India, Feb. 4 -- No, you're not imagining things: Everything really is more expensive now. The CBS News Price Tracker shows that, while inflation has cooled, food costs are up about 18 percent since 2022, and certain goods like tools and hardware are up a whopping 112 percent. So if you're looking to make an impact on your finances in the year to come, you may want to consider moving to a metro area, where the cost of living doesn't come at the expense of the quality of life.

In December, RentCafe.com released its findings on the most liveable cities in the U.S., which it determined by creating a list of contiguous metropolitan areas with populations of at least 300,000. Next, the company compared each metro across three main categories:...