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WorkWingman — Family Cost Comparison (Plain Language)

If you've got a family, moving for a job isn't just about salary — it's "what will groceries and schools actually cost us over there compared to here?" This feature gives you a rough, honestly- labeled answer, built entirely from free/official sources or clearly-marked estimates — never a guess dressed up as a fact.

These are estimates, not advice. Nothing here should be the deciding factor on a move — think of it as a conversation-starter number, not a budget you can bank on.

Tell it about your family (totally optional)

There's a new "Family" section, separate from the rest of onboarding, where you can optionally tell WorkWingman:

  • How many adults are in your household
  • Your kids' ages (add or remove as many as you need)
  • Whether your kids are currently in public or private school
  • What you currently spend on groceries and/or private tuition, if you want a more precise starting point than an estimate

Every field is skippable. If you don't fill this in, nothing else in the app is affected — you just won't see the family cost comparisons. This data is stored only on your computer, the same way your other profile answers are, and is never sent anywhere except the same private Drive-mirror your profile already uses.

Groceries: scaled to your actual family

The idea: a family of 2 adults and 3 kids spends a very different amount on groceries than a single person — and Chicago groceries cost differently than a small town's.

Where the baseline comes from: the USDA's own official "Cost of Food" report — the same number nutrition assistance programs and family-budgeting tools use nationally. USDA publishes a monthly-cost figure for every age group (a teenager eats differently than a toddler, cost-wise), and this feature adds those up for your actual household, then applies USDA's own rule that larger households get a bit of a bulk discount per person (and smaller households pay a bit more per person).

Where the city adjustment comes from: the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks how much more or less groceries cost in different regions of the country. Today WorkWingman uses a snapshot of that data for about 18 major metro areas (BLS's full live data covers more, and a future update could pull it live); if your city isn't one of the 18, it just uses the national average and tells you so — it never makes up a number for a city it doesn't have data for.

What you'll see: an estimated monthly grocery cost for the job's city, and (if you told us your current spending) how that compares — "+$120/month more" or "-$60/month less," for example.

Schools: quality signal + tuition comparison

The idea: if you have school-age kids, "is the local school district actually good?" and "what would private school cost here?" both matter for a move.

School quality — why not GreatSchools: GreatSchools is probably the site you've heard of for this, but it's now a paid, business-only API (roughly $50-$100/month) — not something a free local tool can use. Instead, WorkWingman uses Stanford University's Educational Opportunity Project, a free, well-regarded research dataset that scores school districts on both how well kids are doing and how much they're improving year over year — nationally comparable numbers, not just a raw test-score percentage that means different things in different states.

Coverage caveat: today this only has a snapshot covering a handful of major metro areas built in as an example. Outside those, WorkWingman honestly shows "no data for this area" instead of guessing — that's not a judgment on the schools there, just a gap in what's wired up so far.

Private school tuition — an honest dead end and what we do instead: we specifically checked whether the government publishes an official average private-school-tuition-by-state number. It doesn't — the one federal survey that tracks private schools (NCES's Private School Universe Survey) collects enrollment and staffing info but never asks about cost. And the tuition-comparison websites you might expect to scrape for this data have terms of service that block exactly that kind of automated use, so WorkWingman doesn't do it. Instead, it uses a small set of published state-level averages from independent-school-association reports — clearly labeled as an approximate, non-government estimate, not an official figure.

What you'll actually see, side by side

A comparison card shows, for the job's city vs. your current city:

  • Estimated monthly grocery cost, and the difference from what you told us you spend now
  • School district quality signal (achievement + improvement), when available for that area
  • Estimated private-school tuition, when a state average is available

Anywhere a number isn't available, the card says so plainly instead of hiding the section or inventing a figure.

Honest caveats, all in one place

  • Grocery city-adjustment and school-quality data are seeded snapshots covering a handful of well-known metro areas today, not a live lookup for every city in the country yet.
  • Private-school tuition is a state-level approximation from a non-government source — there is no official number to compare it against.
  • None of this is financial or educational advice — treat it as a starting point for your own research, not a final answer.