Methodology

For a W-2 salary we subtract 2026 federal income tax (standard deduction, 2026 brackets), Social Security (6.2% up to the 2026 wage base), Medicare (1.45% plus the 0.9% additional tax above the threshold), the state's 2026 income tax as an annual liability (not paycheck withholding), and mandatory state payroll programs: disability insurance and paid family leave, employee unemployment insurance (Alaska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) and Oregon's statewide transit tax. The state model uses each state's 2026 brackets for single, joint and head-of-household filers, standard deduction, personal exemptions, credits and their income phase-outs, and special rules such as Alabama's and Oregon's deduction for federal tax, Utah's taxpayer credit and Vermont's minimum tax (Tax Foundation's 2026 table updated for laws enacted since, including Georgia, Utah, West Virginia, Oklahoma and South Carolina). California's brackets (all three schedules), standard deduction and exemption credit are the Franchise Tax Board's 2025 values until it publishes its 2026 inflation indexing. Maryland and Indiana county income taxes are included at statewide average rates on state pages. State pages do not include city income taxes, because most residents of any state live outside a taxing city; city pages do (see Cities below).

The move calculator has optional settings. I itemize deductions uses federal itemized deductions in each state where they beat the standard deduction: mortgage interest (on up to $750,000 of debt) plus state and local taxes, meaning the income tax paid, the disability, unemployment and paid-leave premiums the IRS counts as state income tax, and property tax. The state and local taxes count up to $40,400 for 2026 (less 30% of income above $505,000, but not below $10,000; IRS Schedule A instructions), and mortgage interest is added on top of that cap. The amounts start at the first-year interest and property tax on each state's median home with 20% down, and you can enter your own. Only the federal return changes: state returns keep their standard deduction, and the sales-tax deduction open to people in states without an income tax isn't counted. Keep my job and work remotely keeps the same salary and applies the convenience-of-the-employer rule of the state where your employer is: New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware tax that pay unless the employer requires the work to be done elsewhere, Nebraska only if you also work in Nebraska on more than seven days in the year, and New Jersey and Connecticut only for residents of states with their own rule. Reciprocity agreements override the rule, and the new state's tax is figured with the same credit as in the commuter calculations below.

Personal move budget: enter a destination salary, monthly housing and other spending for both places, and a one-time moving budget. We recompute destination taxes at that salary. Annual remaining money is modeled take-home minus twelve times the housing and other spending you enter. Ongoing monthly change is the difference divided by twelve; first-year change subtracts your moving budget from the annual difference. Payback is the moving budget divided by a positive monthly gain, rounded up to a whole month. With no gain, moving costs are not recovered. Blank housing uses the calculator’s housing estimate; blank other spending and moving costs mean zero. This assumes twelve full months at each salary, not part-year taxes. It does not add the separate comparison’s power, child care or other cost estimates to your entries.

D.C. deduction uncertainty: the model currently follows OTR’s published 2026 estimated-payment worksheet. D.C. Act 26-416, sections 7112 and 9001 retains a separate, indexed D.C. deduction and generally applies from October 1, 2026. The applicable annual deduction needs reconciliation with OTR’s final instructions. D.C. tax results remain provisional until that review is complete.

Children (up to three, each with an age) and head of household filing change the move calculator's taxes, rent and child care. Federal tax takes the 2026 child tax credit: $2,200 a child under 17, less $50 for each $1,000 of income above $200,000 ($400,000 joint), with up to $1,700 a child paid out when it exceeds the tax, limited to 15% of earnings above $2,500 (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32). State tax takes the child credits of Arizona, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Vermont, from each state's own rules. Other states' child credits, state dependent exemptions, earned income credits and the federal child and dependent care credit aren't counted, and the result says so. A head of household gets the federal head-of-household brackets and $24,150 standard deduction, and each state's own head-of-household rules from its revenue department's 2025 or 2026 forms: separate head-of-household brackets where a state has them (California's Schedule Z, New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, Maine, Hawaii and others), the joint brackets where a state gives them to a head of household (New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Idaho), and the state's head-of-household standard deduction, exemption and credits. Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia tax a head of household like a single filer. Exemptions for dependents, including the person who qualifies you as head of household, aren't counted for any filer. Rent becomes the Census ACS 2024 median for two bedrooms with one or two children and three bedrooms with three (table B25031). Child care is full-time center care for each child under 5 at Child Care Aware of America's 2024 state average price for that age (infant, toddler or 4-year-old; California and Rhode Island report no toddler price, so the infant price is used); it counts in the money left over after the move, not in the equal salary.

