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I might have gone a little bit overboard
- causality0 5y agoIs there like another section to this writeup? Because the priorities seemed quite strange and incomplete to me. And were there any "Blue Dots" in the sea of red around where she lives? I can't figure out what her aim is with this. Is the proposition that she'll have an easier time making friends in a city that's 60% Democrat as opposed to 40%? Same thing with the dry county issue. Is an extra five minutes in the car to the next county over even noticeable? So many more significant things are ignored. Does she like the weather in these places? Do she or her husband have significant allergies to the sources of pollen native to the properties?
- baryphonic 5y ago> Do she or her husband have significant allergies to the sources of pollen native to the properties? Seems she has allergies to the Republican neighbors native to the properties.
- kcmastrpc 5y agoI mean, who doesn’t want to live in wealthy, low-crime areas?
- colinmhayes 5y agoMe. Those areas are boring and soulless.
- liveoneggs 5y agoyou might not have a super accurate view of rural georgia surrounding the UGA Athens area
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mschuster91 5y ago> Is the proposition that she'll have an easier time making friends in a city that's 60% Democrat as opposed to 40%? In rural areas that distinction actually matters. > Same thing with the dry county issue. Is an extra five minutes in the car to the next county over even noticeable? When your county is wet, you don't need a car to get to the nearest pub or can hail an Uber for cheap to get home.
- bsagdiyev 5y agoThat wet/dry distinction might not be as big of a deal as you make it still depending on county size. North Carolina has 100(!!) counties, with only one dry still, at that size and with the typical spread between places you easily pass through a couple of counties daily just doing normal day-to-day stuff. For example, I live in Wake County but my grocery store is in Harnett County and my Best Buy is in Johnston County, all still within a 20 minute drive.
- rsynnott 5y agoI mean, I would imagine that many people might like to be able to walk to a pub (_driving_ to one doesn't seem like a great idea...) If alcohol sales are verboten in the county, this seems problematic.
- bsagdiyev 5y agoWhere in the US do you live that a bar would be walking distance and also next to a dry county? All urban areas like that threw out those sorts of laws decades ago. Rural areas are typically where dry counties are found, but not always, but walking to a bar in the US is typically reserved for more built up areas (but once again not always)
- rsynnott 5y agoI don't live in the US. Where I live, though, even in many rural areas walking into the local village would be feasible. There'd be _very_ rural places where you couldn't walk to anything, but they'd be the exception.
- vehemenz 5y agoIt depends on the state, but a pocket of blue in rural/exurban areas often indicates lower crime, better public services, etc.—more educated people and the accompanying externalities. Driving to the next county over doesn’t solve the problem of bad neighbors.
- alisonkisk 5y agoAnd it often means the opposite, so it's useless data in summary.
- llampx 5y agoDemocrat counties have lower crime rates? Doesn't follow from Democrat cities like NYC and Chicago.
- liveoneggs 5y agothe article highlights Clarke Country, home of Athens, home of UGA (a massive college town)
- pavel_lishin 5y ago> Same thing with the dry county issue. Is an extra five minutes in the car to the next county over even noticeable? It might be if the next county over has noticeably better roads because of the extra taxes due to alcohol sales.
- pferde 5y ago"You need to enable JavaScript to run this app." Yeah, I'd say you might have gone a little bit overboard, for an "app" that just shows a text article.
- tommek4077 5y agoGood luck with a comment like this in this JavaScript "Hacker"-Community. +1
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoI think I like her. https://www.willowfinch.com/ https://www.willowfinch.com/ seems to be the start-up that this article founded (or is the story of how she got there) It seems to be a fairly sensible idea - cost-of-living is not just how much a house in Rural "Southern State" costs but varies based on house price + Other State laws and Taxes + mostly healthcare stuff non_US folks dont understand + othr variables based on your stage of life (young and single vs young family etc.) So her startup helps people find best part of the country to live in based on all those variables. Which sounds awesome, if only most people did not base their location on a job. Which after COVID means this is a really good time to start that start up.
- EdwardDiego 5y agoAs a non-US folk I definitely don't understand that health insurance variance. Presumably, as she mentioned ACA, you're getting the same level of service, so how can it vary by state? I thought ACA was federal level?
- bufferoverflow 5y agoDifferent laws, different levels of health problems.
