How good is your zip code?

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All I know is that in my zip code, you canā€™t walk 20 feet without stepping on a Prius. I have no idea if thatā€™s good or bad, though.

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I think that means you need to stop stepping so high up. Just because theyā€™re called feet, doesnā€™t mean you have to raise them feet off the ground. A few inches is enough for walking. Unless youā€™re a giant. In which case, stop crushing cars you clumsy oaf!

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25% oh yeah! Well at least I donā€™t live a mile North then Iā€™d be in the 10% area.
-actually I take that back to some degree, apparently I live right on the edge of 25, 78 and 50ā€¦ ah the virtues of living on the edge of downtown.

I always have a problem with maps that show income level vs. the national average. According to the map the area my parents are from ranks around 20%, but that area is also mostly farm land with a few auto repair places, hair/nail shops, and other small local businesses. I highly doubt anyone there is pulling down six figures, but the cost of living is also cheap, so that makes a difference. Plus if you are farming that reduces a good bit of your food costs right off.

Well, I moved from the 36th percentile to the 91st, so thatā€™s nice. Explains why housing is so much here, though.

I live next to a Super Zip and it looks pretty much just like my sub-Super Zip except that their trees are more tree-like and their Mercedes are more Mercedes-like and for some reason it never seems to rain there.

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Iā€™m not proud of my address
In a torn-up town,
No post code envyā€¦

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The thing that strikes me - though I was intellectually aware of it before - is the vast gulf between zips about five minutes apart. See also 06824, with six-figure incomes and a >90% white population, and 06608, with <30k incomes and a >90% black & Latin@ population.

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22%. Low scores. Iā€™m perfectly happy with it. My neighborhood is quiet, safe, working-class and clean. We have great Italian and Chinese food. May the high rents never find us.

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The town I rent in is a solid 99, where the median household income is $160K (disclosure: Iā€™m well off, but less than half that well off). I donā€™t think thereā€™s anything inherently wrong with people having money, but I grew up in a rural-middle-class family (which is quite a bit different even from suburban middle class) and seeing visible wealth seems perverted. I picked the apartment for the 15 minute commute, and didnā€™t know better since I was from out of town and had a small-town sense of much space people need to live. This was a bad financial decision. Iā€™m now thinking about buying a home, which will require a more appropriate trade in commute time and living space.

Amazing, less than 4 miles away, is a ā€˜8ā€™ zip code, with a $34K median household income. The State of New Jersey is a land of massive incomes and massive inequality. That derivative (d income / d distance) is unreal.

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Hell yeah 13% college graduates!
Oh, and 11. The zip right next door is 9.

Chicagoā€™s the same way. Iā€™m in a 35/$28K neighborhood next to a 1/$20K neighborhood, but about 3 miles away is a 95/$89K neighborhood. You donā€™t even need to change buses or el lines when you travel between them.

My zip code is 27510. I learned shortly after moving here that ā€œNext to the Prius with the Obama stickerā€ is an excellent way to lose a car in a parking deck.

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Mine is 9000.
(Gent, Belgium).

Is that good or bad?

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Well, we know the Beer is good there, at bare minimum. . .

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I apparently live in an island of ā€œpoorā€ people among a sea of 1%ers. I knew this already though, because I live in the town that houses a huge chunk of the immigrant day laborers who work in the surrounding counties.

Of course poor is a relative term. Itā€™s still a 6 figure income area and at 93% nationally.

ā€œLow-income housingā€ in some suburbs around here is reserved for people who make less than $100K. Yeah. But at least it means not all the maids and gardeners need to travel long distances to get to work.

My issue with maps like this is that they are difficult to interpret without a null expectation or detailed knowledge of American geography. A map that shows which areas have more high end zip-codes than expected would say a lot more than the WP map, which just looks like another map of light pollution in the US (poor choice of colour scheme?). Another informative map could illustrate the change in zipcode ranking with time.

Or perhaps correlate it with median home prices/sales. That would at least give you an idea of income to cost of living.

I grew up in a 93 surrounded by high 90s.

The neighborhood down the road, Old Westbury, is a 99.

Depending on whether you ask the post office or who I send taxes to, Iā€™m either in a 71 or a 76.