I'm retired replaces the salary with Social Security, pension and 401(k)/IRA income, taxed in both states with the rules under Retirement taxes below, and adds typical yearly spending for households 65 and older (BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024) adjusted to each state's prices, for a paid-off home or a rental.

We divide take-home pay by the state's Regional Price Parity (RPP) from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, where the U.S. average is 100. "Equal salary" is the gross pay in the new state that gives the same price-adjusted take-home pay, found by searching salaries until the two match.

Federal tax on Social Security follows the IRS provisional-income worksheet (up to 85% taxable). We apply the 2026 standard deduction, the additional deduction for age 65+ and the 2025–2028 senior deduction of $6,000 per person with its phase-out. For states, we apply each state's treatment of Social Security, pensions and 401(k)/IRA withdrawals (exempt, taxed, or partly exempt with a dollar cap and age requirement, researched from state revenue departments, reviewed 2026-09-24), its extra standard deduction, exemptions and credits for filers 65 and older, and the federal senior deduction where the state starts from federal taxable income or has adopted it, then the state's regular income-tax model. Income-tested credits are approximated. State tables and rankings are priced for a retiree aged 67, when every state's age-based breaks apply (Rhode Island's and Wisconsin's start at full retirement age, 67); the calculator also prices younger ages. Where a state's exclusion covers employer plans but not IRAs (Maryland, Rhode Island), the 401(k)/IRA amount is treated as IRA withdrawals. Maine's pension deduction and dependent credit phase out above income thresholds that Maine indexes to chained CPI each year (36 M.R.S. §5403); for 2026 we apply our own estimate of the indexed amounts, worked out by the statute's chained-CPI method (about $128,000 single and $256,000 joint for the pension deduction; Maine Revenue Services' own figures may differ by $50 to $100), until Maine Revenue Services publishes its own.

Without a reciprocity agreement, you pay the work state's tax on your wages and your home state's tax minus a credit for the tax paid to the work state (capped at the home state's own tax on that income), so the total is about the higher of the two. With reciprocity, you pay only your home state. Washington, DC doesn't tax nonresidents' wages. Agreements, convenience-of-the-employer rules and local-tax notes were reviewed 2026-09-24.

• Rent: state median gross rent (Census ACS 2024). "Income to rent" assumes rent is 30% of gross income.
• Buying: state median home value and median property tax (Census ACS 2024); the effective property-tax rate is the median tax divided by the median value. Mortgage payments use the Freddie Mac 30-year average (6.95%, week of 2026-09-17). Insurance uses the median yearly homeowners insurance that owners of homes with a mortgage report paying in each state (Census American Community Survey 2024, table B25141, the latest year published as of September 2026). Census publishes the table in cost ranges, so we take the median by straight-line interpolation within the range that holds the middle home, the way Census computes medians from grouped data. The table counts all owner-occupied homes, condos and mobile homes included. About 9% of owners with a mortgage report paying under $100 a year (the table's lowest range, which also counts none); they are included, which pulls the median down. A median also sits below an average premium, and premiums have risen in most states since 2024, so get quotes. Below 20% down we add mortgage insurance of 0.5% of the loan a year. Income needed follows the 28/36 rule. Closing costs are estimated at 3% of the price.
• Typical lifestyle salary: the U.S. median household income ($81,604) is run through 2026 taxes in every state and adjusted by RPP; we take the median state as the reference and find the salary that matches it in each state.

