This. So many times this. Central New Jersey has all the price inflation you'd expect of a rural area with lots of high-level professionals that's close(ish) to Manhattan and houses a major research university, and yet there are all sorts of little, unexpected ways that things end up being yet more expensive than that. I could never figure it out. Even if money is no object for you, there's no shortage of inefficiencies that persevere for no discernible reason.
(I could never, for example, figure out why approximately half of the food establishments insisted you pay with cash; I literally never have cash on me in Durham because there's no need for it.)
