Your $75,000 in →
Estimates only, based on state average costs. Not financial advice.
Every state has a BLISS Score, our cost of living multiplier where 1.00 is the national baseline. The calculator divides the destination state's score by your state's score and multiplies by your income. The answer is the salary that buys the same lifestyle after the move.
The scores are built from real price data: housing from Zillow, spending shares from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, taxes from the Tax Foundation, energy from the EIA, healthcare from KFF, and childcare from EPI. Housing carries the most weight because it is the biggest slice of most budgets.
Read the full BLISS methodology for every source and weight.
Yes. Enter your state, your income, and where you are thinking of moving. You get the equivalent salary instantly, with no sign up and nothing saved.
It is the income you would need in the destination state to keep the lifestyle your current income buys at home. Same housing tier, same daily spending pattern, adjusted for each state's costs.
Each state's BLISS Score is built from government and industry sources: BLS spending shares, Census incomes, Zillow home values, MERIC cost indexes, Tax Foundation tax data, EIA energy prices, KFF healthcare costs, and EPI childcare costs. The methodology page lists every source.
Yes, state tax structure is part of each BLISS Score. For your exact paycheck after federal and state taxes, use the take-home pay links under your result.
No. It shows what you would need, not what you would be offered. Salaries for the same job differ by market. Use it to judge whether an offer keeps you whole, not to predict the offer.
Housing does most of it. Home prices and rents in the most expensive states run two to three times the national average, and housing is the biggest slice of household spending.
The calculator uses state averages. A big metro usually costs more than its state average and a rural area less. For the 50 largest metros, our salary needed pages add city detail.
Annually, with the yearly BLISS refresh. Each update re-pulls housing, tax, energy, healthcare, and childcare data so the scores reflect current prices.
It is Best Life Index's cost of living multiplier. The national baseline is 1.00. A state at 0.80 costs about 20% less than baseline and a state at 1.50 costs about 50% more.
Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi lead on affordability. Whether they fit your life is a different question, which is what the Best Life Rank measures.