NEW cost of living figures for Colorado Springs

[Wittgenstein's Ghost]

Originally Posted by USNRET04

So they are wrong about every location in the US?

In this particular "study," I don't think the issue is that they are wrong so much as it is they are setting a higher bar than the headline may indicate. The $250k figure for a family of four isn't about what it takes to live here. It's what it takes to live here "comfortably," what constitutes "comfortably" is a judgment call that is reflected in the methodology, and it may not be what the reader has in mind when they see the headline or even read an article discussing the study.

[moguldreamer]

There really is no definition of "living wage" or "living compensation" in economics. While these things can provide an indicator, they are best used when the same tool is comparing location A with location B inside the tool, not for absolute numbers on what is needed.

[cfbs2691]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

some of those 'best places' articles are nothing but Chamber of Commerce fluff.

Exactly!

[Phil P]

I think one thing that people can take away from all this is that incomes and cost of living are very segmented. Some people are locked into good deals with housing and costs whereas if they had to start over as some gen Z person and try to get to what they have now, they couldn't afford their current lifestyle. That's how we get these bizarre numbers, it really is that wacko if you want to try to replicate the way a lot of the way COS lives. And COS isn't really that much different from a lot of the US. What this means is COL keeps going up as rent / housing gets baked into the new salaries for services for things like healthcare and restaurants.