Hey everyone, I did some research and wanted to share:
My wife and I are planning on moving and we wanted to see which US cities have the lowest cost of living, are considered somewhat liberal, and also have mild winters.
After doing the research, I put together a map. I've marked the cities with the lowest cost of living by lighter colored markers, while the more expensive cities have darker colored markers.
Link to the Google Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zBZdymmV8bHI.kuqlOwPc3FAk
Details:
First, I started with gathering the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which does a decent job of summarizing the cost of living, including housing, for all urban places with 2,500 inhabitants or more. I then sorted the list by CPI ascending, so the lowest cost cities are listed first.
Then, to identify places that are “somewhat liberal”, the least-terrible solution I could think of was to look up the 2012 Presidential Election results for each city and only include the ones where more than 50% of the vote were Democratic (Obama).
Finally, for selecting only “mild winter” locations, I looked up the average high/low temperatures for January and July. Cities that have an average January high of less than 40F (4.4C) were filtered out.
Finally, I added in a “Low Taxes Rank” for each of the states. I got this data from the Tax Foundation, which did a study on State-Local Tax Burdens for each state.
Also, here is a link to the Google spreadsheet with all original data if you're interested in messing around with it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... KUfJ61h6S0
Let me know if you have any questions or recommendations to improve this!
Thanks!
My wife and I are planning on moving and we wanted to see which US cities have the lowest cost of living, are considered somewhat liberal, and also have mild winters.
After doing the research, I put together a map. I've marked the cities with the lowest cost of living by lighter colored markers, while the more expensive cities have darker colored markers.
Link to the Google Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zBZdymmV8bHI.kuqlOwPc3FAk
Details:
First, I started with gathering the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which does a decent job of summarizing the cost of living, including housing, for all urban places with 2,500 inhabitants or more. I then sorted the list by CPI ascending, so the lowest cost cities are listed first.
Then, to identify places that are “somewhat liberal”, the least-terrible solution I could think of was to look up the 2012 Presidential Election results for each city and only include the ones where more than 50% of the vote were Democratic (Obama).
Finally, for selecting only “mild winter” locations, I looked up the average high/low temperatures for January and July. Cities that have an average January high of less than 40F (4.4C) were filtered out.
Finally, I added in a “Low Taxes Rank” for each of the states. I got this data from the Tax Foundation, which did a study on State-Local Tax Burdens for each state.
Also, here is a link to the Google spreadsheet with all original data if you're interested in messing around with it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... KUfJ61h6S0
Let me know if you have any questions or recommendations to improve this!
Thanks!