US NEWS
What is the cheapest city to live in the US in 2022?
The US has plenty of expensive places to live but there are also a number of far cheaper places due to economic inequality and high poverty rates.
With the cost of living rising across the US you may be thinking of which areas in the US are cheaper than where you live currently. Compared to much of the world the country has a high median wage but it also has a large number of places where you salary could go further. With changes to work patterns due to the covid-19 pandemic this could be as good a time as ever to explore somewhere new, especially with house prices expected to fall next year.
Business Insider as well as other outlets have published data purporting to show the cheapest cities to live in the US.
What is the criteria measured?
Key for assessing whether a place is cheap or not will depend upon how far your paycheck can go. For example, a city in which the majority of your money goes on rent and subsitence will be nowhere near this list.
Rent needs to be cheap, housing needs to be cheap relative for the median wage and the city itself needs to have a cost of living lower than the national average.
Which cities were cheapest?
Business Insider rated Fort Wayne, Indiana, as the cheapest city in the US. With a median rent of $777 and an average home value of $121,600 the city is well below national averages. With a median wage of $53,978, according to the census, a house is 2.25 times one person’s wage, extremely competitive in a nation which usually has a ratio closer to seven times a wage.
Other outlets disagreed with this. US News ranks Hickory, North Carolina as the cheapest city to live. With their metric the city is cheapest even if the raw data does not mirror this. The average annual salary is $43,630 with median home prices at $161,000. Rent is cheaper however at $708 a month on average.
Lastly Kiplinger rates Harlingen, Texas as the cheapest. With a cost of living a quarter of the size of the rest of the nation as well as a household income to home value ratio of 2.15 times the average wage your money would certainly go a long way. However, nearly 25% of the population live below the poverty line.