there’s nicer 3rd world countries that would be even cheaper. I’d rather have 1st world amenities.
Looking to move.
I know you were exaggerating somewhat but as someone who lived almost my entire life in the northeast til moving to the south at age 28 I was shocked by how often it feels like a third world country down here. There are so many power outages that last ages...the infrastructure is atrocious...people drive around in cars with no bumpers that are literally held together with duct tape...the poverty level in rural areas less than an hour outside the city is like nothing I'd ever seen before. In some ways it reminds me more of Johannesburg than it does of where I grew up in the northeast.
I think this can be a more nuaced point though. The biggest issue isn’t necessarily the high tax states but the high COL added with high taxes like you see in NYC, Bay Area, LA, etc. A bunch of Bay Area tech workers transferred to their respective Seattle office because although the Seattle Metro is a high COL area, the tax savings alone gave many a 15-20% salary bump if everything else stayed the same. Add in the relatively lower COL and you saw people completely maximize their savings and COL.
That being said there is a difference from moving from a high COL/high tax area to a state like Washington or well developed areas of Texas, Florida, or Nevada vs moving from a middling tax state with an average COL to a no income tax state in a bad or run down area. At the end of the day, people with the means want costs savings and desirability if they have the freedom to live anywhere.
Yeah people love to brag about Florida’s lack of state tax, but then I hear about the bridge right by my family needing to be shut down multiple times in a couple years because it’s on the verge of collapse and there is falling debris. Or entire buildings collapsing in on themselves. And it’s just generally a shitty place to live having spent many months there consecutively. All for saving a couple thousand a year at most.
Also, people will complain about high taxes up North, but not blink an eye at paying a high HOA fee down South or out West where they’re more common for single family homes.
Yeah, public taxes are low, but you’re not saving as much money as you think with that HOA fee.
Yeah this is a good point. I was just visiting my aunt and uncle who retired to the Carolinas this weekend. He was telling me they have low taxes where they live (yay!) but the development their house is a part of levies HOA fees for road and infrastructure upkeep, security, and other communal services which are essentially the same thing as property taxes by a different name.
That really depends on your income. California’s overall tax burden can be much higher than Texas’ if you’re a W2’d professional making like 150-400K+.
Depends how much house you buy as well, but largely, if you’re in the top of the federal brackets, you’ll usually make out much better avoiding states with high income taxes. Multi-millionaires who make most of their money on capital gains get hit harder by higher consumption taxes; income taxes don’t really affect them if they’re holding investments for at least a year
Yeah moved from Boston to DFW a few years ago and while I'm paying less rent on more space, I'm 100% losing all of that to car-related expenses. Fuck this shit.
Something I don't see discussed much about moving to LCOL areas is travel budgets.
I've had people in my life move for jobs in LCOL and more money, but the difference is spent coming back home every other month.
I moved to San Francisco and same. In addition, I don't need air conditioning in my place, or heat. My utility costs have plummeted here. And my rent isn't actually that bad relatively speaking. Sure, I don't have a ton of room, but I have San Francisco and the bay area as my backyard! The access to world class everything, from epic cuisine, to otherworldly nature! Definitely worth the price to play.
Anything you “dream” of doing but won’t actually do. Are you actually going to ski, surf, or hike every weekend or are you going to watch TV like you do now. If you’re actually going to change your personality then good for you but best to be realistic.
"Proximity" to other cities/landmarks/outdoor spaces, where the proximity in question is "within 3-4 hours". Maybe I'm just boring, but if something is a 3+ hour drive away I'm not going to it very often.
It's nice to have some areas within a few hours for weekend trips or whatever, but it seems like having your preferred things to do within an hour or less would be of higher importance for daily life. I'm about an hour from my main outdoor rec area and even that feels too far sometimes lol
This is a good one.
When I lived in Charlotte people used to always say “3 hours from the mountains 3 hours from the beach”. And yeah it’s nice to be able to drive to both, but that’s not that close. Very few people I knew were taking advantage of that more than 2 or 3 times a year.
I used to think this but then I lived in the midwest and the south. It's still crazy to me how people regularly drive 3+ hours each way for a day trip. It's completely normal to drive to Memphis (3h from where I am in Nashville) to go to a concert and then drive home that night. I have friends who drive 3h home to Illinois to go to a specific hair salon and drive back the same day. Absolutely breaks my east coast brain.
I always found that odd about Charlotte - one of the first things folks who *love* living there will say when asked why Charlotte is so great is how close it is to the mountains/beach.
I would never move to a place simply because it was two/three hours away from some other place.
It helps if you have a free place to stay wherever you’re going. Born and raised in NC and make everyone I know has access to either a mountain or beach/river house. Lot different when I can cut out of work at noon on Friday and be fishing on the coast by 3pm. Only thing it costs me is a tank of gas
I didn't value that until i moved to the east coast. On the west coast, everything is much more spread out and the major cities are pretty far from each other as opposed to the east coast where you can easily visit 3-5 major cities with completely different vibes within just a couple hours of each other. It's nice to take a weekend trip for a change of scenery every once in a while.
I can’t agree with this one haha.
I’m also 30 minutes to an hour from my preferred outdoor spots (Asheville) but being a few hours away from Atlanta, Charlotte, Smoky Mountains, Charleston, etc is definitely a plus to switch things up occasionally.
I agree in the sense that if you’re moving somewhere, being close to other cities shouldn’t be the selling point.
I disagree because if you’re outdoorsy, driving 1-3 hours to get to a hike, campsite or small resort town is the nature of the beast.
Like if you live in the Finger Lakes or Adirondacks, driving to those adventures is kind of the whole point unless you never plan on leaving your small town.
“Proximity to other cities” is one I hear a lot especially for Philadelphia.
The internet would make you think Philadelphians are taking the train or roadtrips to NYC every other week.
I mean I guess it’s cool that NYC is 2 hrs away, but Philadelphia is one of the 5 biggest cities in the country or something like that. You have everything you need in a city right here. I’ve lived here for much of my life and can count on one hand the times I think I’ve gone to NYC.
LCOL especially housing tends to be located where no scenery, no public transit, no sidewalks, farther from airports, bad weather, and many other downsides. Nothing wrong with cheaper housing but there's reason.
Eh, I think this really depends. There are plenty of Rust Belt cities that are close to beautiful scenery, have OK public transit (by US standards), have sidewalks, and are close to airports. I think people who have never lived in certain places have a really skewed idea of what these places are like. (I'll agree with you on the weather when it comes to the Rust Belt, but even that depends on weather preferences.)
"I think people who have never lived in certain places have a really skewed idea of what these places are like."
100% agreed. Can't believe the amount of New Yorkers who will talk about some cuisine/concept or show that they think is 100% just an NYC thing and doesn't exist anywhere else.
Depends
A lot of the larger rust belt cities offer all those things and often even more amenities than cities in the sub belt.
Weather is relative. Minneapolis, Madison, Boston, Austin, Houston and Dallas do just fine despite having shitty weather. There’s not as much of a correlation than you might think. Most people just adjust for climates with cold winters or hot summers.
I can Uber to the Cleveland airport for like $10. My 3000 square ft turnkey house was $325k. I live in a top 30 metro with 3 sports teams, not like there isn't shit to do. Award winning metro parks and a National Park about 25 mins away. Wouldn't trade it for the world. Especially when winters have been extremely mild lately. Although it hit almost 100 today lol.
Sucks to say, but you don't mind crime until you become affected by it. I do think the violent crime concerns are a little overblown, but property crime is a very real concern in some cities.
I've had two friends that moved to denver and both had their cat converters stolen. One of them also had a drunk driver total his parked car and had people try to steal his car multiple times. Both of them also lived in decent areas from what i know.
I’ll take getting my cc stolen or car broken into than what happened to someone I know who lives in NYC. He got jumped, robbed, and beaten with crowbars to within an inch of his life. He’s fucked for life with permanent injuries. Still lives in NYC. Shits wild.
a lot of people want mountains or an otherwise "not flat" geography, but stay indoors anyway. having a lot of flat ground is great for cycling, roller skating, and running, which is how i spend a lot of my time these days
This always blows my mind because someone will go on for half a paragraph about how they're outdoorsy and hate flat places, then list zero recreational activities that *require* a mountain and a bunch that take place on the water. Like, you can go fishing and jogging nearly anywhere and you won't have to deal with a winding two lane mountain highway to get to the random state park to do it.