- machinerychorus 5y agoACA is a federal level law that does several different things. As I understand it, the main points were increased insurance regulation, the individual mandate, and an option for states to expand medicaid [0]. I'm not sure why there is so much state-to-state variance, but afaik the aca wouldn't prevent that. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThe main point of ACA was removing the ability for managed care organizations (MCOs, or health insurers) to refuse or price one’s premiums based on the probabilities of their future healthcare costs. This is why I prefer the term MCO, as they are no longer selling just insurance, so the term insurer does not seem apt. ACA introduced rules that effectively make health insurance premiums a tax, where the young and healthy pay for the old and sick (like taxpayer funded healthcare). It did so in a few ways: 1) force MCOs to provide insurance to everyone, by removing pre existing conditions as a criteria for pricing insurance (effectively causing healthy people to subsidize sick people) 2) force everyone to buy insurance (although this got neutered, both by removing individual penalty and allowing employer sponsored plans to continue to exist) 3) pricing is only based on age, location, smoking status 4) pricing is such that highest premium can only be 3x the premium of ages 21 to 24, effectively causing young people to subsidize old people 5) out of pocket maximums for in network providers - this leaves in the true insurance part of the business in that you will not have to pay over a certain amount in a calendar year. https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-limit/ https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li... >I'm not sure why there is so much state-to-state variance, but afaik the aca wouldn't prevent that. Because insurance regulation is still at the state level, and MCOs were allowed to use location as a factor in calculating premiums, so different places in the US have different healthcare costs due to factors such as wages, land costs, liability costs. Although this mostly exists on the state level, I do not think it gets more granular than that.
- mschuster91 5y agoAs an European, so much of what has been described here is mind-boggling at best. WTF why does America have different sales taxes between counties? Why are "dry counties" even a thing? And why do healthcare costs differ so wildly? As a comparison, here in Germany it's one federal level of sales tax (19% and 7% for food and a couple other exempted items), one federal level of healthcare costs (7.3% of gross wage, plus .5-2% of surcharge depending on insurance company), and legal drinking/smoking age is federal 16 (beer/wine)/18 (tobacco, other alcohols), and you can buy alcohol and tobacco products everywhere.
- antupis 5y agoDry counties were thing here Finland early 00s even now counties can forbid selling beverages that contain alcohol.
- jjgreen 5y agoAlso in Wales, but only to the extent of "pubs closed on a Sunday".
- paavohtl 5y agoI wonder what you're referring to because Finland doesn't really have counties.
- eonwe 5y agoWith dry counties you mean counties that 25+ years ago allowed retail of alcohol only in Alko, the state monopoly store? I don't think counties can fully forbid sales of alcohol.
- twic 5y agoAh, but America has freedom, so there are a lot more laws regulating what people can do.
- rm445 5y agoJokes aside, the USA seems to have an enormous amount of local democracy with significant powers. The side most obvious to outsiders is where it seems to work badly - the bad sheriff who keeps being re-elected, quirks like dry counties. But it's admirable in a way, that people have some power to determine the local rules, together with the freedom to move away if they don't like it. If local democracy were extended further, there would be more variation, and more weirdness, but perhaps it would be a good thing overall.
- throwaway984393 5y agoWhere is the magical insurance per month graphic? It looks like it's been replaced by an alcohol map of Kentucky?
- _puk 5y agoI got caught by that one. Looks like the two graphics are in the wrong order. The "magical insurance" graphic is the one prior to the alcohol map.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoDoesn’t improve my first impression of the writing.
- johnchristopher 5y agoReally nice reading ! Not ashamed to admit I didn't understand everything and didn't reach the end (to my defense: not living in the US, not a us citizen). But considering taxes can change from year to year, all this work and research has to be redone every few years, right ?
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- nickhalfasleep 5y agoWould be even nicer if it included long term climate and environmental risks. Those Georgia locations are going to bake.
- MobileVet 5y agoThis is really fantastic... and also fairly sobering. Healthcare as the major cost center for an individual is partially understandable yet often discounted. Sad the variance is so high. I would love to see this for the top ~40 or so countries of the world. As indicated in the comments, I think it would be very different and offer an interesting look at cost / benefits of various governments as they relate to someone’s livelihood.
- smeej 5y agoI was confused why this matters so much in a discussion of where to retire. The Social Security calculations clearly indicate that's the consideration, but Medicare kicks in at 65. What does the ACA matter at that point? I'd have understood if there was mention of Medicare gap coverage options instead, but ACA costs really don't make sense to me in this context.
