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 4.965% 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.