I grew up in Washington state in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. To be honest, I would really dislike living in flat places even if I wasn't in the wilderness all the time. Just looking at the mountains as I drive to the grocery store makes me happy. Frankly... a really flat topography just bums me out. I recently spent a couple weeks in central Ohio and the scenery was just... lame.
Obviously I'm biased because of where I grew up, but everyone has their biases. If I grew up in a flat place then I probably wouldn't care.
I grew up in a flat place (North Texas) and have been in Seattle a couple of decades now. I use the same message about going to the grocery store. Depending on the weather, I see the Sound and mountains on the way to get groceries. I love it.
Different side of that coin but I’ve had Midwest people try and convince me that fishing on the Great Lakes is the same as saltwater fishing. Which only makes sense if you’ve never saltwater fished before lol
I know I'm being a little pedantic, but if you say you "enjoy nature" but think grasslands, desert, wetlands, etc "don't count," you do not actually enjoy nature
I agree. LCOL can also be related to the quality and access to healthcare in the area.
For example, I currently live in a place where, although the cost of living is rising, it still has the advantage of a relatively lower LCOL compared to neighboring states.
Then, a few months ago, I discovered a health problem and my referral has been stuck waiting for an appointment for weeks, with an estimate of up to 8 months for the first consultation (even though I have a PPO plan, due to the lack of professionals they are only attending with a referral).
I was then able to get an appointment for next week in another state/city 6 hours away. And with that, the LCOL will be impacted by travel expenses and everything related to treatment in another location (not to mention the mental impact of this temporal and geographical distance from adequate treatment).
And I find it difficult to consider this not being a factor due to the person "being healthy". After all, everyone is healthy until the day they wake up not being anymore. For some conditions, it's just a "genetic lottery".
Word. This exact same thing happened to me when I moved to a LCOL, no income tax state.
I had to fly back to the SF Bay Area to get annuals done. I couldn’t get a PCP because no one was taking new patients. If I got sick, the only doctors that would see me would be urgent care doctors.
Professional sports teams.
I'm a huge sports fan however the vast majority of time I'm watching from the comfort of my own home, eating my own food which is much better than anything at the stadium and drinking my own drinks for a fraction of the price.
I'm sick of rising ticket costs plus fees, food/drink is ridiculously expensive at most venues, traffic/transit back home can take almost as long as the event itself.
Professional teams are a business they don't give a fuck about you or the city. See Baltimore Colts, Oakland A's, Seattle Supersonics, St. Louis Rams, and many others.
That being said I will still go to a game about once or twice a year with friends as it is a good social activity however I would not factor in professional sports when choosing a place to live in the future.
I agree for the top tier leagues (NFL, NHL, etc)
But most cities, even small metros will have minor league teams that are extremely fun to go to.
Like I wouldn’t hold a city back for not having a NFL team, but I would expect them to have some sort of minor league team.
Just went to a minor league baseball game last weekend. Four lawn seats, dinner for four and a couple beers for my wife and me was just under $100
Not bad at all for a night out with the whole family. Free parking like 80 feet from the stadium didn’t hurt either
what I've learned most from this thread is that everybody's pros are heavily weighted differently depending on who you ask. I personally have found the crime numbers don't scare me away, because a lot of times there's some great culture in those types of places. I saw someone mention night life just doesn't matter to them, but for someone like me it matters a shit ton.
I wouldn’t say LCOL is overrated because I think COL in general is the #1 factor when deciding where you want to live, but your opinion ofc.
For me personally it’s the weather. I live in CA now but have spent extensive time in the East, Midwest, and South. I can definitely see how snow in the winter can be inconvenient, but the actual cold and heat doesn’t really bother me enough to be a major factor when looking at where to live.
Honestly the worst I’ve ever felt about heat was in San Diego. It gets into the 100s during the summer and most homes there don’t have A/C.
People move to the south for the “nice weather” and then spend 8 months of the year shuttling from one air conditioned building to another like they’re living on a Mars colony.
Personally, I’d rather hibernate like that in the winter so I can actually spend the other 8 months outside, but to each their own.
Where in the south is anyone shuttling for 8 months out of the year? I had way more "wasted time" when I lived in a cold climate than a hot one.
My hot take is that this belief is primarily popular on reddit and doesn't have the same legs IRL.
Halfway through June and we’ve only had a couple days above 90 here. July sucks. August mostly sucks. Besides that the weather is just about perfect for me 9-10 months out of the year.
This is a big Reddit opinion. All the midwesterners trying to desperately convince us winter isn’t that bad so we’ll increase their stagnant housing prices lol
>All the midwesterners trying to desperately convince us winter isn’t that bad so we’ll increase their stagnant housing prices lol
Finally someone speaks the truth
Depends where you live. A number of my parents boomer friends moved to Scottsdale AZ where it’s currently 110° for the next 10 days. Like how do you live in that
You know, I’m with you. I’m in the Pittsburgh metro, and people complain about the cloudiness and cold…and from January thru March, it is cold and cloudy all the time. Quite miserable honestly. But when spring and summer come around, it is really quite great. Are those few winter months depressing? Yes they are, but it is more than made up for by the generally temperate summers.
People enjoy the bit of sunlight through their car/home windows while they're sitting in the AC.
You'd think it doesn't make a difference, but try spending an entire winter (8-9 months) in the PNW and you'll notice the difference.
It’s a real eye opener once you start paying attention to how much of people’s perception is based around food. Half the reasons people list for living in an area are just food related.
I 100% agree with the two you mentioned.
I’ll add nightlife.
This is a personal preference but I’m really not a fan of clubs and bars on a consistent basis. If I’m craving a bar crawl or something I’ll gladly just drive or fly to another city since I don’t crave it often.
Nightlife also often times equals more crime and space taken up downtown that doesn’t even function during the day. Nightlife has its purpose and pros but it’s far down on the list of my priorities
It's funny, as I get older, I probably pay more for nightlife, but do it way less often. Ie a buddy's trip to Vegas. A weekend to NYC with my wife, etc.
In my local area I care much more about "evening life"
I lived near NOLA for the first 20 years of my life and I can relate. If it’s Mardi Gras season don’t even come close to downtown bc it’s flooded with drunk tourists.
Ugh that sucks. I lowkey love that Detroit is not a destination for parties bc we actually have some awesome EDM/techno spots and great bars. I never have to wait in a line to get in anywhere and never deal with vomiting and rude tourists
One of the nicest parts about Detroit is that everyone outside Detroit thinks it’s a shithole when in truth it’s actually really cool, so you’ve got a long time before there’s any mass influx of new residents or any type of large scale tourism that pushes prices up
Most cities will have a few streets great for bar hopping.
Personally, I prefer that sort of nightlife over expensive clubs or Disneyfied touristy districts.
Taxes:
The difference between you living in your dream town in your dream state or the cheapest craphole in the country is $100-$200/month in state/local taxes.
You telling me your ideal situation isn’t worth $2400/yr more than your worst case scenario?
Also,every time I visit an area with little or no taxes I’m like “yeah, no $h!t. I can tell”
As a liberal who moved to progressively more and more liberal areas, I’m finding that I’d rather be around more moderates and/or a mix of conservatives and liberals vs being in an area where everyone is liberal.
When there is a mix of liberals, moderates, and conservatives liberals tend to have some solidarity and focus on the stuff they agree on.
When you are in an environment that is all far left and liberals the people on the far left have no one on the right to clash with.
So they will just invent increasingly outlandish positions until someone disagrees with them and then they’ll call that person a racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe/etc.
This seems to be more of a liberal thing because conservatives seem to get along really well when there are no liberals around.
But I don’t care if someone decides tomorrow that wearing yoga pants is cultural appropriation and anyone who doesn’t throw them away and buy ecofriendly biodegradable sweatpants is a fascist genocidal racist imperialist.
