How Do You Calculate Cost Of Living Index?
With the wealth of modern resources, figuring a cost-of-living index has become relatively simple. Kiplinger.com’s Complete City Rankings says that 2009’s least expensive city to live in was Pueblo, Colorado, with a cost-of-living index of 83 and a mean income of $39,570. The most expensive city to live in was Honolulu, Hawaii, with an index of 165 and a mean income of $64,355. Every year Kiplinger updates these numbers. The U.S. Department of State also publishes a quarterly international cost-of-living index, which can help you calculate the cost of living anywhere in the United States. Select two cities to compare. In order to get a true calculation you will need to pick a city to compare against. For this example, we will use Washington, D.C., for a U.S. city and Oslo, Norway, for an international city. Look up the cost-of-living index for Washington, D.C. at Kiplinger.com (see Resources). The index is 136. This step is unnecessary in the calculation since the International Index i
