I don’t understand the current trends of economics, either. All I know is, my husband and I work and live fairly simply, and we’re not getting anywhere. Every time I turn on the radio or tv, somebody’s telling me that the price of something I pay for is going up, but my salary doesn’t go up anywhere near enough to keep pace with what we’re paying. My spidey sense is tingling, but I haven’t been able to put my finger on what’s going on.
Having moved from DC to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I’ve noticed that a few things are cheaper:
Housing is the big one. The price of houses here, though high by loal standards, is incredibly cheap by DC standards.
Gas is another big one. Gas prices are about 40 cents a gallon cheaper than in the DC area.
Groceries are also lower, but that is mainly due to shopping at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, which were unavailable to me in DC.
Property taxes are also lower, although income and sales taxes are roughly the same.
However, this is offset by the fact that my wife and I must own a car (soon to be two) here while we didn’t need to do so in DC.
Same here. I’m very frugal, but I can never get ahead. I’ll be lucky if my annual raise covers the increase in my rent.
Housing is a given I suppose but I was shocked at the price of gas in Sacramento, California compared to Arkansas. Also, the On the Border restaurant in Sacramento charged an average of $2-3 more then the exact same meal in Little Rock. DVDs seemed to be a buck or two more in places like Best Buy but the Nintendo DS games in Toys R Us and Best Buy were the same as they were in Arkansas. Maybe I’m mistaken about the DVDs.
Marc
I work in DC and live in Northern Virginia (Manassas, which is one of the more reasonable places costwise around here–certainly not Falls Church or Arlington, etc.). I also travel a bit. When in different parts of the country I don’t go around investigating property taxes or incurance rates, but I DO see what groceries, restaurant meals, and hotel rooms go for.
There is a noticable difference many times. For example, last week I was on travel in eastern Missouri and western Illinois, including Springfield and Decatur and some small rural towns. Local cafe: burger for $1.85; add another $1.00 for fries. Evening meal: glass of house wine for $3.50. Crown and coke at the hotel bar: $4.50. Gas was $2.59/gallon. I rarely eat at McDonald’s, but went into one in Springfield and saw they had something called a McFlurry for $1.99.
Ok, compare that with Manassas/DC:
Burger and fries at a local diner? Not $2.85!
Glass of house white? $5.50 in Manassas; more in DC
Call drinks at the bar? $7, give or take
Gas in Manassas is 2.85 and typically at least .30 higher in the District
a McFlurry in Manassas is $2.39, not sure what it is in DC
Just one comparison, but this is what I typically see. A few cents here and couple of dollars there, and yes, it is more expensive here. And that’s not even touching on the insane housing costs here.
It’s not your imagination. For many people, wage increases are not keeping up with inflation.
All of this explains why far South Central PA is becoming a bedroom community for DC and Baltimore. In places like York and Chambersburg, a goodly percentage of residents live there and work in either Baltimore or DC. I can’t remember what the exact percentage is, but it’s getting up there.
Robin
The DC market is just crazy. We bought a house a little over a year ago, it needs a lot of work, but if I told people outside of the area what it costs they would be shocked.
I read an article in the NY Times a couple of years back about some companies that relocated from the Mid-West and West to the East Coast and the executives were stunned how little house they could afford. They went from huge McMansions to townhouses. So I think most of cost of living (but not all) is housing and taxes associated with housing.
For most households in the United States the single largest monthly expense is going to be housing. So, yeah, when it comes to cost of living the price of housing is probably going to be making the biggest dent in most of our budgets. I
I experienced the same problem when I moved from a relatively large Arkansas town of 50,000+ people to a town of 5,000. The items in the two grocery stores were a little more expensive then they were in the bigger town.
Really? Because while I was paying $2.75 a gallon for gas here in Arkansas the folks in Sacramento were paying about $3.00 a gallon.
Who cares what the MSRP is? The S is for “suggested” what I want to know is what the cars actually go for.
Gas, groceries, entertainment. Folks in New York City were paying 9 dollars for evening movie tickets when I was still paying 6-6.50 in Dallas.
It was many years ago, but I remember reading that supermarket chains do this deliberately. IIRC the chain in question had three sets of prices, depending on the prosperity of the area. The supermarkets also had slightly different mixes of produce. Sorry I can’t remember more, but I’m sure there’s a Doper or two who’s a buyer who can explain this.
I can anecdote one better than that. My grandfather used to work at a fruit market which had one window facing the affluent street and one window facing the poor street. He’d open a big bag of oranges, pour half into one bin, labeled 5 cents each, and the other half into the bin on the other side of the store, labeled 7 cents each. :eek: If you don’t think the same thing still goes on today, you are a less cynical person than I.
I don’t want to cast asperions on your story, but how did the check-out girl know which bin the oranges were from, come check-out? 
:dubious:
As to the OP, you are correct to a large extent. Most differences are in housing. Here in San Jose area, buying a house is impossible even for an upper-middle class professional. Rents are high, but not that bad.
Food is cheaper in areas with cheaper housing as the chain gets to pay the workers less. Wages are higher here. However, competition is the #1 thing that drives down food prices. Even though housing is expensive in LA, food there is (was?) cheaper than the Bay area due to serious competition. Gas prices are slightly higher here. The Minimum wage in CA is higher, and is even higher in SF.
The cost of land drives up all the costs- makes rents higher for retail, makes wages higher- thus payroll more expensive, and so forth.
Car prices are driven highly by competition, too. Thus, although a rural dealer will pay less reant, and thus have lower costs, he has little competition, and thus less need to deal.
Visiting a friend in Michigan a few years ago (and living in CA at the time) I noticed that certain things in the grocery store were significantly less expensive (milk, eggs, cheese, meat (especially chicken and beef)). Most produce was more expensive.
When I moved to Colorado 3 years ago I noticed the same thing - milk, cheese, and meat are much cheaper here than in CA (particularly things like boneless skinless chicken breasts) but a lot of produce (not being grown here) is much more expensive (like red bell peppers).
Gas is definitely less expensive in CO than CA, often by 50 cents or more a gallon, but part of that is that regular gas here is 85 octane, not 87, and CO doesn’t have the same emissions standards that CA does. At altitude I guess you don’t need higher octane gas.
I know that some parts of the country (and some areas within a state) are expected to be more expensive in terms of what food in a restaurant costs because I work for state government and have a per diem rate when I travel. The rates just went up for July 1, but prior to that the cheapest per diem (for the less expensive areas of the state and less expensive cities in other states) was $35 for the whole day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and went up to something like $51 or $52 per day for the Denver metro area and big cities like Seattle, DC, and Boston. Looking at my per diem sheet the rates have gone up to $39/day cheapest to $64/day most expensive. The government thinks it costs more to eat out in a big city than in podunk nowhere, so I see no reason to believe that wouldn’t happen to non-governmental employees as well.
Well, depending on how old you are, there may have been severalfold inflation since your parents were your ages so you may be earning less than they did, in terms of spending power. As late as the mid 1970s, it’s clear from some contexts that $20K was considered a handsome annual salary.
This was before the days of self-serve. One of his coworkers would fill your bag and check you out. Nowadays, it’s easy to do with barcode stickers.