5 Best Affordable Places To Live If You Don’t Own a Car

Let’s face it: Owning a car is expensive. Therefore, perhaps you’ve decided to seek out an affordable new hometown where you don’t need one.

Considering the average cost of owning and operating a vehicle in the U.S. is $10,728 per year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, this decision can save you serious cash.

In fact, the average annual cost of living in the U.S. is $38,266, so opting out of car ownership can make it much easier to stay on budget. Of course, when you think about places where you don’t need a car to get around, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago likely come to mind — and they aren’t exactly cheap.

To make this decision easier, GOBankingRates conducted a study to determine the five best affordable places to live if you don’t have a car. All cities on this list have a lower annual cost of living than the U.S. average — our monthly cost of living calculation includes public transport, healthcare, groceries, utilities and miscellaneous expenses.

Here are the five best affordable cities you’ll want to consider moving to if you don’t own a car.

• 2022 One-Bedroom Rent: $941
• Livability: 67
• Monthly Cost of Living Index: 98.6
• Monthly Cost of Living: $2,916
• Annual Cost of Living: $34,994
• Transit Quality Score: 6
• Monthly Expenditures: $3,857

• 2022 One-Bedroom Rent: $964
• Livability: 65
• Monthly Cost of Living Index: 90
• Monthly Cost of Living: $2,662
• Annual Cost of Living: $31,942
• Transit Quality Score: 6.6
• Monthly Expenditures: $3,626

• 2022 One-Bedroom Rent: $906
• Livability: 76
• Monthly Cost of Living Index: 83.2
• Monthly Cost of Living: $2,461
• Annual Cost of Living: $29,529
• Transit Quality Score: 7.7
• Monthly Expenditures: $3,366

• 2022 One-Bedroom Rent: $795
• Livability: 68
• Monthly Cost of Living Index: 86.8
• Monthly Cost of Living: $2,567
• Annual Cost of Living: $30,806
• Transit Quality Score: 6.8
• Monthly Expenditures: $3,362

• 2022 One-Bedroom Rent: $776
• Livability: 75
• Monthly Cost of Living Index: 78.7
• Monthly Cost of Living: $2,328
• Annual Cost of Living: $27,932
• Transit Quality Score: 5
• Monthly Expenditures: $3,103

Methodology: To find the best affordable places to live without a car, GOBankingRates first used Apartment List data to find (1) average 2022 one-bedroom rents. GOBankingRates then used Sperling’s Best to find the (2) overall cost of living index for each selected city. Next, GOBankingRates used (3) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2021 Consumer Expenditure Survey to find the annual expenditure amounts to determine how much a person might spend living in each city monthly. GOBankingRates then added monthly costs together. For a place to qualify for the study, it had to have (4) a livability score of 65 or above, as sourced from AreaVibes; and (5) a transit quality score of 5 or above, as sourced from AllTransit. All data was collected on and up to date as of Oct. 21, 2022.