Salary needed for a couple or a family. Each state's cost-of-living page also sizes the typical-lifestyle salary for a couple and families, in its household table. Of the single adult's typical-lifestyle take-home at the state's prices, what is left after the state's median rent is what one adult spends on everything else. A bigger household needs more of that, by the three-parameter equivalence scale the Census Bureau uses for the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM technical documentation, section 4.2.1): one or two adults, adults to the power 0.5; a single parent, (1 + 0.8 for the first child + 0.5 for each other child) to the power 0.7; other families, (adults + 0.5 a child) to the power 0.7. That makes 1.41 for a couple, 1.51 for a single parent with one child and 2.16 for two adults with two children. On top of that come the median rent for a home with enough bedrooms (two with one or two children; Census ACS table B25031) and full-time center care for a child under 5 (Child Care Aware of America). Taxes use the household's filing status (married filing jointly for couples, head of household for the single parent) and child tax credits. The salary is the lowest pay, to the nearest $100, whose take-home covers all of it. The children are 4 (in full-time care) and 9 (in school; before- and after-school care isn't counted). Taxes, rent and child care are the move calculator's own figures at that salary.The federal child and dependent care credit isn't counted, in the table or the calculator; on the 4-year-old's care it is worth $600 to $1,050 at these incomes (20% to 35% of $3,000). Because the base is the median income of all U.S. households, whatever their size, scaled up for household size, the family-of-four salary comes out above what the median four-person household earns in every state (Census ACS table B19019); each page shows that median for comparison. Where a state has no child care price (New Mexico), child care is left out and the salary is shown as a minimum.

• Electric bills: EIA average monthly residential bill by state (2024).
• Gas: AAA state average for regular, captured on the date shown.
• Car insurance: NAIC average expenditure per insured vehicle (2023 data, Auto Insurance Database Report, Table 4), rounded to whole dollars. NAIC asks for written permission to reprint its tables, so we use each state's figure in our own calculations and name NAIC wherever a figure appears, without reprinting NAIC's tables.
• Health insurance: KFF's analysis of 2026 Marketplace premiums (CMS data) for a 40-year-old, scaled to other ages with the federal default age curve, or with the state's own CMS age curve in Massachusetts (2:1 limit), Utah and Washington, DC. New York and Vermont don't rate premiums by age.
• County property tax: median real estate taxes ÷ median home value, ACS 2020–2024 5-year estimates.

State and city comparison pages add up a year of the costs most households have, before and after the move, at the page's salary for a single filer: income and payroll taxes (with the principal city's resident income tax on city pages), 12 months of median rent or the cost to own the median home with 20% down at the Freddie Mac rate, the state's average electricity bill, NAIC car insurance and AAA gas for one car driven 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg, and the KFF benchmark Marketplace premium for one adult aged 40, before any premium tax credit. On city pages, everything but taxes and housing uses the principal state's averages. Child care is shown in a note rather than in the totals, and sales tax, food and other spending are left out.

We start from average spending by households headed by someone 65 or older (BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024, 1.8 people). Housing is the local median rent, or property tax plus national upkeep costs scaled by local service prices for owners without a mortgage. Electricity uses the state's average bill (EIA 2024), gas uses AAA state prices, car insurance uses NAIC state averages, and food, goods and other spending are scaled by BEA price levels. Health care uses the national retiree average. Single and couple budgets scale non-housing spending by the square root of household size.

• Yearly electricity cost uses each state's average residential bill (EIA 2024), which reflects both local prices and typical usage.
• Child care: Child Care Aware of America, Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis, Table I (average annual price of full-time center-based infant care; Jan 2025 CCR&R survey or latest state Market Rate Survey) (2024).
• New-resident deadlines and fees come from each state's motor-vehicle agency website. Where an agency publishes no fixed number of days (New Mexico's vehicle registration, for example), the page says to check with the agency instead of quoting an unofficial figure.

