The 25 US cities with the lowest cost of living

Updated

2022-08-31T20:56:53Z

• It can be extremely expensive to live in big cities like New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles.
• However, living in places, like Fort Wayne, Indiana, or Brownsville, Texas, can be more affordable. 
• Fort Wayne, Indiana, was named the city with the lowest cost of living for 2022.

Big coastal cities, such as New York and San Francisco, are known for having notoriously high rent prices and an expensive cost of living. But in their smaller Midwestern counterparts, like Indianapolis, Indiana or Toledo, Ohio, life proves much, much cheaper.

And while a lower cost of living doesn't always equate to a higher quality of life, it can make a difference for those looking to stretch their paycheck.

Niche, a company that researches and compiles information on places to live, released its list of the US cities with the lowest cost of living in 2022.

The ranking focused primarily on the ratio of home values to income, median property taxes, median home values, median rent, and ratios of monthly housing cost to income for each place. It also took into account the price of gas, the price of groceries, and the ratio of the median rent to income into consideration. You can read a full breakdown of the methodology here.

Many of the top 25 cities fell within the Midwest and the South, with a city in Indiana earning the top spot.

Emmie Martin contributed to an earlier version of this article.

Erin McDowell

Reporter, Editorial Partnerships

Erin McDowell is a reporter on the Insider Inc. distribution team. She covers food, lifestyle, entertainment, retail, careers, and more for Insider, Business Insider, and Insider Inc.'s partners, including MSN.com and Yahoo. She graduated from Elon University in January 2019, where she studied strategic communications and digital art. She has written for V Magazine, Milk.XYZ, OUT.com, Brides Magazine, and more. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and can be found on LinkedIn.  Please send all inquiries, comments, or tips to [email protected].

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Erin Snodgrass

Junior Reporter

Erin Snodgrass is a junior reporter for Insider. Before joining Insider, Erin was an intern with InvestigateTV and Česká televize. She graduated from Loyola University New Orleans in 2020. Her work has also been published in The Olympian and on Nola.com.  She can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter as @erinsnod. 

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