Live single, keep your jingle

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.