This Tool Helps You Find a Place to Live Based on Your Budget

If you’re wondering where you can happily live on a shoestring, retire on a budget, or, maybe, where you can step up your lifestyle and live in the lap of luxury within your budget, the new website, theearthawaits.com, has a tool to help you find your own unique nirvana.

With multiple-choice menus and slider tools, you can choose how far you’ll be from a city center, how cushy your lifestyle could be, how much pollution you can tolerate, family size, apartment size and crime rate. After you enter your information, click calculate, and a city and country appears with how much you’ll likely pay to live there.

For example, let’s say you’re a single person with a budget of $900 per month and the ability to live anywhere in the world. Maybe you’d like a modest lifestyle in a one-bedroom apartment, but you’d love to live in a city center with low pollution and low crime. (Almost sounds like a pipe dream, right?)

Enter your preferences and Osijek, Croatia, pops up on your list of choices, where the living expenses for a modest lifestyle would be around $838, according to the website. Your average rent would be $510, and food for the month would be $157.

Click further and the site will rate the quality of life (79), healthcare (70) and a flight there, which as of press time was $553, according to travel engine Skyscanner. The site will also tell you other things, such as weather, the city’s civil freedom score (87), women’s equality (70.8%) and whether same sex marriage, alcohol and cannabis are legal.

The data for all of this is crunched from about two dozen sources, including Numbeo (for cost of living data), Freedom House reports (for human rights) and U.N. reports, according to the company spokesman. Because the site is new, it is not yet profitable but carries Google ads, book suggestions from an Amazon affiliate, and may make some cash off Skyscanner, pending on the volume of web traffic, the spokesman said.

Remember, good credit can help make your living situation more affordable since it helps you score the best terms and conditions on a mortgage. Many landlords, too, check a version of your credit report when you go to rent an apartment. You can see where your credit currently stands by viewing two of your scores, updated every 30 days, for free on Credit.com.

Image: Jacob Ammentorp Lund