Comparing true cost of living

Yes Insurance varies.

Also taxes of various kinds as you noted. Texas is high -- they just take those five letters and move them around a little bit.

But not many calculators take into account the two things we are experiencing after moving from GA to CA. Both of these are positive BTW.

1. Quality of Life. Since moving to SoCal about 3 years ago (from Atlanta), I have worn long pants only for work and two dinner parties. Since COVID, I'm not even 100% sure where all these pants are now. Have invested much money now in shorts so I guess your expenses will go up there This is as much culture related as it is is climate related. IMHO this also translates to a different outlook on life in the general population. More sun and no wind chill or humidity equates to fewer grumpy faces. My opinion of course.
2. Cost of heating/cooling. Our utility bills for these are much lower than in GA. Not much else to explain there when temps are between 55 and 75 most of the time. This is fact.

People love to beat up on California, but I honestly now cannot understand why anyone would want to live in places where they have to shovel snow 3 (or more) months of the year. I think this is envy converted to criticism. Yeah of course it's not problem-free but what place is?

Been there, done that except replace Conn with shitty NJ, land of high taxes across the board, property taxes to the level of insanity and expensive everything. Just about any place you consider is better in that regard unless you want to go to shit holes like California to retire lol.

As to a site, there isn't any that I found that factors in everything. And it will largely depend on what you are looking for. In my case, I wanted to go somewhere safe\low-crime with low taxes (or at least a lot lower taxes) and I pretty much decided it was likely somewhere in the South\warm\no snow be it Florida or maybe the Carolinas. Had friends and a cousin in Florida so spent some time visiting\scoping the areas out. I strongly suggest doing that multiple times for a couple of weeks here and there to get an idea of the area.

For example, my friend has her brother, sister and best friend living in SE Florida, Miami up to Boca area. To her dismay I wrote that area off after a couple of visits because the home insurance was crazy (hurricane alley), property prices very high for Florida and the 3 SE counties of Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach) all have fairly high taxes for Florida and are run by Democrats.

I then visited a friend in Port Saint Lucie and costs were much cheaper and the area less full of yuppie north-easterners taking their stupid politics down with them. Gated communities, much cheaper everything, modern amenities, shopping, etc. The same house I brought there would have cost at least 100k more in Boca for example (and cost less than half what I sold my home in NJ for). Property taxes were also less than half, home insurance was higher (1200 vs 800 though no where near the 2000 plus in Boca), cost of goods generally the same or less. HOA dues in the communities muddy the analysis some as what you pay in the NE for cable, TV, phone, and often landscaping will be built into the dues, but all in all they end up being fairly equivalent.

There are cheaper places to live in Florida for sure, esp. if you want to avoid gated communities, but PSL has a very low crime rate and they are building retirement communities everywhere down here (for good or bad long term) so the area has a vested interest in keeping the crazies out. Add in the Florida gov is all run by Reps who are pro gun and conservative, so hopefully we don't see any of that change.

Spent some time with a cousin further north in Ormond beach. Area was even less expensive in general but it was sort of not what I was looking for and the crime stats were no where near as good. That is not to say there are not good place to move to in other parts of Florida, but if you are going to live there, you really need to scope out the place.

Also, most states have there property taxes online and you can use sites like city-data and others to get crime and demographic data to weed out areas. So you can get a feel for what a home in the area will cost and what the taxes and crime data are.

My 2 cents.

Been there, done that except replace Conn with shitty NJ, land of high taxes across the board, property taxes to the level of insanity and expensive everything. Just about any place you consider is better in that regard unless you want to go to shit holes like California to retire lol.

As to a site, there isn't any that I found that factors in everything. And it will largely depend on what you are looking for. In my case, I wanted to go somewhere safe\low-crime with low taxes (or at least a lot lower taxes) and I pretty much decided it was likely somewhere in the South\warm\no snow be it Florida or maybe the Carolinas. Had friends and a cousin in Florida so spent some time visiting\scoping the areas out. I strongly suggest doing that multiple times for a couple of weeks here and there to get an idea of the area.

