What life actually costs
where you live.

This tool runs entirely in your browser: no data is sent to any server. Pre-filled costs come from a table of 78 metros stored in the page code, not live data, and your entries are saved in this browser's localStorage.

• Pre-fill: each metro stores 1-bedroom rent, groceries (1 adult, couple, family of 4), health premium (single, family), childcare per child, gas price, transit pass, electric, gas/heat and car insurance. Rent is scaled × 1.25 for a couple, × 1.45 for a household with at least 1 kid, × 0.55 with roommates and × 1.3 for a rented house; owning uses rent × 1.15 for the mortgage and rent × 0.2 for property tax; owning with no mortgage keeps the property tax and hides and drops the mortgage; living with family pre-fills $400 rent. Groceries: the 1-adult figure (× 0.9 with roommates), the couple figure, the family-of-4 figure + $150 per kid over 2 for a couple with kids, or the 1-adult figure + $200 per kid for a single parent. Health premium: the single figure, × 1.7 for a couple, the family figure for a couple with kids, or the single figure + $150 per kid for a single parent. Childcare = the metro rate × kids; diapers and supplies = $120 × kids. Fuel = 1,000 miles ÷ 26 mpg × gas price. Each figure is rounded to whole dollars. A "with kids" household with 0 kids uses the no-kids rules. A figure you type, or one carried in the page address, is never overwritten by a later pre-fill, except rent when the home situation changes; clearing a field restores its pre-fill.
• Monthly total = the rows that apply to your settings + the savings rows: rent lines when renting or living with family, owner lines when owning (mortgage only with a mortgage), car or transit lines for your transport (neither for bike or walk), child lines only for a household with kids, and pets only when ticked. Every row, including 401(k), HSA and health premium, is treated as paid from take-home. A negative amount in a counted row is counted as $0, and a note under the total names those rows. Per day = monthly ÷ 30. The CSV export lists exactly these rows, as counted, plus the total.
• Income needed: the gross monthly income whose estimated take-home (next line) equals the monthly total, found by bisection. The tax share shown = 1 minus total ÷ that gross.
• Take-home, if left blank, 0 or still auto-filled: gross × 12 minus federal tax, state tax and FICA, ÷ 12 (before any 401(k), HSA or premium deduction). With gross at 0, an auto-filled take-home is cleared, and a take-home you type is used on its own. Federal tax uses 2026 brackets and standard deductions: $16,100 single, $24,150 head of household (single with kids), $32,200 married filing jointly (couples)^[8][9]. State tax = the state's rate from a built-in site table × gross, with no state deduction or exemption: the 2026 flat rate for Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Utah, otherwise a rough effective rate (a site estimate, not checked against a 2026 published rate; 4% if the state is missing). FICA = 6.2% Social Security on wages up to the $184,500 2026 wage base per earner (couples: gross split evenly between two earners) + 1.45% Medicare on all wages^[10] + 0.9% Additional Medicare above $200,000 ($250,000 for couples)^[11]. A take-home you type yourself is kept. A negative gross is not valid: it is counted as $0 and the income card says so. A negative take-home you type is not valid: it is not used or replaced, the income card says so, and the surplus, savings rate and allocation wait for a take-home of 0 or more.
• Living wage: MIT's hourly metro figures from its February 15, 2026 update^[12] × 2,080 hours. Single, roommate and single-parent households use MIT's 1-adult figure for their number of kids; couples use MIT's 2-working-adult figure for their number of kids, which is per adult, so × 2 for the household. Kids above 3 use the 3-kid figure, and the household line says so. The result line states the ratio of your required gross to that figure (at or below, up to 1.2 times, 1.2 to 1.6 times, or more than 1.6 times). The median income line is a rough site estimate. Wilmington, DE and Newark, NJ use MIT's Philadelphia and New York metros; Long Beach, Fort Worth and Arlington share their metro's figure.
• Savings rate = savings rows ÷ take-home; with no take-home the card asks for income instead. Allocation targets as a share of take-home: housing 30%, transport 15%, food 12%, healthcare 8%, debt 10% (up to 1.3 times a target shows "slightly over", above that "significantly over"), savings at least 15% (7.5% up to 15% shows "below target", under 7.5% "significantly below target"). Each share is compared after rounding to the one decimal shown, so the label always matches the displayed percentage.
• Opportunity cost: dining, entertainment, travel and gifts invested at the end of each month for 20 years (240 months) at 7% a year (monthly rate 1.07^(1/12) minus 1).
• City comparison rebuilds rent (or mortgage and property tax), electric, gas/heat, groceries, health premium, childcare, car insurance, fuel and transit pass from the other metro's row, rounded to whole dollars the same way the pre-fill rounds them. It uses the same pre-fill rules as your city (listed above), keeps your own rent entry when living with family, and counts the same rows as your total. Every other line (insurance, maintenance, water, internet, car payment, parking, car upkeep, rideshare, food extras, health extras, other child costs, debt, subscriptions, personal, pets and savings) keeps your own entry, so picking your own metro with untouched pre-filled figures reads "cost about the same". The monthly difference is rounded to whole dollars.

Not modeled: wage differences between cities, local sales and property tax rates, and tax credits. Verify the methodology or inspect the source code in your browser's dev tools.