re: 12 Cheapest States to Live in for 2025

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Yeah the problem with Tennessee, at least in and around Nashville, is a house that you want to actually live in with schools that are actually good will cost you $1.5MM-$2MM. And while there is no income tax in TN and relatively low property taxes, the mortgage on a house that expensive right now would suck balls to pay.

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With so many moving from the NE and West Coast, what had become their traditional targets of Texas and Florida are now becoming less attractive to some as those populations grow. TN, UT and ID (along with the Carolinas, to some extents) have been the growth places you don't hear about on the news but are seeing around the same percentages of growth.

As a footnote: when sitting down with the estimates, it won't shock me to see New York lose yet another seat in Congress as they have lost both the 2nd largest percent of their population and the largest total number from 2020-2024 (-1.21% and -336,524, respectively).

Which is why we don't get the good jobs...

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Out of this list, I would choose to live in the following states:

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1 MS
2 GA
3 TN
4 AR
5 AL
6 MO
7 WV
8 IN
9 IA
10 OK
11 KS
12 NE

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You are correct. You can’t deny that this list is not valid though.

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Admittedly I haven't ran the numbers and don't know. The rest of the state is anywhere from affordable to very affordable by national standards though. I agree whole heartedly that Nashville is expensive. Especially by Tennessee standards, but the high COL is hyper focused on about 5-6 counties in metro Nashville out of the 95 counties in the state. Nashville is the capital but life and opportunities don't revolve around it for Tennesseans the way that some states revolve around their capital. It's not binary in the sense that it's Nashville or bust. There's tons of great cities all over the state (and rural areas for that matter) to live in Tennessee that are still objectively more affordable than the vast majority of the country.

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There are parts of WV that are incredible, and I would gladly live there.

There are other parts that are so incredibly depressing, you may not last 2 years. It's hit or miss as any place I've ever been.

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This. I've been through there more times than I can count.

West Virginia is gorgeous, but it's also the poorest state in the Union. The poverty there will make you cry.

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Tennessee is fairly surprising to me, as well as Georgia.

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TN is “cheap” because rural TN is pulling the average down. If you want to live in the “uncool” parts of the state housing is cheap. If you want to live in Nashville or the prettier areas housing is as high as giraffe arse.

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There are parts of WV that are incredible, and I would gladly live there.

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agree, although I haven't been through WV in going on a decade and you don't hear much about it.


I could easily see some of the towns and areas having a revitalization or influx of out-of-towners discovering the affordability and natural beauty and going all Coeur d Alene

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9. Tennessee

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if someone wanted to live amongst Californians or Floridians, why not just move to CA or FL instead of TN ?

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agree, although I haven't been through WV in going on a decade and you don't hear much about it.

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The general Beckley area would be pretty awesome - so long as you were working remote and making good money out of a place like Cincinnati or Pittsburgh.

Living in WV on WV wages would be fricking awful.

A 216k house in AL is in a shite town or it's a shite house.