Which US cities/areas do you believe have the highest quality of life (people/culture, social scene, weather, restaurants, activities, etc.) for the lowest total cost of living (state/local tax profile, real estate, general day-to-day expense, etc.)?
Making the safe bet that Chicago, Charleston, major Texas cities (less Austin now), and Tampa or other costal Florida towns make the list. (Will my beloved Cleveland make the cut?)
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Chicago no doubt, have mutliple friends in High Finance and M/A there making East coast salaries and housing alone is far less. Charleston, yes, but it's gained in popularity so much, and people have to move further out, and the same with a lot of Texas cities. The sprawl means you aren't really in the city anymore. Kind of what happened to ATL and Dallas a while back. Also Philadelphia and Baltimore, while rough around the edges, both have great food scenes, close to the shore, LCOL, and not just great bars and nightlife but museums/culture/history, you just got some crime in spots lol.
My brother in Christ, you got crime everywhere in Baltimore outside of inner harbor/federal hill.
lol crime in inner harbor as well wdym
Philly and Baltimore are hot steaming garbage lol
To be fair Philly the suburbs are cut off from downtown quickly and there isn't great transportation out to them so no one can come out and break in lol. Baltimore pays well and it's dirt cheap, OP never worried about crime lol.
Tampa and Miami are IMO the best (though Miami COL if you want to live in Brickell is steadily getting more expensive, approaching NYC-levels in some places). Dallas & Austin are a close second. Chicago is the best if you want traditional big city/NYC-like aesthetics and can tolerate the politics. Don't know anyone in the Carolinas so can't comment but I've heard positive things about Charleston and Raleigh. Nashville is a sleeper city and definitely on the come up, know a couple people who absolutely love it and want to be somewhere with a real winter climate.
Nashville is already getting priced up downtown, my friend went to undergrad and grad school there and they bought a townhome for him to live in vs the dorms. They are getting like 3500 a month now in rent and I think only paid 375k for it back in the day. Not a big fan of Tampa. I lived there for 2 years and the people are such pieces of trash even in like the "luxury condos." It's progressively getting better. Raliegh is a sleeper also. Miami is always be great, just not anything but a HCOL city now. Though Condo prices are collapsing due to insurance and HOA fees skyrocketing. A guy on our desk moved there and he bought his condo for like 820k pre pandemic, sold it for 1.3M a couple years later to an investor, who can't offload it now. The house he bought though inland on the canals is sick and going up in value.
Chicago weather in winter is miserable and basically rules it out when you can be wearing shorts and a t shirt year almost round in the south
Agree - Chicago fantastic outside of brutal winter weather and politics
The objective answer to this as someone who has spent too much time trying to maximize this ratio (Disclaimer-this is oriented for younger single people not for families looking to settle down):
Tier 1: Chicago, Miami USED to be in this category but given the insane COL increase (particularly Brickell) it doesn't really qualify anymore
Tier 2: Vegas
Tier 3 (in no particular order): Austin, Dallas, Scottsdale
Tier 4 (in no particular order): Houston, Nashville, Atlanta
Charleston is nice. I’ve spent a lot of time here, but am in the process of moving next week. I would say it was a LCOL city up to 2021. It’s definitely MCOL now. Everything has gotten more expensive.
It’s hard to beat being on the beach and one of my recent clients lived on the water in an exclusive gated community, so I was a bit spoiled working with him the past few months at the beach house.
The big downside to Charleston is lack of finance jobs. Most people are doctors, lawyers, hospitality, or real estate. Overall though, I would love to get a beach house on Sullivan’s Island and retire there. Also, there are now direct flights to NYC and Miami, which is nice. The airport went through a massive renovation.
NYC. Yes, I said what I said and I meant it
Didn’t know Joshua Block was on WSO
You guys can’t be serious about Nashville and Raleigh. Boring, fucking cities
Austin and Chicago would be my guess
Austin particularly because the size of industries continue to grow yet it's one of the few cities where net rent is down YoY
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