For example, my friend has her brother, sister and best friend living in SE Florida, Miami up to Boca area. To her dismay I wrote that area off after a couple of visits because the home insurance was crazy (hurricane alley), property prices very high for Florida and the 3 SE counties of Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach) all have fairly high taxes for Florida and are run by Democrats.

I then visited a friend in Port Saint Lucie and costs were much cheaper and the area less full of yuppie north-easterners taking their stupid politics down with them. Gated communities, much cheaper everything, modern amenities, shopping, etc. The same house I brought there would have cost at least 100k more in Boca for example (and cost less than half what I sold my home in NJ for). Property taxes were also less than half, home insurance was higher (1200 vs 800 though no where near the 2000 plus in Boca), cost of goods generally the same or less. HOA dues in the communities muddy the analysis some as what you pay in the NE for cable, TV, phone, and often landscaping will be built into the dues, but all in all they end up being fairly equivalent.

There are cheaper places to live in Florida for sure, esp. if you want to avoid gated communities, but PSL has a very low crime rate and they are building retirement communities everywhere down here (for good or bad long term) so the area has a vested interest in keeping the crazies out. Add in the Florida gov is all run by Reps who are pro gun and conservative, so hopefully we don't see any of that change.

Spent some time with a cousin further north in Ormond beach. Area was even less expensive in general but it was sort of not what I was looking for and the crime stats were no where near as good. That is not to say there are not good place to move to in other parts of Florida, but if you are going to live there, you really need to scope out the place.

Also, most states have there property taxes online and you can use sites like city-data and others to get crime and demographic data to weed out areas. So you can get a feel for what a home in the area will cost and what the taxes and crime data are.

My 2 cents.

I can't really speak to a lot of the countries cost of living dynamics, but I can tell you that Florida and Texas will eat you alive with taxes. Even thou they don't have income taxes, they over compensate by taxing everything else to the max to make up for it. The higher you are on the tax ladder, the less you will pay. The lower you are, the worse the tax burden becomes.

Simply put, this is just false. You can't compare apples to oranges. NJ, for ex., will sock you to the tune of 2.5- 3+x the prop tax rate of Florida. People with 800k-1M dollar 3000 sq feet homes in Jersey will pay 18-25k in property taxes (of which only 10k can be deducted) compared to maybe 5-8k in Florida depending on the city and that is not factoring in that the cost for that 3000 sq foot home is likely 1/2 or less the price of the similar home in NJ.

There is no state income tax. The sales tax is around 7% which is comparable to the northeast states. About the only thing more expensive in Florida than in the NE is home insurance because of the hurricanes. Electricity is a 1/3 cheaper as well.

The other nickel and dime stuff (car registration, various fees are on par with NJ and NY at least in my experience). Yeah Florida has fees for some stuff you don't find in NJ like for example the fee to get a concealed carry license...which is because NJ and NY simply don't approve any carry permits lol. To each his own and if you love to just pay and pay some more and get zip for it, NJ and NY are for you imo.

CT - 6.35% sales tax on everything except food
Property tax: currently pay about mil rate 33 on 70% of assessed (which is always lower than market), or let's say roughly 2% of market value* (but won't vary with market value, just included as reference) and that includes other large personal property like cars [I pay around $10k in property taxes per year]
Income tax - most people will pay 5-6%, the situation is simple and straightforward with little to no deductions
Electricity - very high, around $0.24/kWh
Gas - ironically lower, right now $3.35

it is hard to talk about true cost of living without talking about true cost of wealth increase based on where you are living.

I live in the Boston area and it is EXPENSIVE. But I invested in real estate and it has paid me back in spades.

Yes, but that's subjective. I get what you're saying - it might be say 10% more expensive to live someplace but if you get paid 20% more you're still ahead. The issue is it's easily to make generalizations about COL but not so much income since it's so YMMV.

While is is more YMMV.... you can find the average salary of each state and then it is no longer YMMV.