Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Fond du Lac's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Fond du Lac?
Your $100,000 in Fond du Lac has the same purchasing power as $118,793 in the average US city. You'd need $18,793 less here to maintain that standard of living.
Demographics and workforce data from the US Census ACS 5-Year.
bachelor's or higher
Climate, safety, and walkability indicators.
See a side-by-side breakdown of cost of living, housing, and salaries.
Popular comparisons
Sorted by affordability — most affordable first.
Within 10 points of Fond du Lac's cost index of 84, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Fond du Lac, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Living costs come in under the US baseline and on the calmer side of the national distribution lead, plus 3 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 84, a comfortable 16% under the US norm. It shows up most clearly in housing, which is where the gap to coastal metros usually opens up. Median rent in town runs about $868/mo against a typical household income of $58,675, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
Reported crime in Fond du Lac comes in around 1,970 per 100,000 — under the national baseline of about 3,500. Worth digging into specific neighborhoods before settling on one, but the city-level picture is on the safer side.
With a citywide Walk Score of 74/100, Fond du Lac sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Average AQI in Fond du Lac comes in around 41, well into the "good" band. Clean air isn't a thing you appreciate until you've lived somewhere it wasn't — and this is the side of that line you want to be on.
Average commute time in Fond du Lac runs around 19 minutes one-way — short enough that it doesn't restructure your day. Compared to the 45-plus-minute commutes that are normal in major metros, the difference adds up to a real lifestyle gap.
Reasons are pulled from Fond du Lac's actual data — Census ACS, BLS, BEA, NOAA, EPA AQS, FBI, and Walk Score. We don't list positives that aren't supported by the numbers, which is why different cities show different sections.
Fond du Lac does winter the real way. Averages around 20°F keep snow on the ground for weeks at a time, and lakes and rivers tend to freeze hard enough to walk on.
Properly cold. Fond du Lac's winter sits around 20°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Fond du Lac sits about 80°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Zone 7, give or take a half-zone. Fond du Lac's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 7 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 768 feet (234 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
The headline number is reassuring. Fond du Lac's reported incident rate of about 1,970 per 100,000 is comfortably below the US norm of around 3,500 per 100k. Specific neighborhoods always vary, but the broader picture is on the safer side.
Fond du Lac is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 84 versus the 100 national baseline — about 16% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
Fond du Lac scores 74/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $58,926 to live in Fond du Lac the way a $70,000 earner lives in a typical US city. The math gets less forgiving the lower you go below that. Median rent in Fond du Lac runs about $868/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.