10 States Where You Can Live Easily Off $2,500 a Month

In a country as big and diverse as the United States, you are bound to have wide discrepancies in income, lifestyle and cost of living. That’s borne out in the data, which shows that the country’s most expensive state (Connecticut) has average personal expenditures that are 53% higher than the least expensive state (Mississippi), according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

At the same time, average salaries in Connecticut are nearly double those in Mississippi, according to an Indeed.com analysis of U.S. Labor Department data.

Finding places where you can skate by on a limited income requires some digging – especially when you want to live easily off of $2,500 a month.

The following are 10 states where you might be able to live easily off of $2,500 a month if you find the right county or town. Each state includes average personal consumption expenditures based on BEA data; the overall cost-of-living index according to data from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center; and average salaries based on Labor Department data.

• Average PCE: $42,469 a year, $3,539 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 90.4 (Ranked 10^th in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $1,172 a week, $5,079 a month

• Average PCE: $42,294 a year, $3,524 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 92.0 (Ranked 14^th in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $1,058 a week, $4,585 a month

• Average PCE: $41,758 a year, $3,480 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 89.7 (Ranked 6^th in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $1,080 a week, $4,680 a month

• Average PCE: $41,153 a year, $3,429 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 90.3 (Ranked 8^th in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $968 a week, $4,195 a month

• Average PCE: $40,816 a year, $3,401 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 93.8 (Ranked 18^th in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $1,038 a week, $4,498 a month

• Average PCE: $40,028 a year, $3,336 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 94.2 (Ranked 22^nd in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $1,018 a week, $4,411 a month

• Average PCE: $39,657 a year, $3,305 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 88.8 (Ranked 5^th in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $1,072 a week, $4,645 a month

• Average PCE: $39,044 a year, $3,254 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 90.3 (Ranked 9^th in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $1,060 a week, $4,593 a month

• Average PCE: $38,650 a year, $3,221 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 86.0 (Ranked 2^nd in the U.S)
• Average salary: $1,012 a week, $4,385 a month

• Average Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE): $36,445 a year, $3,037 a month
• Cost-of-Living Index: 85.3 (Ranked 1^st in the U.S.)
• Average salary: $879 a week, $3,809 a month

As of 2021, the last year data are available, average personal consumption expenditures in the U.S. were $47,915 a year or about $3,993 a month, according to the BEA. That average alone is about 60% above the target of $2,500 a month.

Even states with cheap costs of living pose a challenge. In Mississippi, for example, average personal consumption expenditures are $3,037 a month – more than $500 above the $2,500 target.

The key is to find inexpensive towns or counties located in the least expensive states. For instance, the cheapest county in the U.S. as determined by the Niche website is Jefferson County, Oklahoma. Median home values there are $63,100 – well below the national median of $244,900. The median rent in Jefferson County is $513 a month, less than half the national median of $1,163.

You can be pretty confident that living in Jefferson County and similar places won’t break the bank, though you might need to make sacrifices in areas such as amenities and quality of life.

Methodology: To find the States Where You Can Live Easily off a certain amount per month, GOBankingRates used a list of all the states and soured the cost of living indexes from Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. Then GOBankingRates multiplied each state’s cost of living indexes by each categories expenditure survey to find the average annual and monthly expenditure costs. These were sorted to show the cheapest to most expensive states expenditure costs. All data is up-to-date as-of July 11th, 2023.