[AVMA] Cost of living by state

[Mr.Smile12]

Chart of the month, March 2024

Chart of the month: Connecting the cost of living and salary

The cost-of-living index is a rich data source to inform decisions about where we want to work and live. A new tool makes comparisons easy.

www.avma.org

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[battie]

It blows my mind DC has the highest cost of living.

 

[KCgophervet]

It blows my mind DC has the highest cost of living.

There's no rural areas with low costs of living to balance it out I assume. Like NY state is average, but NYC has gotta be way higher than average. But the rest of the state is there to balance it so it doesn't look crazy high.

 

[battie]

There's no rural areas with low costs of living to balance it out I assume. Like NY state is average, but NYC has gotta be way higher than average. But the rest of the state is there to balance it so it doesn't look crazy high.

On the Instagram post from the AVMA, a bunch of urban vets were arguing these numbers cant be right because Y state is extremely expensive. Must be the same thing; their in an urban area that is being balanced by the rural areas.

 

[JaynaAli]

It’s definitely something that needs considered. I roll my eyes a little at the posts in the Debt Free Vets FB group when people just make blanket statements that vets should earn 150k full stop or they tell people asking about offers that a base of 90-120k is too low. It’s more nuanced than that. In my state, 80-100 seems to be a pretty common base for a small animal GP. That likely is not reasonable in California or obviously DC. In really rural areas vet care tends to be cheaper or more bare bones and you’ll make less but our housing is even more cheap. Even in the metro areas of my state you can get a nice house for 300-400k. My rent in Memphis was nearly triple what my mortgage+insurance is in my rural town (and I couldn’t have afforded to buy a house on my single income in Memphis), and both those states are in the below average category on the map.