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# Live single, keep your jingle
- URL: https://www.redeyebr.com/live-single-keep-your-jingle/
- Published: 2026-08-07T02:29:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-07T02:29:08.000Z
- Description: Baton Rouge is the nation's second-most affordable major city for going solo. Even Carrie Bradshaw could afford it here.
- Author: Mukul Verma

Here's a pitch for people who want to be left alone: Baton Rouge is the **second-most affordable major city** in the country for living alone in an apartment, according to an analysis by The Economist.

**Why it matters:** People pick a place to live for two main reasons. One is affordability: Baton Rouge has that covered. The other is quality of life, which the city has long lacked and is still working to build.

**The details:** The Economist ranked 100 U.S. cities using its "Carrie Bradshaw index," named for the famously single "Sex and the City" character who somehow kept a one-bedroom on a columnist's salary. The magazine then calculated the annual income a renter would need to keep rent at or below 30% of gross pay, the limit financial advisers generally recommend.

**By the numbers:** A typical Baton Rouge studio rents for about $700 a month.

- A renter here would need to earn $28,000 a year to stay under the 30% line.
- That's nearly $20,000 below the national median wage across the 100 cities.
- Only Wichita, Kansas, came out more affordable for solo renters.

**Zoom out:** New York was the most expensive city on the list, where a typical studio runs $3,790 a month. Staying under the 30% threshold there takes a salary of $151,600\. Rounding out the priciest five: Jersey City, Miami, Boston and Charleston, South Carolina.

**The bottom line:** For anyone in Baton Rouge craving a place of their own, solitude comes cheap. And the same low housing costs that make living alone easy here make a decent pitch to anyone thinking about moving in.

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