the.com/cost of living

means The total price of simply existing in a place and time — rent, food, fuel, and everything else needed to keep a life running.

from Not an ancient coinage but a modern economic phrase, built plainly from 'cost' (Latin constare, 'to stand at a price') and 'living' in the sense of sustaining oneself. It hardened into its familiar form in the 20th century alongside 'cost-of-living index' and wage negotiations, as economies needed a shorthand for how prices crept upward while paychecks tried to keep pace — a phrase born less of poetry than of payroll departments and inflation reports.