Distance is the straight line between the states' 2020 population centers (U.S. Census Bureau) times 1.17, the median ratio of driving miles to straight-line miles on our calibration routes. For each method (rental truck, container, full-service) and home size, we fitted low and high cost lines of the form base + rate × miles to 198 published price ranges on 22 interstate routes (moveBuddha route pages, retrieved 2026-09-24, based on user quotes). We then checked those lines against 47 independent published prices, retrieved 2026-09-25: dated example quotes U-Pack published for its own trailers and ReloCube containers and for U-Haul, Penske, Budget, U-Box and PODS on the same moves; the 1,200-mile U-Haul rates in HireAHelper's Rental Truck Price Database; and Move.org's 3-bedroom full-service medians by distance. For 2–3 bedroom and larger homes they ran higher than moveBuddha's top quotes: its ranges held 6 of 15 truck, 7 of 26 container and 1 of 6 full-service prices. So we raised the top of those ranges to the typical independent price and kept the low end at moveBuddha's, and a bigger home is never shown as cheaper than a smaller one. The ranges now hold 10, 19 and 5 of them, and none falls below a range. The quotes come from the summer peak season, which runs 20–30% above off-peak prices (moveBuddha's moving-season guide), so for an October–April move the calculator divides the low end by 1.3 and the high end by 1.2. Under 100 miles it flags a local-distance move, because local movers usually charge by the hour.

Moves to, from and between Alaska and Hawaii go by sea or through Canada, so we use published prices for each direction and home size instead of the road model. The main source is Matson's household-goods container rates (in effect June 1, 2026 to May 31, 2027; port or rail ramp to port), with the fuel surcharge Matson set on April 12, 2026 (14% for Hawaii, 10.5% for Alaska), priced from the West Coast port (Tacoma for Alaska) up to the Matson rail ramp nearest the mainland state. Beside them are U-Pack's ReloCube quotes (to Honolulu for March 2024 moves, from the published starting point nearest the mainland state; Portland to Anchorage, October 2025), U-Pack's U-Haul 10-ft truck quote from Portland to Anchorage through Canada (October 2025) and full-service starting prices from Royal Hawaiian Movers (July 2026). Royal Hawaiian's liftvan, about one small room, isn't used as a studio price. We use no price older than 2025 for Alaska and no full-service range for it: moveBuddha's Alaska truck prices turned out to be U-Haul's from April 2023 despite a 2026 page date, and Three Movers' Alaska route table has barely changed since at least February 2023, with low ends below Matson's rate for the ocean leg alone, so both are left out. A 20- to 40-ft container stands for a 2–3 bedroom home and a 40- to 45-ft one for 4+ bedrooms; we don't price a whole container for a studio. Where no source publishes a price for a method, home size or direction, the calculator says so and asks for quotes. We left out moveBuddha's California-to-Hawaii table ($199–$1,100 by container), which is far below Matson's published rate for the ocean leg alone.

Open-carrier sedan prices come from lines fitted to published 2026 route prices (moveBuddha, SGT Auto Transport). SUVs add 25% and enclosed carriers 35%. Hawaii and Alaska use published regional ocean and truck-ocean prices.

City figures cover 149 metropolitan statistical areas (OMB 2023 delineations): the 100 largest by population; 45 smaller metros that drew movers from at least 21 of those 100 (IRS county-to-county migration data, 2022–2023); and the largest metro in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, so every state has at least one. Price levels come from BEA metro Regional Price Parities (2024); rent, home values, income and property tax from the Census ACS 2024 1-year estimates; and locations from the Census Gazetteer. Taxes use the metro's principal state plus, by default, the 2026 resident income tax of the principal city for 20 cities that levy one: New York City (3.078%–3.876% brackets on New York taxable income), Philadelphia (3.735% from July 1, 2026), Pittsburgh, Allentown and Harrisburg (earned income tax including the school district), Detroit, Grand Rapids, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Akron, Toledo, St. Louis, Kansas City, Louisville and Lexington (occupational license taxes, including the school tax), Portland (Metro and Multnomah County taxes above their thresholds, plus the city's Arts Tax), and Baltimore City and Marion County (Indianapolis) in place of the Maryland and Indiana averages.