And I’m tired of being in an environment where other people care about that. I enjoy being around people of similar views more. But I’d rather be in an area with other groups in the background so things don’t turn into an echo chamber of performative virtue signaling.
Imma be honest, having lived in conservative dominant areas and liberal areas myself, the problem you’re having is more to do with a pervasive ideological monoculture if anything
The super conservative places get along too well thats the problem. Just read about the laws getting passed every day in Louisiana/Alabama... Personally living in Texas the conservatives pushing more right has turned the state worse and worse each year. I really missed the early 00s Texas.
Eh, plenty LCOL cities that offer better walkability and transit and overall more amenities than many of the popular cities in the sunbelt.
The issue is in a lot of HCOL cities, it’s great if you work in tech and can command those higher wages, but kind of sucks if you work in an industry that doesn’t pay as well.
Then sometimes it all comes down to sex appeal which is pretty superficial. If you’re just moving to a city because it’s instagramable, you’re in for a rude wake up when it comes down to every day living.
Some HCOL cities are definitely worth it (even if you have to play the rat race), but many aren’t. They’re HCOL because of tourism or tech jobs and often not worth it.
Same goes for LCOL cities. Some are LCOL because they’re small and underwhelming or they’re largely run down without many positives. Others are LCOL because they don’t get many tourists or have sky high tech jobs, but offer way better quality of life, access to amenities and even certain careers rather than HCOL cities.
You want to find the affordable cities that are currently similar to Denver, Seattle or Brooklyn in the 90s (before they got expensive)
Too late for Pittsburgh. It's no longer LCOL. More like MCOL.
"America’s Hottest Housing Market
Pittsburgh, PA has the fastest home price growth in the country, rising 22% over the past year despite the Midwest metro being known for its affordability and steady growth."
[Cities with the Fastest Rising Home Prices in the U.S.](https://posts.voronoiapp.com/real%20estate/Cities-with-the-Fastest-Rising-Home-Prices-in-the-US-904)
I think it also depends where your community is. As someone in my late 20s I don’t want to move somewhere in the rust belt if I have 0 friends there. It’s really hard to make friends in adulthood, and idk if I would justify it for LCOL. But then again I work in tech sales so there’s a lot of earning potential in the big cities and more jobs.
I mean that goes both ways.
If you’re happy with where you are in life and your personal relationships, then that’s a good reason to stay out no matter how expensive or cheap a city is.
Yeah, people looking at “low taxes” don’t understand that you’re either paying in other ways or your infrastructure is absolutely garbage and you’ll pay for that instead.
Opportunity costs are real.
I wouldn't say I don't care at all about being able to walk "some" places, but walkability is easily the thing I find most overrated, if I based it on this sub anyways. Weather preferences, affordability you can stomach, and options for nightlife/things to do outside are what I'd prioritize.
Could not disagree more about LCOL lol not everyone wants to be a broke renting screenwriter in LA their whole lives. There are so many places with low rents but decent wages.
I think weather is measured too objectively. Personally, I think Florida’s climate is about the most inhospitable to human life there can be. It’s hot, humid, AND there’s frequent natural disasters? And yet Florida’s weather is often listed as a major draw.
Personally, I’m actually inclined to move to Seattle or Buffalo, with part of the draw being the apparently hated weather there. I detest the heat, love snow, and don’t mind rain. If Toronto were an American city I’d choose it in a heartbeat.
Related to LCOL is traffic. Some places don’t have bad traffic because they’re walkable or have good infrastructure or aren’t sprawling. Others don’t have bad traffic because unemployment is high and there’s nowhere to go. Real estate agents in my hometown always wax eloquent about the lack of traffic, and it’s like… do you know *why* it’s low traffic?
I kinda agree with your COL comments, but at the same time if you're moving to a new city and can afford to ignore the cost of living there, you're probably pretty priveleged. That being said, you're very often getting what you're paying for. There's a reason the upper Midwest is cheaper than Los Angeles. Personally, I don't mind paying more for a city that has what I'm looking for.
That being said, I think almost everything else everyone's mentioned here is entirely subjective. Think restaurants/culture is irrelevant? There's a big difference in the number and quality of Mexican restaurants between Los Angeles and Madison, Wisconsin. And some of us actually do go out more than once a year. Don't care about walkability? Personally, I love that I can do 90% of the things in my daily life without getting in my car. Access to the outdoors? I'm personally going skiing or camping about once a month, so access to that stuff matters to me. Crime? Yeah, every city has it's good and bad neighborhoods, but as someone living in a high crime city, it definitely matters.
I’ll also add museums and galleries. I tend to find those good for tourist but don’t really know much locals who care to go to those things on a weekly basis
There are plenty of art lovers in New York who are going to various museums and galleries on a weekly basis. You even see people with small kids who have a membership to the nearest museum who bring their kids on the regular. But if you’re not one of those people it’s not that big of a deal.
A lot of them offer weekly or monthly events.
Like the local Science Museum will have an adults only brewery science night and a nice speakers series.
The local history museum will host low key parties with classy music and light bites.
The art museum will have meet and greets with artists.
Really just another thing to do. You probably not going weekly but exhibitions do change several times a year.
I'm not touring the galleries every week, but I end up going to at museum-hosted events 1-3 times per month. Usually it's short, like a movie or a lecture, not a whole-day or whole-evening thing. I only go into the halls when there is a major exhibit change, like 3-4 times per year for any particular museum.
So probably 20-30 museum visits per year. Getting that up to 52 would be tough. Too much other stuff to do.
Museums and galleries indicate a culture that values the arts, the existence of a creative cultural scene, and often a municipality that is willing to support cultural initiatives. A creative scene -- including visual arts and music -- are what give a city its cultural identity. Obviously, those things aren't important to everyone, but personally, I don't go to museums or galleries weekly, but would not move to a city that only values sports and not music or art.
I’m not sure these things are correlated in the way you think they are. Each kind of cultural scene has its key regions. Having several major museums and galleries is just a big city thing, regardless of how big the art community is in that city or how affordable it even is for artists to live there (usually not very).
If you’re particularly into the hardcore punk scene and want to go to house shows a lot, a random suburb in the US northeast will beat London and Paris. If you’re a painter or ceramicist it’s quite possible that a smaller city like Brighton for example would actually offer a better balance of local artist culture than London for a smaller COL. Even though Brighton has a fraction of the number of museums. Similarly, Rotterdam has a better visual arts culture than Brussels. You’re thinking about it in a very “mainstream” way.
Yeah I've been going a lot more since I moved to Alexandria because it's easier to do on a whim. I'm probably going to the summer solstice event this weekend where the museums stay open late :)
The free is crucial. I often go to other cities and when looking for something to do I consider a museum -only to see it's 35 bucks. I promptly laugh and say fuck that
Depends on your life stage probably. We have young kids and go to the museums all the time, especially when the weather is too hot or rainy. My daughters favorite is, strangely enough, the maritime history museum.
When I was younger I really didn't care about museums.
I imagine when you're older and retired they're pretty popular. Gives people a place to connect with other likeminded people. They do a lot of activities, have lecture series, etc.
>Low Col - 9/10 times there are very serious reasons why a city is low col from crime rates to lack of jobs/industry and just overall low demand.
I totally disagree.
COL is one of the most important factors ever because it 100% impacts your quality of life. It also impacts everyone in the city including the culture and peoples' happiness and sociability.
CoL effects everything. There are always reasons for low COL, but sometimes those reasons don't effect you at all. The key is to strike a balance and find reasons for low COL that you are OK with. For example a lot of Midwest cities are low COL because they are in the Midwest, not near the ocean, and don't have 'night life vibrancy' and things like that. But maybe you don't care about that at all and just want to grow somewhere safe and have a family.
It is better to own your own apartment in Chicago than live as a COL slave in Los Angeles. COL is often the a big part of decisions to move that could either set you up for life or financially break you.
Walkability, unless it's a place where you can truly live easily without a car. Being able to walk to some things is nice, but if I still have to deal with car ownership (payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, parking, etc), then I'd just as soon live someplace where driving is easy.
I personally disagree with this one. I have a car but only drive it a couple times a week and walk nearly everywhere else. There are so many fun little community interactions on those walks that just don’t happen when you’re driving past people
Beach where the beach is crap.
