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And the cost of living can have a big impact on how far your hard earned salary stretches for you and your family. So if you have a choice in where you can live for your job, the cost of living can play a big part.
That’s where Zippia comes in; to show you the places in Wisconsin that would eat up a big part of your paycheck on expenses — the San Franciscos of the world if you will. Where housing is expensive and day care will put you back a pretty penny.
These are the cities in Wisconsin where the cost of living is actually higher than the national average because, for the most part, Wisconsin isn’t all that expensive.
After we crunched all the numbers, we were left with this set of the most expensive places to raise a family in the Badger State:
- Waunakee
- Mequon
- Elm Grove
- Delafield
- Cottage Grove
- Whitefish Bay
- Middleton
- Brookfield
- Fox Point
- Fitchburg
Read on to see how we determined the places that try to keep up with the Joneses a little too much.
How we determined the least affordable places to live in the Badger State
There are basic necessities that you have to buy no matter where in the country you live. Those things include:
- Housing
- Food
- Gas
- Health Insurance
- Utilities
- Transportation
You can then compare the cost of these things in each of the places in Wisconsin to figure out which is the most expensive.
What you are left with is a “Cost of Living Index” that normalizes to 100 for an average place in the United States. And lucky for us, AreaVibes has such an index for us.
So we used that cost of living index in order to rank the largest 143 places in Wisconsin.
And just so you can better understand how the cost of living index works, 100 is the average cost of a place in the United States. A score of 90 means that the place cost 10% less than average. A score of 120 means it’s 20% more expensive.
San Francisco has a score of 243 meaning it’s almost 2.5 times as expensive as the average place in the country.
1. Waunakee
Population: 12,142
Housing: 151
2. Mequon
Population: 23,164
Housing: 182
3. Elm Grove
Population: 5,958
Housing: 179
4. Delafield
Population: 7,060
Housing: 169
5. Cottage Grove
Population: 6,174
Housing: 135
6. Whitefish Bay
Population: 14,063
Housing: 159
7. Middleton
Population: 17,589
Housing: 133
8. Brookfield
Population: 38,015
Housing: 152
9. Fox Point
Population: 6,703
Housing: 152
10. Fitchburg
Population: 25,222
Housing: 130
Author
Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.
