Hello, viability
Why we built costofplace, what the v1 map shows, and where it goes next.
Welcome to costofplace. The premise is short: ranked lists of “best cities to live in” are useless because they don’t know anything about you. We’re building a map that does.
What’s in v1
The v1 map covers the continental United States at three zoom levels — states, counties, and census tracts — and lets you tune three inputs:
- annual household spend
- household size
- ages of household members
Move the sliders, and the map recolors based on a single viability score per geography. Green is “your numbers work here.” Red is “they don’t, by a lot.”
What’s next
- Property-buy mode (mortgage + property tax + insurance instead of rent)
- Portfolio-aware mode (you’re spending from invested assets, not wages)
- Alaska, Hawaii, and territories
If you find a county where the numbers look obviously wrong, that’s exactly the feedback we want.