Daily Poor: Live in the pod.

Yah, das right, youbetcha, eh.

Based Daily Poor reader's plan to live the good life:

I am moving from an insanely high cost place to a very low cost place.

Fortunately I am a high earner, but I am tired of the rat race and I’m checking out.

I’m checking out of this economy, I’m checking out of my insanely busy schedule, I’m checking out of this materialism fuelled artificial shit hole.

We’re going back to a simple life and it will be more fulfilling than anything. I can’t wait to garden, have animals, build a guest house, and live off the land.

This is our 2-3 year plan.

Wife took a flight out of town Friday morning and back in this afternoon. Our small town airport took about 5 minutes to get her from walking in to ready to take off. She arrived an hour early, being used to Chicago airports. But it was totally unnecessary.

I wonder if this sort of thing is a pattern, or if I'm reading too much into a single trip going well.

As a Midwesterner and someone raised in the Chicago suburbs, it's normal to think of Gary, Indiana as the cheapest of the cheap in terms of real estate. I decided to use that as a starting point for some analysis, attempting to find livable and wholesome places with even cheaper homes.

I began with a list of all named places in the US that had census data on file for median home cost for the most recent available year, 2021. Then, I eliminated all places equal to or more expensive, in terms of average home cost, than Gary (any place with an average equal to or above $70,600). This brought the total number of places from 28,092 to exactly 3,700.

Next, I cut that number further by eliminating all places with less than 90% of their population being single race, Non-Hispanic White. That took it from 3,700 to 1,725 places.

It's noteworthy that almost half of the places with such affordable housing prices rank in the top third nationally for non-Hispanic White population percentage, eh? See more about that here and here.

Next, since we have so many places, let's hone in on towns that are likely to be self-sufficient for the average citizen. That is, let's exclude towns that are unlikely to have essentials like grocery stores.

While it's challenging to pinpoint this with absolute certainty, and it will often depend on factors like how close a small town is to a larger one, generally speaking, towns with a population of at least 500 are fairly likely to have at least one grocery store and gas station, as well as services like general contractors and mechanics. So, let's be safe and multiply that threshold by 1.5, setting our minimum population to at least 750 people, taking us down to 235 mostly White places that have extremely affordable real estate markets, with the median house being more affordable than in Gary.

(Noting here that 7, or about 3%, of those places are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.) 😁. That's also 25% of the 28 places in the U.P. that meet the 750 minimum population threshold.)

Below are the ten most populous places that fit our criteria (with a U.P. city in the #10 slot). They are listed with, in parentheses, their population, Non-Hispanic White percentage, and median house cost. Pennsylvania is the big winner here, taking the top spot, 40% of the top 10 list, and 11% of the list overall. For the rest of the list, see the spreadsheet available here.

1. Oil City, Pennsylvania (9,685, 94.1%, $57k)
2. Crestwood Village, New Jersey (8,414, 93.2%, $70k)
3. Hornell, New York (8,284, 90.8%, $69k)
4. Bradford, Pennsylvania (7,913, 91.9%, $64k)
5. West Frankfort, Illinois (7,299, 96.4%, $69k)
6. Hartford City, Indiana (5,895, 95.1%, $62k)
7. Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania (5,740, 94.6%, $61k)
8. Titusville, Pennsylvania (5,214, 95.6%, $66k)
9. Uhrichsville, Ohio (5,175, 93.6%, $70k)
10. Ironwood, Michigan (5,147, 92.6%, $60k)

While more work certainly needs to be done to assess the livability of these places, as this analysis is not sufficient to demonstrate that they are good places to live, it is a decent place to start in looking for a wholesome and affordable place to live.

I may post analysis regarding some of these towns if the urge strikes me. Let me know if you'd be interested in a post about any of them in particular and it may sway me.

An addition made after publication:

List of states with at least one place on the list: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin

Sorry, most of the Western US.

A reader writes in, "Authors of The Daily Poor, you intolerable bastards, why not write about some of the best places in each state? That way it would include states that are grayed out in the map that people might still want to live in."

That's a terrible idea, and it would fit right in here with the atrocious quality of content found in this publication. We'll start tomorrow.

Or, you know, after doing the ten places already listed.

Richy? Not gonna fly here, mate.

What, you guys thought i was describing the tree? No, that's its name

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