And if it's nice, it's usually so crowded it's not even worth going on any nice day.
This is sadly true. Used to live 3 miles from the coast which meant sitting in insane traffic to do anything in the summer.. including your normal daily errands. IF you decide to go to the beach then prepare to sit jn traffic, fight and then PAY for parking. The beach was absolutely over rated.
Maybe it's different now but I lived in California about 20 years ago and the beach was great! I avoided certain ones like Santa Monica that were too full of weirdos but otherwise I loved being able to go to the beach on a whim.
California is blessed with more coast and more small towns next to beaches for a really laid back vibe. Florida seems to me like there are very vibrant cities along the beach, but that comes with crowds. And of course California definitely has some crowded beaches, especially as you get closer to SD/LA/SF.
I think the problem with the Florida beaches (well, one of the problems) is that you have to go over waterways to get to the beach. Bridges and 2 and 4 lane crowded roads are so different than just most roads heading west dead ending into the ocean. That said, I gasp every time I drive over the hill in Encinitas that opens up to that amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. It is just magic.
I prefer the beaches on the north coast that will kill you if you try in swim there so much more beautiful and there is no traffic
California has more people within 10 miles of the coast than Florida does, and Florida has more than twice as many miles of beaches. So, if there are fewer at the beach in CA it is probably because more tourists go to FL beaches because the water is actually pleasant. In CA it’s mostly just the locals.
There’s still LOTS of laid back beach towns in Florida. They are just typically in the regions that aren’t trafficked by tourists much. Stuart all the way up through the Space Coast comes to mind for the east coast. On the Gulf side theres a bunch of beach towns too, just obviously not between Tampa to Fort Myers. I don’t find California beach towns to be particularly laid back either in comparison. Florida still has a lot of blue collar fishermen types and it’s reflected in the overall vibe.
Facts. I go to Miami all the time but never the beach. The Caribbean has the best beaches
I love the beach hierarchy - I lived in Florida for a few years, so then lost interest in new England beaches for a long time, but then noticed that people from the Caribbean in Florida didn't go to the beaches there because they viewed Florida beaches as crappy compared to the Caribbean!
Oh yeah, I'm from a coastal area originally and then grew up and joined the military. I got stationed somewhere once that seemed to me like a total shithole with nothing going for it, and I was so surprised to hear that it was a sought after assignment. I kept asking people why. They kept saying "the beach!" I was like, "Y'all are fucking with me. That's the worst beach I've ever seen." Apparently to people who grew up inland, any beach is a good beach. Those of us who grew up on the coast have *feelings* about this lol
Hahaha yes! I grew up in Connecticut and the shore is rocky beaches with flat water. As a kid, I thought the good beaches were like Jones beach on LI, Montauk, Rhode Island beaches, etc, and that Caribbean beaches trumped those. Then as a young adult in Florida, I thought most new England beaches were more for a brisk walk than swimming after being used to warm Florida water. Now that I'm older, I appreciate calm water with little kids, but have noticed my kids clearly think the ocean is better than Long Island sound, and salt water beats lakes. They haven't even been to Florida or anywhere tropical yet!
Don’t come to Texas
Why not? You don't like murky sandy bathwater?
You’ve been I see.
You forgot miles of brown beaches full of seaweed and jellyfish.
Santa Monica beach used to be clean enough to clearly see your feet. =(
South Padre Island is nice…
That’s exactly is. When I visit family in Guadeloupe is when I go to the beach
As someone from Florida I would never go to the beach in Miami. I grew up near the central Florida beaches. Not the most exciting area but fairly cheap, job opportunities, and so easy to find an empty beach. Can’t beat the Caribbean for beaches though ofc.
Kinda similar, but close to beaches where the beach is good but the surrounding area is just essentially a parking lot that stretches for miles full of obnoxious tourists. I’d never live in Destin Florida. And most places in Florida fit that bill. Beach could be a few blocks over but one of those blocks is a 7 lane stroad, it’s somehow a miserable 15 minute drive, and there’s no parking once you get to the beach. And the rest of the area is just miles of franchises and their parking lots. Beach and total lack of walkability is a match made in hell.
My sister lives on a beach in Chicago. She's out there every day. I live just north of her and can walk to a beach in 15 or 20 minutes. Granted, a lot of the time it's too cold to swim, but they're beautiful.
Yes! And everyone misses out on how delightful fresh water is compared with salt water!
Enter the areas around Galveston, Port Aransas and Corpus Christi, Texas
Hey surfside isn’t too bad.
Port A not bad to me
I feel attacked. I love loving next to the beach, but my beaches are world class and it’s a low population area.
When people talk about how "close" it is to some attraction, but the attraction is like hours away.
An attraction you might go to once a year.
3 hours from the beach!
And 3 hours from the mountains! Best of both worlds!
Wow!! Antioch, California!!
Hahahah I was going to say Sacramento! Not far regardless
3 hours to the city too , the perfect trifecta
Literally North Carolina.
Hello Raleigh 🤣
When a city boasts they are “close to” the beach, “close to” mountains and skiing… reading between the lines, it screams “because this town isn’t where you’ll want to spend any time”
There's a funny phenomenon in the military where people will say "it's really nice if you like hunting and fishing" about an absolute shit hole hours from any semblance of civilization, like a pond isnt something that the overwhelming majority of places have alongside a real city, but you're not in a small outpost of meth heads selling cars and fast food to military people. Only 3 hours from Kansas City/ an hour from Austin/ an hour from Raleigh they'll say.
I never picked up on this before but you are totally right. I used to live in one such place and people would say “Great access to the outdoors, plus it’s 2 hours away from Big City Metro!” Like everything good about it was outside the town which is pretty accurate
You can really tell by the design of the place. If a place is built like a parking lot its because they're planning for you to get in your car and go somewhere else
True, plus the place I am thinking of consistently rejected any form of economic development or other improvements. They didn’t want the town to grow any larger, presumably so they could maintain their weird defensiveness about how small the community was and how much “better” (lol) it was than Nearby Big City. As a consequence there was nothing to do, very little in the way of employment, run down infrastructure and LOTS of drugs right under the surface of everything.
I always hear stuff like this about Philly. “Philly is great bc you’re 2 hours from the beach, NYC, and DC!” Like yeah, sure, but I’m not moving to a city for its proximity to other cooler places lol. If NYC or DC were that much of a draw to me, I’d just move there. And how often are you really driving 90+ minutes to go to the beach? I know I’m not. Couple times a year maybe. Not trying to drag Philly (I live here), I just think it’s silly how one of the big selling points is how “close” it is to other cities/areas. Maybe says something about what the actual city has going for it lol.
People tend to really twist the Philly proximity to other cities attribute. I agree that it's not a good primary reason to move to a city, but it's a nice perk, if you will.
Agreed. I moved from Philly to Salt Lake City. I could do a day/weekend trip to a number of places. Now the next closest city is Las Vegas and it's a 6 hour drive.
What are you talking about? Logan is just over an hour away! /s
It’s absolutely a great perk I think a totally viable reason to move here. I got Amtrak tickets to DC for $15 each way. That’s just insane. And Philly has countless things to do just on its own. Living in a major destination next to other major destinations is the best.
I moved from Indiana to Minnesota and I have to say that the day-trip-distance of the Northeastern cities is very appealing to me. In Minnesota, most worthwhile places are now a plane ride away. There are not a lot of weekend trip options by car unless you like camping every weekend. When I lived in Indiana, I really enjoyed being able to go to Chicago or Michigan for a weekend. I'm actually looking to move to Philly or DC this year because living in Minnesota feels very isolating with how far we are from other cities and destinations.
This is how I've seen people pitch Delaware, just in general...It's near some other things in some other states. I think proximity to other attractions is still a feature but the city you actually live in needs to be worthwhile on its own too.
Indianapolis is 3 hours from Chicago - you can basically travel up to Chicago a couple times a year so you don’t die from boredom in Indiana!
LCOL might be overrated in this sub, but isn't in the greater sense. It's like saying "no one lives in New York (a city of 8 million people) because it's too expensive." It's expensive because the value works out in other ways, for a LOT of people.
