Cost of Living

What is the average cost of living in the US? The average cost of living in the United States is estimated to be between $2,500 and $3,500 per month, depending on your location and lifestyle. This includes housing, food, transportation, health care, taxes, and other expenses.

TENNESSEE

Ordinarily, $37,499 ($3,125/month) per year should cover your expenses in Tennessee. However, to really live comfortably, you need to earn an average salary of $80,548 ($6,712/month) per year to be able to cover other miscellaneous costs you might have.

My wife and I live in East Tennessee which  typically has a lower cost of living that Middle Tennessee or West Tennessee.  Knoxville (East TN) is less that Chattanooga (East), Nashville (Middle), or Memphis (West).

We are probably living above the average here in East TN because we are spending about $4,500 each month.  One of the reasons for that is that we are properly maintaining 2 cars; we are spending about $1,000/month on health insurance (Medicare and a Supplement), and we do not cut back on groceries, eating out at a restaurant weekly, or going on vacations.

However, we use coupons, buy year old vehicles, and look for sales when we buy clothes or other items.  We spend money but we don't spend foolishly.  We only purchase what we need not what we want.

Our only source of income is Social Security and what we need to remove from savings each month to pay our bills.

We are fortunate that we had the good sense to save money while making sure we eliminated all of our debt.  We have been debt free for over 15 years now.

We have an American Express/Delta credit card and when we use the card, we get one frequent flyer mile for each dollar spent.  Today, we have over 300,000 frequent flyer points that we are saving to use when we absolutely have to.

Our savings is enough to pay all our bills plus special expenses like nursing care...  until we are both 95 years old.

WE DID THIS BY SAVING AFTER WE PAID OFF DEBT AND STOPPED SPENDING FOOLISHLY...