> Taxes are bigger, but rent is the only real major difference in costs
Have you ever lived in a small town in, say, Texas for a month? Nearly everything is cheaper there, and not by a little. Gas can be $1.50/gallon instead of $3.89/gallon. Dairy, produce, meat are all cheaper. Utilities/energy is cheaper.
Maybe it doesn't have as big an impact if you don't have kids, but I only have three and man these things eat a lot.
Beef was cheaper. Chicken and pork were same as Cali. Produce was a lot more expensive; regular produce cost the same as organic produce in Cali, and the quality dropped off a cliff in the winter.
Gasoline was cheaper, but the only utility that was cheaper was water. Internet was more expensive. Electricity and (natural) gas was significantly more expensive, because A/C was a must in the summer and heating was a must in the winter.
Car maintenance was much more expensive, since the salt they use to melt the snow is corrosive. House maintenance was more expensive, because the humidity year-round meant increased mold growth.
In order to get cheaper than LA/SF, you had to move to a small town...but you can do the same thing in Cali too; such as by moving to San Bernardino or Sacramento, and you end up with a much higher quality of life than a small town in the Midwest.
I have noticed LA has waaay more cheap food options than Chicago, where any full meal is going to start around $12 with tax, even at like divey local Mexican places. Go someplace a little "nicer" or add one thing to your order and you're at $18-$22 a meal easily.
In LA with a little effort you can find endless Asian/Mexican options for sub-$10.
Taxes and rent are still bigger. For a senior FAANG engineer making $400k a year, CA income taxes are nearly $40k/year, and rent on a house is perhaps another $60k/year (alternatively, ~$100k/year for a mortgage). All other basic needs are a rounding error compared to that, even with a family.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the biggest CA income tax deduction available to most people is the mortgage interest and property tax deductions. So yes, you can deduct a lot of your state taxes - provided you're spending even more on an expensive home.
And yes, the tax rate is progressive, but the average rate is still around 9% at that income level (~36k). Marginal rate is just over 11%.
My overall point is just that almost all of the cost of living delta in CA is from taxes and housing. Didn't mean to get too deep into the numbers.
That’s just state tax (CA being one of the highest). They’ll have to pay the same
federal rates as everyone else on top of that. I assume the reason for excluding it is that’d stay constant no matter where you live in the US.
Lived in Dallas and College Station for far longer than I'd prefer, and I can contrast to NYC - taxes and rent is incomparably different. Everything else just depends on your lifestyle choices. You can buy groceries in Dean and Deluca and your coffee in La Colombe, or you can shop in a dollar store and get a coffee for a buck from a stall. I've never scored a coffee for a dollar in Texas even in the shadiest of gas stations. The breadth of options in NYC is insane, especially when you realize that while gas prices are more in Texas, you don't pay for gas at all in NYC! Of course if you're in the burbs that changes, but it's still arguable that you can live fairly modestly in NYC especially if you're single.
Have you ever lived in a small town in, say, Texas for a month? Nearly everything is cheaper there, and not by a little. Gas can be $1.50/gallon instead of $3.89/gallon. Dairy, produce, meat are all cheaper. Utilities/energy is cheaper.
Maybe it doesn't have as big an impact if you don't have kids, but I only have three and man these things eat a lot.