- jupiter90000 5y agoShe mentioned calculating that due to retiring before the age of 65 as an option. However comparing only 2nd cheapest silver plan seems a little lacking; more equivalent would probably entail comparing price of plans that are actually close to equivalent in terms of deductibles and out of pocket costs. When I’ve looked at ACA plans, there seems to be significant variance between states and just using the plan color and price doesn’t necessarily indicate they are close to equivalent.
- sidlls 5y agoThis is a really poor, rambling presentation of some really poor quality data analysis.
- eplanit 5y agoYes. In the end, the piece is really an ad for her analytics business.
- commandlinefan 5y agoI re-read the first paragraph a few times and finally figured out "hubster" means "her husband" (I think...). There might be some value in here, but I couldn't get through the writing.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI did not think there was any value, especially as it turned out to be a poorly written ad (or may be just one that was not intended to appeal to me). Her partner's obsession with sales tax made no sense either, considering there are far bigger costs to consider for one's retirement budget.
- robotresearcher 5y agoThe article says > Who cares if there are income taxes? When it came to monthly expenses, the savings would be thousands less paid in health insurance.
- blunte 5y agoThe author is a person I would never argue with.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoNever argue, or never bother arguing with?
- thayne 5y agoHow did we get to a point where people make decisions about where they move based on how the neighbors voted in the last election?
- psychometry 5y agoWhen one of the two major candidates decided the US shouldn't be a democracy any more?
- Aeolun 5y agoWell… like. If I were living in the Netherlands I would not care one whit. Seeing those raving lunatics roving over the capitol grounds gives me pause though. I know most people aren’t like that, but it’s hard to not be worried.
- commandlinefan 5y ago> Seeing those raving lunatics roving over the capitol grounds I know, the Kavanaugh protesters were totally unreasonable.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoI think he either means the two left wing capitol bombings, or Jan 6th. Who can tell anymore!?
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- seventytwo 5y agoDid you live under a rock the last four years?!
- asoneth 5y agoI lived in multiple deep red communities in multiple red states while working as a military contractor. The warfighters I worked with were absolutely phenomenal but the broader cities and towns around were a poor culture fit for me. (To be clear, my neighbors were all very nice people, it was just the culture fit compared to purple/blue areas I've lived in.) I'd suggest that if someone is more than a couple of queer, atheist, racial minority, vegetarian, cyclist, artist, nerdy, career-oriented female, etc then they may find it even more challenging to fit in. It's worth looking carefully at any community before moving in, but it's worth looking especially carefully before moving to a deep red area in a red state. (Or vice-versa if you're a religious conservative -- you might find a dark blue community in a blue state a poor fit.)
- rcthompson 5y agoThe exposition on how to interpret boxplots is odd, especially the part about the difference between the median and the mean being representative of the "variance". I want to give the benefit of the doubt and assume the author is simply using "variance" to refer to a different statistical concept (e.g. skew), but then later she writes "the variance between the Washington state average & median values is negligible - meaning there is little / no variation in the dataset" which is just wrong. The WA boxplot has the largest variance of any state on the plot. And the distinction is not just academic, because that larger variance increases the potential savings for moving from their current WA home to a cheaper home in the same state.
- dragonwriter 5y agoreferring to 2016 presidential election data: > Having access to this information at a state level in the past was a simple public records request. Having this level of detailed information at a national level, with a tool affordable enough so that an individual entity separate from a corporation could visualize the results - historic. Only the GIS-style visualization part, which is probably the least important piece if you are cross tabulating with other county- and state-level data to find a county suitable to live in, e.g., for 2012: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/07/us-2012-election-county-results-download https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/07/us-201... IIRC, most states have been posting county level results on the web since the late 1990s, so it's mostly been an evening of crossing public websites even before convenient national aggregates were published.
- jefftk 5y agoThere's a lot going on in this post, and it's not the most structured, but the graph of healthcare costs by county at age 59 was fascinating: https://s3.amazonaws.com/mx.sairamachandr.in/moogle.cc/blogposts/attachments/rf7putgc45s3qicnr4tb0nebntf1humgj5kvnh81/health%20care%20compared%20to%20king%20county.PNG?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIA4R7E54H5HNTA5RM4%2F20210707%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20210707T095152Z&X-Amz-Expires=604800&X-Amz-Signature=b6d1135b2569f9a85508d3775b466909e379e6c975cc48bf2972394138598daa&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host https://s3.amazonaws.com/mx.sairamachandr.in/moogle.cc/blogp... ("This map of the 2018 2nd Cheapest Silver ACA plans shows the variance against the cost for 2 people, aged 59, with King County, Washington as the base. The olive green color is zero-ish variance. The darker the green, the cheaper the health insurance is in that county. The darker the red, the more expensive that county is compared to King County, Washington.")