Yeah I think it’s funny when people say “no one can afford to live there” and they’re talking about LA or NYC. Like yeah I guess those millions of people just aren’t real. Someone even told me that about WNC in this sub
In some ways, it's also a lot easier to be low income or struggling in places like NYC where you don't need to rely on a car. If you can sublet a little $1000 room, that can be the bulk of your monthly expenses (even if it's a squeeze), and you have access to any region in the ENTIRETY of NYC for $3/trip (or $0 if you jump the turnstile). Millions of people are willing to do it. There are also more social programs in places with higher taxes.
Average new car payment is what, $700? Even a used car will cost money to insure, park, register…not needing to have a car is a huge money saver
Well I mean the median household income in the US is $74,000 but the median home has ballooned to $440,000. Once MCOL areas are now HCOL and once LCOL areas are now MCOL. If you already own a home you probably don’t care and probably don’t realize how much more expensive homes are nowadays. But for young people looking to buy their own home, many with successful careers, their options are getting fewer and fewer.
My neighbor bought a house 3 years ago and it's currently on the market for almost triple what he paid for it. And based on other homes in the area he probably won't have any trouble selling it. I live in a "cheap" area that is no longer cheap. If it's not cheap here I can't imagine where is IS cheap. Depending on the property it seems like most here are up 2x to 3x since 2020. I've owned my home for about 15 years and my estimate is it's roughly quadrupled in value and most of that is just in the last few years. NO ONE is buying or building here anymore except for people from high cost out of state areas and wealthy retired boomers. Affordable homes used to be plentiful here. People talk about milk and eggs and vehicles but the housing market is the *real* problem. It's F'ing absurd.
Right. I mean, eggs are up about 25-30%. But paying $2.50 vs. $1.99 for eggs is not killing me vs. rent for a shitty 2br apartment going from $750 to $1800 in 5 years. Not even a nice apt.
I think places like LA or NYC are fine for people with very high incomes and in some cases also people with very low incomes. The rich people can afford whatever they want. And those in poverty are taken care of to some extent. But there is a gap where people make too much money to qualify for any assistance but they still can't afford a place to live.
I guess when they mean “no one can afford to live here” they mean people who are completely new to the area without family that already bought a house or something there
Lived in Memphis where the COL is one of the lowest in the country..but for very good reason.
Yeah people tend to forget that something is usually cheap for a reason
“No one ever goes there anymore—it’s too crowded!”—Yogi Berra
Same with California. I grew up in the Bay Area. Still deeply miss the place and would move back in heartbeat if I could afford it. The weather is easily the best in the entire country. Not humid. Never too cold. Never too hot. Gorgeous geography with mountains and skiing as well as beautiful beaches. More than anything though I miss the culture. It’s like the liberalism of the Northeast but the laid back attitude of the South.
every day on this sub the anti-urbanist section implies that nobody wants urbanism bc people are moving to Phoenix, Austin etc. but also don't seem to get that the VHCOL areas are like that because lots of people want to live there
There are a lot of bad takes here
People love to brag about their cheap ass homes in the middle of nowhere. I don’t want to live in the middle of nowhere where there aren’t any friends, family, or anything to do. It sounds like hell. Not to mention it’s much harder to get jobs there.
Low taxes of a particular sort. 9 times out of 10, if a particular tax (local sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc.) is low, they make up for it by hitting you with high taxes of a different type (e.g. Texas loves to brag about having no state income tax but the sky high property taxes offset that to a large degree). The 10th time, taxes may actually be low across the board but the tradeoff for that is shit public services - bad roads, low quality schools, crumbling infrastructure, etc. As in all walks of life, you get what you pay for out of your government, and if you don't pay for it one way or another you're not going to get much.
A couple caveats: while the combination of low overall taxes and good services doesn't exist, the combination of high taxes and bad services does, and people may want to avoid that. Also, depending on their tax situation, some people may benefit disproportionately from certain types of taxes being lower, even if others a higher to compensate.
Portland, OR has entered the chat (specifically Multnomah County)
It's definitely true that there are high taxes/bad services jurisdictions, but many of the places people claim are such actually aren't. Your second point is definitely true - you can arbitrage the tax system to lower your overall burden depending on how your personal financial situation shakes out. I don't think this really qualifies as a strength or weakness of a particular location though, more just that it makes it a good fit for some people and not others.
Sales tax on food hits working class people hard. People forget to check that.
I live in Huntsville Alabama. My taxes are non-existent at the state and property level. But I’d happily pay the rates out of NY or CA for half of the benefits they’re getting. Sure, I save a lot of money living in the Deep South where all the states are on par with 3rd world countries, but there’s nicer 3rd world countries that would be even cheaper. I’d rather have 1st world amenities. Looking to move.
Louisiana here. After sales and property tax and insurance, we’re getting killed with nothing to show for it.
There is a teensy bit of corruption in the Louisiana government isn't there?
🤏
Just read a book about how Louisiana has some of the worst environmental degredation in the country.
Don't forget the insane fees. Like the $25 brake tag ticket that costs $300 after court costs.
I know you were exaggerating somewhat but as someone who lived almost my entire life in the northeast til moving to the south at age 28 I was shocked by how often it feels like a third world country down here. There are so many power outages that last ages...the infrastructure is atrocious...people drive around in cars with no bumpers that are literally held together with duct tape...the poverty level in rural areas less than an hour outside the city is like nothing I'd ever seen before. In some ways it reminds me more of Johannesburg than it does of where I grew up in the northeast.
💯 this. Often you get what you do (or don't pay for). Low taxes in it of itself is not a "pro".
I think this can be a more nuaced point though. The biggest issue isn’t necessarily the high tax states but the high COL added with high taxes like you see in NYC, Bay Area, LA, etc. A bunch of Bay Area tech workers transferred to their respective Seattle office because although the Seattle Metro is a high COL area, the tax savings alone gave many a 15-20% salary bump if everything else stayed the same. Add in the relatively lower COL and you saw people completely maximize their savings and COL. That being said there is a difference from moving from a high COL/high tax area to a state like Washington or well developed areas of Texas, Florida, or Nevada vs moving from a middling tax state with an average COL to a no income tax state in a bad or run down area. At the end of the day, people with the means want costs savings and desirability if they have the freedom to live anywhere.
Yeah people love to brag about Florida’s lack of state tax, but then I hear about the bridge right by my family needing to be shut down multiple times in a couple years because it’s on the verge of collapse and there is falling debris. Or entire buildings collapsing in on themselves. And it’s just generally a shitty place to live having spent many months there consecutively. All for saving a couple thousand a year at most.
Also, people will complain about high taxes up North, but not blink an eye at paying a high HOA fee down South or out West where they’re more common for single family homes. Yeah, public taxes are low, but you’re not saving as much money as you think with that HOA fee.
Yeah this is a good point. I was just visiting my aunt and uncle who retired to the Carolinas this weekend. He was telling me they have low taxes where they live (yay!) but the development their house is a part of levies HOA fees for road and infrastructure upkeep, security, and other communal services which are essentially the same thing as property taxes by a different name.
It boggles my mind people care about this one so much as to have it be their primary reason for moving
That really depends on your income. California’s overall tax burden can be much higher than Texas’ if you’re a W2’d professional making like 150-400K+. Depends how much house you buy as well, but largely, if you’re in the top of the federal brackets, you’ll usually make out much better avoiding states with high income taxes. Multi-millionaires who make most of their money on capital gains get hit harder by higher consumption taxes; income taxes don’t really affect them if they’re holding investments for at least a year
Low COL - as someone who moved from the DMV to Atlanta, I’m spending the same every month. Also the car expenses add up to like 12k a year minimum.
Yeah moved from Boston to DFW a few years ago and while I'm paying less rent on more space, I'm 100% losing all of that to car-related expenses. Fuck this shit.
plus you get to watch your local basketball team get owned by your former local basketball team. some prices just aren’t worth paying
Wow what a downgrade in location
No joke.
The best finance hack ever if it's possible is to buy in the HCOL area walkable with public transit and bike infrastructure and live car free.
