Living It Up
In Mississippi, you can live it up instead of paying it out for day-to-day living expenses. Due to our low Mississippi cost of living, you can take what you save on housing, utilities, health care and taxes, and spend it on recreation, travel or investments.
Just to give you an example, let's look up Hattiesburg, one of our Certified Retirement Cities, in the ACCRA Cost of Living Index: Comparative Data for 311 Urban Areas. This compares the Hattiesburg Mississippi cost of living to other cities around the nation.
According to the data submitted for 2011 Annual Average Report, the average cost of living in Hattiesburg is 5.7% less than the national cost of living. Housing prices are 8.7% below the national average, and health care costs are 11.1% less.
You could rent an attractive 950-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment for $570 a month. Or you could purchase an 1,800-square-foot new house on an 8,000-square-foot lot for $133,121 - paying only $722 a month in principal and interest, assuming 25% down payment. Utilities average around $101 a month. The following chart compares Hattiesburg to cities throughout the nation based on the composite cost-of-living index.