Housing
Cost of Living Is Really All About Housing
Places where the rent really is too damn high.
No question about it: how much money it takes to make ends meet varies dramatically across the country. It takes a whole lot more money to get by in New York, San Francisco, Boston, or D.C. than, say, Pittsburgh or even Portland.
These differences boil down to gaps in what economists call the “cost of living,” a figure that takes into account how much you need to do everything from pay rent to buy a gallon of milk, and which is a function of both national and local economic trends.