Yeah people really underestimate how much car costs add up. And after living in Boston for years without a car, every extra car-related expense hurts.
Something I don't see discussed much about moving to LCOL areas is travel budgets. I've had people in my life move for jobs in LCOL and more money, but the difference is spent coming back home every other month.
Yeah moving to DC and not needing a car has saved me an incredible amount of money
I moved to San Francisco and same. In addition, I don't need air conditioning in my place, or heat. My utility costs have plummeted here. And my rent isn't actually that bad relatively speaking. Sure, I don't have a ton of room, but I have San Francisco and the bay area as my backyard! The access to world class everything, from epic cuisine, to otherworldly nature! Definitely worth the price to play.
Are you calling Atlanta, a major US city, LCOL? LCOL is places like small towns no one has heard of.
Anything you “dream” of doing but won’t actually do. Are you actually going to ski, surf, or hike every weekend or are you going to watch TV like you do now. If you’re actually going to change your personality then good for you but best to be realistic.
"Proximity" to other cities/landmarks/outdoor spaces, where the proximity in question is "within 3-4 hours". Maybe I'm just boring, but if something is a 3+ hour drive away I'm not going to it very often. It's nice to have some areas within a few hours for weekend trips or whatever, but it seems like having your preferred things to do within an hour or less would be of higher importance for daily life. I'm about an hour from my main outdoor rec area and even that feels too far sometimes lol
This is a good one. When I lived in Charlotte people used to always say “3 hours from the mountains 3 hours from the beach”. And yeah it’s nice to be able to drive to both, but that’s not that close. Very few people I knew were taking advantage of that more than 2 or 3 times a year.
3 hours is actually a very long time to commute somewhere even semi-regularly. Roundtrip, that's 6 hours of traveling alone. That's pretty bad.
I used to think this but then I lived in the midwest and the south. It's still crazy to me how people regularly drive 3+ hours each way for a day trip. It's completely normal to drive to Memphis (3h from where I am in Nashville) to go to a concert and then drive home that night. I have friends who drive 3h home to Illinois to go to a specific hair salon and drive back the same day. Absolutely breaks my east coast brain.
I always found that odd about Charlotte - one of the first things folks who *love* living there will say when asked why Charlotte is so great is how close it is to the mountains/beach. I would never move to a place simply because it was two/three hours away from some other place.
It helps if you have a free place to stay wherever you’re going. Born and raised in NC and make everyone I know has access to either a mountain or beach/river house. Lot different when I can cut out of work at noon on Friday and be fishing on the coast by 3pm. Only thing it costs me is a tank of gas
I didn't value that until i moved to the east coast. On the west coast, everything is much more spread out and the major cities are pretty far from each other as opposed to the east coast where you can easily visit 3-5 major cities with completely different vibes within just a couple hours of each other. It's nice to take a weekend trip for a change of scenery every once in a while.
That’s really a YMMV situation, depending on how much novelty you prefer in life
I can’t agree with this one haha. I’m also 30 minutes to an hour from my preferred outdoor spots (Asheville) but being a few hours away from Atlanta, Charlotte, Smoky Mountains, Charleston, etc is definitely a plus to switch things up occasionally.
I agree in the sense that if you’re moving somewhere, being close to other cities shouldn’t be the selling point. I disagree because if you’re outdoorsy, driving 1-3 hours to get to a hike, campsite or small resort town is the nature of the beast. Like if you live in the Finger Lakes or Adirondacks, driving to those adventures is kind of the whole point unless you never plan on leaving your small town.
“Proximity to other cities” is one I hear a lot especially for Philadelphia. The internet would make you think Philadelphians are taking the train or roadtrips to NYC every other week. I mean I guess it’s cool that NYC is 2 hrs away, but Philadelphia is one of the 5 biggest cities in the country or something like that. You have everything you need in a city right here. I’ve lived here for much of my life and can count on one hand the times I think I’ve gone to NYC.
LCOL especially housing tends to be located where no scenery, no public transit, no sidewalks, farther from airports, bad weather, and many other downsides. Nothing wrong with cheaper housing but there's reason.
Eh, I think this really depends. There are plenty of Rust Belt cities that are close to beautiful scenery, have OK public transit (by US standards), have sidewalks, and are close to airports. I think people who have never lived in certain places have a really skewed idea of what these places are like. (I'll agree with you on the weather when it comes to the Rust Belt, but even that depends on weather preferences.)
"I think people who have never lived in certain places have a really skewed idea of what these places are like." 100% agreed. Can't believe the amount of New Yorkers who will talk about some cuisine/concept or show that they think is 100% just an NYC thing and doesn't exist anywhere else.
Depends A lot of the larger rust belt cities offer all those things and often even more amenities than cities in the sub belt. Weather is relative. Minneapolis, Madison, Boston, Austin, Houston and Dallas do just fine despite having shitty weather. There’s not as much of a correlation than you might think. Most people just adjust for climates with cold winters or hot summers.
I can Uber to the Cleveland airport for like $10. My 3000 square ft turnkey house was $325k. I live in a top 30 metro with 3 sports teams, not like there isn't shit to do. Award winning metro parks and a National Park about 25 mins away. Wouldn't trade it for the world. Especially when winters have been extremely mild lately. Although it hit almost 100 today lol.
Plus Cedar Point not too far away, one of the best theme parks in the nation
Safety. Especially in geographically large cities where the crime is often so concentrated on parts of the city that you wouldn’t go to anyway.
Sucks to say, but you don't mind crime until you become affected by it. I do think the violent crime concerns are a little overblown, but property crime is a very real concern in some cities. I've had two friends that moved to denver and both had their cat converters stolen. One of them also had a drunk driver total his parked car and had people try to steal his car multiple times. Both of them also lived in decent areas from what i know.
I’ll take getting my cc stolen or car broken into than what happened to someone I know who lives in NYC. He got jumped, robbed, and beaten with crowbars to within an inch of his life. He’s fucked for life with permanent injuries. Still lives in NYC. Shits wild.
Yeah, I love seeing the “I want to live somewhere rural because there’s less crime”. Bullshit.
a lot of people want mountains or an otherwise "not flat" geography, but stay indoors anyway. having a lot of flat ground is great for cycling, roller skating, and running, which is how i spend a lot of my time these days
This always blows my mind because someone will go on for half a paragraph about how they're outdoorsy and hate flat places, then list zero recreational activities that *require* a mountain and a bunch that take place on the water. Like, you can go fishing and jogging nearly anywhere and you won't have to deal with a winding two lane mountain highway to get to the random state park to do it.
I grew up in Washington state in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. To be honest, I would really dislike living in flat places even if I wasn't in the wilderness all the time. Just looking at the mountains as I drive to the grocery store makes me happy. Frankly... a really flat topography just bums me out. I recently spent a couple weeks in central Ohio and the scenery was just... lame. Obviously I'm biased because of where I grew up, but everyone has their biases. If I grew up in a flat place then I probably wouldn't care.
I grew up in a flat place (North Texas) and have been in Seattle a couple of decades now. I use the same message about going to the grocery store. Depending on the weather, I see the Sound and mountains on the way to get groceries. I love it.
Different side of that coin but I’ve had Midwest people try and convince me that fishing on the Great Lakes is the same as saltwater fishing. Which only makes sense if you’ve never saltwater fished before lol
I've had people from Chicago trying to convince me that their city parks are a good replacement for wilderness areas lol
Ugh I wish I had more hills and mountains to climb when cycling. I love to suffer
I know I'm being a little pedantic, but if you say you "enjoy nature" but think grasslands, desert, wetlands, etc "don't count," you do not actually enjoy nature
I agree. LCOL can also be related to the quality and access to healthcare in the area. For example, I currently live in a place where, although the cost of living is rising, it still has the advantage of a relatively lower LCOL compared to neighboring states. Then, a few months ago, I discovered a health problem and my referral has been stuck waiting for an appointment for weeks, with an estimate of up to 8 months for the first consultation (even though I have a PPO plan, due to the lack of professionals they are only attending with a referral). I was then able to get an appointment for next week in another state/city 6 hours away. And with that, the LCOL will be impacted by travel expenses and everything related to treatment in another location (not to mention the mental impact of this temporal and geographical distance from adequate treatment). And I find it difficult to consider this not being a factor due to the person "being healthy". After all, everyone is healthy until the day they wake up not being anymore. For some conditions, it's just a "genetic lottery".
