Really? ‘Experts’ Claim You Can Survive on Less Money in Missouri

I don't doubt that the experts are right about this issue, but it doesn't feel like they're right about this issue. They claim that you can survive on less money in Missouri than almost any other state in America. Let's see if they're correct.

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Go Banking Rates computed "the living wage a single person needs to survive" in each state. They included a lot of science which I can't begin to explain so here are their exact words on the methodology applied here:

2021 Consumer Expenditure Survey data (the latest available) for a single person from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the annual cost of necessities based on data from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center’s 2023 Q1 Cost of Living Data Series.

This is me pretending that I understand one single word of that data. The bottom line is they surveyed people in every state to determine how they're doing and when all the numbers were crunched, sliced and diced, this is what they came up with:

Missouri is the 8th most affordable place for a single person to survive in America. 

They say that for a single person to "make it" in Missouri is just over $47,000. Interesting.

Here's where I take issues with this conclusion that you can determine an income for a person that will be acceptable. Everyone has a different history and list of needs/wants. For one person, $47,000 is gonna sound great. For another, it's not nearly enough.

Perhaps I should just take this as the good news that it is. You can live more affordably as a single person in Missouri than just about any other state.