Investigating Cost of Living

Objective

Students will compare the costs of living, wages, and quality of life in three different cities and then decide which is right for them.

This project was inspired by this Reddit post, which claims that one can save money by working in San Francisco but commuting from Las Vegas.

Steps

1. Students will learn about cost of living and pick a third city to investigate.
2. Then, they'll get a job and look up wages in the different cities.
3. They'll convert their information into monthly amounts.
4. Next, students will consider the "Quality of Life" in each of the cities.
5. They'll analyze the "Cost vs Fun" of their cities by creating a scatter plot.
6. Finally, they'll decide which city is best for them and develop a persuasive argument.

Resources

• Wages by City website
• All Worksheets (PDF)
• Worksheet Part 1 (Google Slides)
• Worksheet Part 3 (Google Slides)
• Worksheet Part 4 (Google Slides)
• Worksheet Part 5 (Google Slides)
• Worksheet Part 6 (Google Slides)