Have you ever wondered how much your monthly rent will get you somewhere else, compared to where you live now? BuzzFeed might be able to help you out with that: Their latest video takes a look at what $1,000 in rent will get you in 12 different U.S. cities. This could be either astonishingly good news or horribly bad news, depending on where you are and/or where you’d like to be; either way, though, it might be a useful bit of information to squirrel away if you’re thinking about relocating anytime soon.
Gathering their data from Zillow (who brought us yesterday’s list of the best cities for trick-or-treating), BuzzFeed discovered a range of results. Then they arranged it in order from the most square footage you can get for $1,000 to the least — and, well… prepare yourselves either to celebrate or cry. Spoiler: The folks who are probably going to be crying all live in either San Francisco or New York. Scroll down to watch the whole video yourself, but in the meantime, you can check out a few highlights here. Ready for this? Brace yourselves. And… go:
Athens, GA:
For $1,000, you can get a luxurious 1538 square feet; that comes out to just 65 cents per foot. Although the ground plan displayed here shows it as a two-person dwelling, I would imagine a third person would be able to live quite happily there.
Des Moines, IA:
At 1136 square feet with a rate of 88 cents per foot, a $1,000 apartment in Des Moines is a tad less expansive — but it’s still pretty spacious.
Austin, TX:
Here’s where it starts looking a little… shall we say, cozy. I feel like it’s probably worth noting that when my brother lived in Austin circa 2007, one of his places was a huge two-bedroom in a complex with a pool and a fitness center and everything for around $850; it looks like the real estate market has not been kind in the intervening years.
Denver, CO:
Apparently you are not allowed to have coffee tables in front of your couch in Denver. The size of the apartments dictates that you jettison yours immediately.
Los Angeles, CA:
446 square feet for $1,000 a month at a rate of $2.24 per foot starts looking a little scary. But it’s nothing compared to…
San Francisco, CA:
Yikes. Just… yikes. New York is about the same. This meme has never been more accurate:
Just for funsies, I played around with a cost of living calculator I found on CNN Money to see what the difference between living in San Francisco and living in Atlanta (which was the nearest option to Athens the calculator had). Say you make $50,000 in San Francisco. How much do you need to live a comparable existence in Atlanta?
About 40 percent less. Yowza.
The trouble is that most of us find ourselves needing to choose between the places our salaries will go further and the places that have the kinds of jobs we want. When it gets down to it, it’s a deeply personal choice: Would you rather have more in the bank in a less desirable area and/or working a job you like less, or live paycheck to paycheck working a job you love in a place that might have a little more going on in it? That’s totally up to you — but a word of advice: Never live outside your means. Spending money you don’t have is never going to end well.
Images: brrad/Flickr; BuzzFeedBlue/YouTube (6); Imgur; CNN Money