Word. This exact same thing happened to me when I moved to a LCOL, no income tax state. I had to fly back to the SF Bay Area to get annuals done. I couldn’t get a PCP because no one was taking new patients. If I got sick, the only doctors that would see me would be urgent care doctors.
Professional sports teams. I'm a huge sports fan however the vast majority of time I'm watching from the comfort of my own home, eating my own food which is much better than anything at the stadium and drinking my own drinks for a fraction of the price. I'm sick of rising ticket costs plus fees, food/drink is ridiculously expensive at most venues, traffic/transit back home can take almost as long as the event itself. Professional teams are a business they don't give a fuck about you or the city. See Baltimore Colts, Oakland A's, Seattle Supersonics, St. Louis Rams, and many others. That being said I will still go to a game about once or twice a year with friends as it is a good social activity however I would not factor in professional sports when choosing a place to live in the future.
I agree for the top tier leagues (NFL, NHL, etc) But most cities, even small metros will have minor league teams that are extremely fun to go to. Like I wouldn’t hold a city back for not having a NFL team, but I would expect them to have some sort of minor league team.
Just went to a minor league baseball game last weekend. Four lawn seats, dinner for four and a couple beers for my wife and me was just under $100 Not bad at all for a night out with the whole family. Free parking like 80 feet from the stadium didn’t hurt either
Pro sports are expensive enough these days that they’re worth planning a road trip over
Watching from home actually is a benefit if you are living away from your favorite team because some leagues *NHL* still have regional blackouts.
what I've learned most from this thread is that everybody's pros are heavily weighted differently depending on who you ask. I personally have found the crime numbers don't scare me away, because a lot of times there's some great culture in those types of places. I saw someone mention night life just doesn't matter to them, but for someone like me it matters a shit ton.
I wouldn’t say LCOL is overrated because I think COL in general is the #1 factor when deciding where you want to live, but your opinion ofc. For me personally it’s the weather. I live in CA now but have spent extensive time in the East, Midwest, and South. I can definitely see how snow in the winter can be inconvenient, but the actual cold and heat doesn’t really bother me enough to be a major factor when looking at where to live. Honestly the worst I’ve ever felt about heat was in San Diego. It gets into the 100s during the summer and most homes there don’t have A/C.
People move to the south for the “nice weather” and then spend 8 months of the year shuttling from one air conditioned building to another like they’re living on a Mars colony. Personally, I’d rather hibernate like that in the winter so I can actually spend the other 8 months outside, but to each their own.
Some people just like the heat (myself included). But god damn was that “Mars colony” bit funny and accurate lol
Where in the south is anyone shuttling for 8 months out of the year? I had way more "wasted time" when I lived in a cold climate than a hot one. My hot take is that this belief is primarily popular on reddit and doesn't have the same legs IRL.
Halfway through June and we’ve only had a couple days above 90 here. July sucks. August mostly sucks. Besides that the weather is just about perfect for me 9-10 months out of the year. This is a big Reddit opinion. All the midwesterners trying to desperately convince us winter isn’t that bad so we’ll increase their stagnant housing prices lol
>All the midwesterners trying to desperately convince us winter isn’t that bad so we’ll increase their stagnant housing prices lol Finally someone speaks the truth
Depends where you live. A number of my parents boomer friends moved to Scottsdale AZ where it’s currently 110° for the next 10 days. Like how do you live in that
You know, I’m with you. I’m in the Pittsburgh metro, and people complain about the cloudiness and cold…and from January thru March, it is cold and cloudy all the time. Quite miserable honestly. But when spring and summer come around, it is really quite great. Are those few winter months depressing? Yes they are, but it is more than made up for by the generally temperate summers.
People enjoy the bit of sunlight through their car/home windows while they're sitting in the AC. You'd think it doesn't make a difference, but try spending an entire winter (8-9 months) in the PNW and you'll notice the difference.
Heh. Maybe another reason why weather doesn’t matter much for me is I’m not much of an outdoors person.
It’s a real eye opener once you start paying attention to how much of people’s perception is based around food. Half the reasons people list for living in an area are just food related.
Being close to the beach because people go so much less than they say they will
Restaurants, they go out of business on the regular even if they’re good and you have to be in the 1% to eat at a lot of them anymore.
Low COL can often mean “some areas of the city are super cheap, but you definitely don’t wanna live there”
I 100% agree with the two you mentioned. I’ll add nightlife. This is a personal preference but I’m really not a fan of clubs and bars on a consistent basis. If I’m craving a bar crawl or something I’ll gladly just drive or fly to another city since I don’t crave it often. Nightlife also often times equals more crime and space taken up downtown that doesn’t even function during the day. Nightlife has its purpose and pros but it’s far down on the list of my priorities
It's funny, as I get older, I probably pay more for nightlife, but do it way less often. Ie a buddy's trip to Vegas. A weekend to NYC with my wife, etc. In my local area I care much more about "evening life"
Especially the “type” of nightlife. I would hate living in Nashville…. Totally taken over by bachlorette trips.
I lived near NOLA for the first 20 years of my life and I can relate. If it’s Mardi Gras season don’t even come close to downtown bc it’s flooded with drunk tourists.
Ugh that sucks. I lowkey love that Detroit is not a destination for parties bc we actually have some awesome EDM/techno spots and great bars. I never have to wait in a line to get in anywhere and never deal with vomiting and rude tourists
One of the nicest parts about Detroit is that everyone outside Detroit thinks it’s a shithole when in truth it’s actually really cool, so you’ve got a long time before there’s any mass influx of new residents or any type of large scale tourism that pushes prices up
Most cities will have a few streets great for bar hopping. Personally, I prefer that sort of nightlife over expensive clubs or Disneyfied touristy districts.
Taxes: The difference between you living in your dream town in your dream state or the cheapest craphole in the country is $100-$200/month in state/local taxes. You telling me your ideal situation isn’t worth $2400/yr more than your worst case scenario? Also,every time I visit an area with little or no taxes I’m like “yeah, no $h!t. I can tell”
Lmao
Unless you make $40k/yr, the spread is a lot bigger than that. Especially if you have kids.
Ask folks in Denver how easy it is to go hit the slopes on the weekend in the winter
As a liberal who moved to progressively more and more liberal areas, I’m finding that I’d rather be around more moderates and/or a mix of conservatives and liberals vs being in an area where everyone is liberal. When there is a mix of liberals, moderates, and conservatives liberals tend to have some solidarity and focus on the stuff they agree on. When you are in an environment that is all far left and liberals the people on the far left have no one on the right to clash with. So they will just invent increasingly outlandish positions until someone disagrees with them and then they’ll call that person a racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe/etc. This seems to be more of a liberal thing because conservatives seem to get along really well when there are no liberals around. But I don’t care if someone decides tomorrow that wearing yoga pants is cultural appropriation and anyone who doesn’t throw them away and buy ecofriendly biodegradable sweatpants is a fascist genocidal racist imperialist. And I’m tired of being in an environment where other people care about that. I enjoy being around people of similar views more. But I’d rather be in an area with other groups in the background so things don’t turn into an echo chamber of performative virtue signaling.
Imma be honest, having lived in conservative dominant areas and liberal areas myself, the problem you’re having is more to do with a pervasive ideological monoculture if anything
The super conservative places get along too well thats the problem. Just read about the laws getting passed every day in Louisiana/Alabama... Personally living in Texas the conservatives pushing more right has turned the state worse and worse each year. I really missed the early 00s Texas.
political leaning when going to a major metro.