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- mumblemumble 5y agoI'm having a hard time interpreting that because I don't know enough about the Affordable Care Act. Is this making an apples-to-apples comparison? Are Silver ACA plans roughly comparable in terms of quality of coverage? One anecdotal experience in this area for me is that my employer recently switched health insurance companies on us. On paper, the new plan is equivalent to the old plan, but appreciably less expensive. In reality, I would gladly pay even more than the old plan cost, just to go back to it. And probably save money (certainly be able to hold onto my hair color a bit longer) in the process.
- burnished 5y agoCan you qualify why specifically you would prefer the old plan even though it is 'on paper' the same?
- dgb23 5y agoIf the author is reading this: The first (oldest) post on the blog index is still a Moogle tutorial/example post. I suggest to delete/unpublish it.
- Aeolun 5y agoI think the most important observation of this article is that health insurance trumps literally all other costs. How do people even live with health insurance that costs $2000 per month?
- WYepQ4dNnG 5y agoWell, that's why you need at least $1M (stressing at least) to retire in US. That's insane!
- 1123581321 5y agoYou only need that if you want to live beyond what Social Security and public assistance provide.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThe purchasing power of social security benefits has been going down for many, many years. I predict it will continue to go down and become more means tested as the proportion of working to not working population goes down. I assume social security will just be a nice bonus if I get it in the 2050s.
- 1123581321 5y agoSocial Security payouts have been adjusted upward for inflation almost every year since 1975. You can see the data here: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/colaseries.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/colaseries.html There are no plans to discontinue this practice. Many people believe SS will not be meaningfully available to them at retirement decades from now, which is understandable skepticism, but is not a reflection on how retirement is intended to work in the US.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThose inflation statistics have no bearing on my experienced expenditures over the course of my life and where I intend to spend money in the future. If I took all my expenses over my adult life of 15 years and calculated the price change between 15 years ago and when I purchased them, the total increase in prices eclipses the official nationwide statistics. So I assume healthcare costs will continue at above official inflation (especially as the proportion of young to old people decreases, which means less supply of labor in the face of increasing demand). And similar movements in the land and other labor I would be interested in. Also, social security retirement age was 65, and it was updated to 67 for those born in 1960 or later. It would be prudent to expect more increases in future years. I can easily see 70 being the new age at which you get “full” social security benefits. > but is not a reflection on how retirement is intended to work in the US. It does not matter what the intentions are. At the end of the day, it is productivity from the younger groups that allows for the benefits to be realized by older groups. As the younger group gets fewer and fewer, and the older group gets bigger and bigger, the supply of productivity from the younger groups decreases and the demand for it increases. The only way that works out is if fewer people actually get to realize those benefits, which means you want to be able to pay for it (with cash and/or political power).
- chromatin 5y agoThe writing was really bad and difficult to follow. In the end I realized it was an ad for her startup (willowfinch) which apparently does the same thing -- screen for where-to-live.
- sonofaragorn 5y agoHow did this get to the front page of HN? It's very poor quality and almost every comment has a negative sentiment.
- burnished 5y agoBecause it is interesting! Not every blog with a good idea to explore is a well polished and well produced performance, you know?
- sonofaragorn 5y agoGood point! I guess I just thought the bar was higher. I've seen people write on their bio that they got to the front page once lol
- EricE 5y agoYes, I found it extremely helpful, and so have several friends I've already shared it with. I find the comments about "quality" pretty ludicrous and more than a bit elitist.
- remram 5y agoI think it's on purpose. The cryptic title doesn't help either.
- saimiam 5y agoYeah, I realize that but the HN submission rules say not to edit the title. Btw, I didn’t write the piece - I just built the blogging platform on which this is hosted.
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- natmaka 5y agoSuch an optimization, if largely adopted, may create zoned clusters, "administrative/geographic areas were a given category of population is over-represented". This will boost any pertinent local commercial activity (and, reciprocally, dumb down anything not pertinent), the zone will become even more attractive to this population category, and so on... This population category will gain influence, and vote local laws in favor among its members, boosting the feedback loop.
- asoneth 5y agoThis theory is often called "the Big Sort". In abstract, allowing people to move to places where the government and work more closely matches their personal values and skillsets seems like a good way to increase everyone's satisfaction. In practice I'm not sure.
