Sunday, March 25, 2007

Bay Area, CA to Columbus, OH

On Monday my wife is having a first round telephone interview for a Merchant-In-Training position at her company's corporate office in Columbus, OH. While the idea of leaving California again is a little scary to me, since everyone I know and love is basically in California, Ohio does hold one significant carrot out in front of me: the cost of living. Just for kicks I decided to do a cost of living comparison using CNN's Cost of Living Calculator. Here are the results:

Salary in San Francisco CA: $84,000
Comparable salary in Columbus OH: $50,687.94

If you move from San Francisco CA to Columbus OH...

Groceries will cost: 31.663% less
Housing will cost: 63.584% less
Utilities will cost: 31.186% more
Transportation will cost: 14.965% less
Healthcare will cost: 15.863% less

Our rent in the bay area is astronomical. We are paying $1,450 per month for a small two bedroom apartment. Sure, we're close to the beach, but we are still barely scraping by a good deal of the time. So while Ohio sounds a good deal more lonely than California, perhaps it's time to suck it up, bite the bullet, and make a sound financial decision that will significantly help us get our feet back on the ground. If anyone has any thoughts on Ohio in general or Columbus in particular, please fire away in the comments! And keep your fingers crossed for my wife's interview tomorrow; this is a job she really wants.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

But it's still OHIO...

Anonymous said...

Where's OHIO? Is that even a state? Wait...wasn't that the state that put G "W" into office last election? What a bunch of idiots!

Cat said...

And where do you two ignorant, judgmental losers live? Have you ever even been to Ohio? Did you even pay attention to one word written in this blog? Maybe in the future you should try THINKING before posting asnine comments on other peoples' blogs; or at the very least, you could have enough balls to post your name!

Living Almost Large said...

Geez, $1450 is a deal, and it's because I see you are in Santa Cruz not in the city. Where $1450 might buy you a room. Ugh, move to Ohio, it's a better quality of life. If you lose your job you won't lose your home. It's so much easier to save long term with a lower cost of living. But once you go you can never go back to CA. You'll be priced out of the housing market, priced of the cost of living.

DH and I have discussed this extensively because we just switched one HCOLA for another no biggie. But one day we hope to move to a lower COLA. Then we'll be out of the game/rat race forever.

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