These are the rates for people who live in the city. Most of these cities also tax commuters who work there, often at a lower nonresident rate, and many suburbs levy their own tax, so each city page says what changes outside city limits. If you choose to live outside city limits, the calculator uses a typical suburban local rate for that metro instead:

• Pennsylvania and Ohio metros: the population-weighted median rate of the suburban municipalities (Pennsylvania DCED earned income tax register; Ohio Department of Taxation table LG-11).
• Louisville and Lexington: about 1%, typical of the work-location taxes in the surrounding Kentucky counties.
• New York City, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kansas City and St. Louis: none, because most of their suburbs have no local income tax.
• Portland: the Metro housing tax only.
• Baltimore and Indianapolis: the state's average county rate.

Taxes charged only where you work in cities we don't model (Birmingham, Denver) are noted, not modeled. Sources: each city's or state's revenue office, as listed in our data file. Migration between cities adds up IRS county-to-county flows (2022–2023) for all counties in each metro. City-pair pages are built where at least 1,000 households made the move, and indexed where at least 3,000 did.

City cost-of-living pages and the relocation quiz use NOAA's 1991–2020 U.S. Climate Normals: the average January low, the average July high, days a year at 90°F or hotter, and yearly precipitation and snowfall. Each metro area uses one weather station, usually the city's official National Weather Service station at its main airport; where that station doesn't record snowfall, snow comes from a nearby station at a similar elevation. A state's climate figures average the metro areas we cover that are centered in it, weighted by population; Delaware and West Virginia, which have none, use the Wilmington, Del., and Charleston, W.Va., airports. Unemployment is the 2025 annual average from BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics (the U.S. rate is from the Current Population Survey). The 2025 average covers 11 months: October 2025 data were not collected during the federal government shutdown. Wages are the median yearly wage across all jobs from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025), which count wage and salary jobs, not the self-employed. For states, unemployment and wages are the state's own BLS figures.

FEMA's National Risk Index (v1.20, December 2025) scores every county from 0 to 100 as a national percentile, combining expected annual losses from 18 hazards with social vulnerability and community resilience. State and metro scores are population-weighted averages of their counties.

Our calculators, rankings and maps cover the 50 states and D.C. only, because the data they run on stops there. BEA's Regional Price Parities and EIA's state electricity tables leave out Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa. The IRS state-to-state migration files code moves to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as "foreign". FEMA's National Risk Index rates every territory "Insufficient Data". And a bona fide resident of a territory files a territory income tax return, not a state one. So our territory pages report official facts rather than calculator results: where a bona fide resident files (IRS Publication 570); Census figures (ACS 1-year for Puerto Rico; the 2020 Island Areas Censuses, with 2019 incomes, for the other four); FEMA major disaster declarations since 2017; car-shipping prices that carriers publish; and Puerto Rico's own Internal Revenue Code and Incentives Code (Act 60 as amended by Act 38-2026), read from the official OGP compilations. Each territory page lists its sources, and we record the source and retrieval date of every figure.

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates (B25064, B25077, B19013, B25103; B25031 rent by bedrooms)
• U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities by State, 2024
• U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A (residential, June 2026)
• 2026 federal brackets and state income tax model (IRS Rev. Proc. and state revenue departments)
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey
• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates, Table B25141 (Homeowners Insurance Costs by Mortgage Status, Yearly): median for owner-occupied homes with a mortgage, interpolated from the table's cost ranges
• U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Centers of Population
• NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals, 1991–2020
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics, 2025 annual averages
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025
• moveBuddha state-to-state route pages (price ranges from user quotes, trailing 90 days), cross-checked and re-fitted with 47 independent published prices (U-Pack published example quotes, HireAHelper Rental Truck Price Database, Move.org moving cost medians)
• Matson household-goods container rates, June 2026 (Hawaii, Alaska, between Hawaii and Alaska) and fuel-surcharge notice (April 2026)
• Moving prices: U-Pack's published quotes, HireAHelper's Rental Truck Price Database and Move.org's moving cost medians
• State revenue departments and motor-vehicle agencies (linked on each page)