Anyone living/working, or ever lived/worked in Nashua, NH?

Subject: Anyone living/working, or ever lived/worked in Nashua, NH?
From: "Doug, Data Librarian at Ext 4225" <engstromdd -at- PHIBRED -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 08:45:55 -0500

Folks:

This is written in response to Patrick O'Connel's post about how to gauge
cost of living in a distant location.

When I was engaging in a continent-wide job search, I found that a very
effective way to get a "feel" for a distant place was to subscribe to the
local paper. You can get names and phone numbers for virtually any
publication that accepts advertising from the Ayer Guide to Publications,
which is available in most libraries and is organized by city.

For this purpose, the advertisements are more important than the news,
though something like "Twelve Die in Drive-By Shooting" or "Local Company
Indicted for Waste Dumping" probably warrants attention. The apartment ads
are especially valuable.

My wife and I found that dividing the "average" rent for an apartment of a
certain size by the proposed monthly salary, then comparing this ratio to
your present salary and rent gave a crude but effective gauge of relative
purchasing power. If rent is expensive, everything tends to be expensive,
while if rent is cheap, everything tends to be cheap.

The key is to be consistent in the type of apartment you compare (large
complex, multiplex, duplex, etc.) and try to sort out neighborhood
variations. This isn't much of a problem in a place as small as Nashua,
NH, but in larger areas you may want to thow out the cheapest one-third and
most expensive ten percent (or something) so you use places you might
actually live as a basis of comparison. This probably would not work in a
major city, because there's too much variation between neighborhoods.

One other caveat: If you do this at several locations simultaneously, the
post office will probably hate you; newspaper bulk adds up quickly.

FWIW,

Doug
ENGSTROMDD -at- phibred -dot- com


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