Cost of living calculator

[NHYRNUT]

I noticed more and more on that other site ppl are asking for a cost of living Calculator. HINT HINT This is something that could start ppl onto this site. Google will pick it up fast. as there seems to be a shortage. Could that be added here?

[Sekretgardengal]

A cost of living calculator??

[NHYRNUT]

Yes it is OK say you live in like Miami and you make 38k a year. And you are moving to Henniker NH. It will tell you how much you need to make there in order to servive with the lifestyle you have become acustome to. Some times they even tell you what the pay is for your particular job in the area you are moving to. Like this 1 ya this is a good exsample http://WWW.moving.com/find_a_place/c...calc/index.asp Ya some thing like this wow that actually took some hunting to find a half decent 1. And I have seen better with List on what your job title pays in the area you are moving to and what to exspect for benafits on average anyway. Like I'm an electrician so some will tell you NH electricians make 53k a year and VT electricians make 38K a year but the cost of living is such and such so you need to make this to maintain the life style you now live and you can exspect a 10K a year loss in salery or you can exspect a 10 K a year gain in salery with cost of liveing being 1/3 less there so you actually make 12 K a year more with cost of living type deal. They Can get real Cowl depends on what one you can find. And I just discovered even with google it is hard to find a good 1. Salery dot com used to have one but it has been down for ever and a day.

[Cotero_FL]

http://www.moving.com/Find_A_Place/C...lc/results.asp

I just tried it out with a couple of numbers... for example..

The cost of living in Green Bay, Wisconsin is 21.7% higher than that of Tampa, Florida. A salary of $X0,000 in Tampa, Florida has the same buying power that a salary of $X8,667 has in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (The numbers have been changed to maintain privacy... of course)

Good to know!! So now you can check out your buying potential in the TalkStates Classified ads and check out my house for sale!!!

[NHYRNUT]

Yes it is cowl But could we get 1 here on this site. Not send them elsewhere for it but bring them here for it.

[CandyApple]

Oh, and we should have a mortgage calculator, too. Let me dig up the post I made...

Regarding the calculator (and I guess everything else) is that there are some people who are daydreaming about buying a house "someday", and others who are "in the market" for buying a house. I fall into the former category. As such, I like a simplified calculator that I don't have to enter much info into. Or better yet, if I could get a table that lists a variety of different info...

For example: how much I would pay per month (loan only and with "other stuff" like insurance), total over the course of the loan, and in a down payment, over say, a five year loan, 10 year, 15 year, 20, 25, and 30 year loan, at 5%, 6%, and 7% and the "going rate" for interest, with $0, 10%, 20%, and $10,000 down payments, on a house that's 50K, 100K, and 300K. It should be easy to save on my computer to view later. I like how you include the going interest rates on your page- put that in the results, too. Oh, and include what percentage you would pay over the price of the house. Eg, if I payed $100,000 for a house and $50,000 in interest, that would be 150% of the listed house price total.

If I could pick which info to include in the table, like with little check boxes and places to fill in numbers and stuff that would be great.

This site is so much fun!

[RodFarlee]

The cost of living calculators at CNN/Money, Salary.com, Sperling's Best Places, bankrate.com, cityrating.com, moving.com, salaryexpert, etc. rely on purchasing proprietary quarterly data from ACCRA or a similar source, including housing costs from the MLS. So it costs money and effort to keep the data up-to-date, which might be justified if it got a lot of traffic, and wasn't readily available elsewhere.

Some of the calculators could certainly be improved. They have only one generic cost of living index for each city, which doesn't depend on income, renting vs owning, or number of dependents. It is also difficult to compare housing costs in, for example, Phoenix and Manhattan, as comparable homes simply don't exist. So these indices are inherently limited.

[Sekretgardengal]

Ok, that sounds very helpful.

[MyAzi]

I have seen so many different ones and the last one I took to heart was the one that told me living here in the Seattle area would be less expensive than where I was. NOT TRUE!!!

[NHYRNUT]

Originally Posted by MyAzi

I have seen so many different ones and the last one I took to heart was the one that told me living here in the Seattle area would be less expensive than where I was. NOT TRUE!!!

I could have told you that. LOL

[NHYRNUT]

Originally Posted by RodFarlee

The cost of living calculators at CNN/Money, Salary.com, Sperling's Best Places, bankrate.com, cityrating.com, moving.com, salaryexpert, etc. rely on purchasing proprietary quarterly data from ACCRA or a similar source, including housing costs from the MLS. So it costs money and effort to keep the data up-to-date, which might be justified if it got a lot of traffic, and wasn't readily available elsewhere.

Some of the calculators could certainly be improved. They have only one generic cost of living index for each city, which doesn't depend on income, renting vs owning, or number of dependents. It is also difficult to compare housing costs in, for example, Phoenix and Manhattan, as comparable homes simply don't exist. So these indices are inherently limited.

That is alot of info for admin to sort out. I was thinking maybe we could hijack one someone has done and upkeeps for a small fee and just call it ours supplied by so and so. You know Rent 1 lol. or start out with a free 1 for now and upgrade in the future.