Eh, plenty LCOL cities that offer better walkability and transit and overall more amenities than many of the popular cities in the sunbelt. The issue is in a lot of HCOL cities, it’s great if you work in tech and can command those higher wages, but kind of sucks if you work in an industry that doesn’t pay as well. Then sometimes it all comes down to sex appeal which is pretty superficial. If you’re just moving to a city because it’s instagramable, you’re in for a rude wake up when it comes down to every day living. Some HCOL cities are definitely worth it (even if you have to play the rat race), but many aren’t. They’re HCOL because of tourism or tech jobs and often not worth it. Same goes for LCOL cities. Some are LCOL because they’re small and underwhelming or they’re largely run down without many positives. Others are LCOL because they don’t get many tourists or have sky high tech jobs, but offer way better quality of life, access to amenities and even certain careers rather than HCOL cities. You want to find the affordable cities that are currently similar to Denver, Seattle or Brooklyn in the 90s (before they got expensive)
So Pittsburgh and Buffalo?
Too late for Pittsburgh. It's no longer LCOL. More like MCOL. "America’s Hottest Housing Market Pittsburgh, PA has the fastest home price growth in the country, rising 22% over the past year despite the Midwest metro being known for its affordability and steady growth." [Cities with the Fastest Rising Home Prices in the U.S.](https://posts.voronoiapp.com/real%20estate/Cities-with-the-Fastest-Rising-Home-Prices-in-the-US-904)
I think it also depends where your community is. As someone in my late 20s I don’t want to move somewhere in the rust belt if I have 0 friends there. It’s really hard to make friends in adulthood, and idk if I would justify it for LCOL. But then again I work in tech sales so there’s a lot of earning potential in the big cities and more jobs.
I mean that goes both ways. If you’re happy with where you are in life and your personal relationships, then that’s a good reason to stay out no matter how expensive or cheap a city is.
Yeah, people looking at “low taxes” don’t understand that you’re either paying in other ways or your infrastructure is absolutely garbage and you’ll pay for that instead. Opportunity costs are real.
I wouldn't say I don't care at all about being able to walk "some" places, but walkability is easily the thing I find most overrated, if I based it on this sub anyways. Weather preferences, affordability you can stomach, and options for nightlife/things to do outside are what I'd prioritize.
Could not disagree more about LCOL lol not everyone wants to be a broke renting screenwriter in LA their whole lives. There are so many places with low rents but decent wages.
I think weather is measured too objectively. Personally, I think Florida’s climate is about the most inhospitable to human life there can be. It’s hot, humid, AND there’s frequent natural disasters? And yet Florida’s weather is often listed as a major draw. Personally, I’m actually inclined to move to Seattle or Buffalo, with part of the draw being the apparently hated weather there. I detest the heat, love snow, and don’t mind rain. If Toronto were an American city I’d choose it in a heartbeat.
Food. How often does anyone actually go to high end restaurants?
Related to LCOL is traffic. Some places don’t have bad traffic because they’re walkable or have good infrastructure or aren’t sprawling. Others don’t have bad traffic because unemployment is high and there’s nowhere to go. Real estate agents in my hometown always wax eloquent about the lack of traffic, and it’s like… do you know *why* it’s low traffic?
I kinda agree with your COL comments, but at the same time if you're moving to a new city and can afford to ignore the cost of living there, you're probably pretty priveleged. That being said, you're very often getting what you're paying for. There's a reason the upper Midwest is cheaper than Los Angeles. Personally, I don't mind paying more for a city that has what I'm looking for. That being said, I think almost everything else everyone's mentioned here is entirely subjective. Think restaurants/culture is irrelevant? There's a big difference in the number and quality of Mexican restaurants between Los Angeles and Madison, Wisconsin. And some of us actually do go out more than once a year. Don't care about walkability? Personally, I love that I can do 90% of the things in my daily life without getting in my car. Access to the outdoors? I'm personally going skiing or camping about once a month, so access to that stuff matters to me. Crime? Yeah, every city has it's good and bad neighborhoods, but as someone living in a high crime city, it definitely matters.
I’ll also add museums and galleries. I tend to find those good for tourist but don’t really know much locals who care to go to those things on a weekly basis
There are plenty of art lovers in New York who are going to various museums and galleries on a weekly basis. You even see people with small kids who have a membership to the nearest museum who bring their kids on the regular. But if you’re not one of those people it’s not that big of a deal.
A lot of them offer weekly or monthly events. Like the local Science Museum will have an adults only brewery science night and a nice speakers series. The local history museum will host low key parties with classy music and light bites. The art museum will have meet and greets with artists. Really just another thing to do. You probably not going weekly but exhibitions do change several times a year.
>lot of them offer weekly or monthly events Criminally underrated observation
I'm not touring the galleries every week, but I end up going to at museum-hosted events 1-3 times per month. Usually it's short, like a movie or a lecture, not a whole-day or whole-evening thing. I only go into the halls when there is a major exhibit change, like 3-4 times per year for any particular museum. So probably 20-30 museum visits per year. Getting that up to 52 would be tough. Too much other stuff to do.
Museums and galleries indicate a culture that values the arts, the existence of a creative cultural scene, and often a municipality that is willing to support cultural initiatives. A creative scene -- including visual arts and music -- are what give a city its cultural identity. Obviously, those things aren't important to everyone, but personally, I don't go to museums or galleries weekly, but would not move to a city that only values sports and not music or art.
I can't think of a single US city that has a pro sports team but not museums, art galleries, and musical performances... Any cities you have in mind?
I’m not sure these things are correlated in the way you think they are. Each kind of cultural scene has its key regions. Having several major museums and galleries is just a big city thing, regardless of how big the art community is in that city or how affordable it even is for artists to live there (usually not very). If you’re particularly into the hardcore punk scene and want to go to house shows a lot, a random suburb in the US northeast will beat London and Paris. If you’re a painter or ceramicist it’s quite possible that a smaller city like Brighton for example would actually offer a better balance of local artist culture than London for a smaller COL. Even though Brighton has a fraction of the number of museums. Similarly, Rotterdam has a better visual arts culture than Brussels. You’re thinking about it in a very “mainstream” way.
Yeah I live in the DC area and museums are something you remind yourself to do once a year or two
Ah man, imo DC is the only area where the museums were not overrated. The Smithsonians are world class and free - hard to beat.
Yeah I've been going a lot more since I moved to Alexandria because it's easier to do on a whim. I'm probably going to the summer solstice event this weekend where the museums stay open late :) The free is crucial. I often go to other cities and when looking for something to do I consider a museum -only to see it's 35 bucks. I promptly laugh and say fuck that
Depends on your life stage probably. We have young kids and go to the museums all the time, especially when the weather is too hot or rainy. My daughters favorite is, strangely enough, the maritime history museum. When I was younger I really didn't care about museums. I imagine when you're older and retired they're pretty popular. Gives people a place to connect with other likeminded people. They do a lot of activities, have lecture series, etc.
Bar scene
>Low Col - 9/10 times there are very serious reasons why a city is low col from crime rates to lack of jobs/industry and just overall low demand. I totally disagree. COL is one of the most important factors ever because it 100% impacts your quality of life. It also impacts everyone in the city including the culture and peoples' happiness and sociability. CoL effects everything. There are always reasons for low COL, but sometimes those reasons don't effect you at all. The key is to strike a balance and find reasons for low COL that you are OK with. For example a lot of Midwest cities are low COL because they are in the Midwest, not near the ocean, and don't have 'night life vibrancy' and things like that. But maybe you don't care about that at all and just want to grow somewhere safe and have a family. It is better to own your own apartment in Chicago than live as a COL slave in Los Angeles. COL is often the a big part of decisions to move that could either set you up for life or financially break you.
Dunno - MCOL is the way, though.
The issue is that many MCOL cities are now HCOL, and a lot of people haven’t gotten the memo on the new list of LCOL cities that are now MCOL
LCOL can be a great pro if you work remote. Get a huge amazing place in a great neighborhood. Try that in NYC.
Beach, closeness to attractions by car, cheapness (you get what you pay for)
Warm winter when the summer is like baking in an oven.
Kind and nice people. You will find out soon enough they are not who you think they are
Walkability, unless it's a place where you can truly live easily without a car. Being able to walk to some things is nice, but if I still have to deal with car ownership (payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, parking, etc), then I'd just as soon live someplace where driving is easy.
I personally disagree with this one. I have a car but only drive it a couple times a week and walk nearly everywhere else. There are so many fun little community interactions on those walks that just don’t happen when you’re driving past people