- Simulacra 5y agoWhen we were looking for our first house we got a flyer about a service that would help us choose the best location that fit with our "lifestyle and personal" preferences. Once of those was to look at which neighborhoods were liberal and which were conservative, and give us an idea of the kind of neighbors we would have. Quite useful, though we never used the service, as granular data continues to be collected and stored I wonder if we'll see people more and more choosing neighborhoods based on the quality of their neighbors.
- outsidetheparty 5y agoI was honestly intrigued by the startup this is an ad for -- this subject is very relevant to my interests -- but their website just has more marketing copy, a YouTube video demonstrating features that don't appear to exist anywhere, and a "sign up for our spam" form. Maybe wait to start your marketing efforts until you actually have something ready to market, eh?
- RosanaAnaDana 5y ago>Maybe wait to start your marketing efforts until you actually have something ready to market, eh? I feel personally attacked by this sentiment. As a fellow wonk, there is a lot more to getting a program out to the world than just the cleverness of connecting the dots. You don't have anything without the cleverness, but the dot connecting takes time. I look forward to good things. I liked the blog and I think the product would be neat to couple with zillow fantasies.
- EricE 5y agoHi! I really enjoyed your post. As to the site, it would be VERY helpful if there were at least a "Coming Soon" or something similar. I was trying different browsers, computers, etc. just to ensure there wasn't something technical on my side preventing me from potentially using the site. You typically get one chance to make a first impression. Indeed, along with the "Coming Soon" message you can offer to notify people when you do go operational - win win. I'd like that since the site looks like it could be very useful (and not just for myself!).
- RosanaAnaDana 5y agoJust to be clear, I didn't make the post. I just happen to be a fellow wonk who also has been in the position of bringing something that was a cool one-off idea to market, where just because I captured some cleverness and connected some dots, doesn't mean I'm the one to productize it. Just to be clear, I did not make the post or am affiliated with the website. I too would like to explore their product.
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- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago>I might have gone a little bit overboard When a blog post weighs over 4MB, yeah, I'd call that going a little bit overboard :)
- engineer_22 5y agoUnfortunately the cool tool she is touting is not open to public testing?
- Johnny555 5y agoThe missing dimension is "climate", which is at the top of my list when looking for places to retire - I like to spend time outside. I live in the Pacific Northwest and while winters are a little too cold and rainy, summers are typically perfect (ignoring the recent Heat Dome, which I hope will not become a regular part of summer). I've thought about moving back to the Bay Area (fortunately, my job allows me to afford it), but between the droughts and wildfires, I'm not sure it's the same place that I left. Maybe I'll just rent an AirBNB there for a month in the winter.
- mikewarot 5y agoThere were many fascinating things here, but in the back of my mind, there was this "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley" I'd go for friends, family, and a place where you'd be happy. Taxes and other factors vary across time, why not be somewhere nice instead of always worrying the optimum spot won't be next year?
- zem 5y agoi think the people who are complaining that this is "rambling", or "poor quality data analysis", or "just an ad for her startup" are missing the main value of this post - the pointer to the amount and variety of demographic/economic data that is out there and freely available to run through data analysis tools. i found it pretty interesting to think of building a weighted map of the country that way.
- purplepatrick 5y agoThis is neat. However, one big problem with national cost of living projections I found is property tax data, as taxes are set on the municipal level. State or county averages are pretty useless in high-tax states such as in the NE: in NJ or NY, the range is ~0% to over 3% of assessed values, depending on the municipality. There is no national source for municipal level mill and equalization rates and the figures on Zillow & co are only point in time snippets (and often wrong) and will change through your purchase or if you remodel. And for the most part, this data resides only in PDFs, if it’s available at all. With the SALT deduction currently at $10k and likely going to be subject to wild swings over the next decades, property taxes can dwarf most other expenses such as health insurance or sales tax. At current mortgage rates, they could even be higher than your actual mortgage payments. Another problem is state long term capital gains taxes. If you have investable assets or plan on building those, it makes a big difference whether you live in a state that has them or does not have them and how soon you’ll have them. Federal LTCG taxes are easier to navigate if you can time your income - sell assets in years without (much) earned income, for example. But the state level is more rigid. For example, TN and WA may come ahead based on capital gains taxes (they don’t have any), while GA has nearly 6%. That being said, an analysis like that could be useful for comparing states that resemble each other in terms of their tax profile. Or you exclude high prop tax and non-zero LT cap gains tax states from the beginning but then your state sample shrinks, leaving less room for the many subjective characteristics that cannot be quantified easily…