<prompt> Human: TL;DR dont compare only salary differences and cost of living differences to give you comparisons for where youll better stretch your dollarIve seen this a couple of times here, and pretty often in my personal life. People often use this logic to compare job offers in different cities, and I just want to make sure they understand how to actually measure this difference. The logical fallacy is simplified as follows: Making 100k a year in RichTown is like making 50k a year in RuralTown since the cost of living is twice as high in RichTownYoure not accurately comparing the two cities. Ill explain with quick case study. Lets compare my hometown, to a city with much cheaper costs of living. Lets say I live in San Jose, California and I make 100,000 a year. My monthly living expenses rent bills food comes out to about 2,000 a month, or 24,000 a year. San Jose has a cost of living index of 168. You will owe approximately 18,000 in Federal taxes, leaving you with 58,000 a year. Buffalo, NY has a cost of living index of 78. For a ballpark comparison we can probably assume that 78168 24,000 gives us 11,000 a year for cost of living. Here is where the fallacy comes into play, if you assume that because it is 1-78168 thats not right is it? cheaper to live in Buffalo, your salary can be 78168 as much. This is where you would be wrong! 78168 100k gives you a salary of 46,400 a year. After 11k in living expenses and 5k in taxes, you are left with 30,000. Ive purposefully narrowed out the cost of living to rent bills food because these are the things most likely to be effected by regional price variations. Here is a quick list of things that are not appreciably less expensive in Buffalo than San Jose Electronics Cars Airfare Likely more expensive from places far from regional hubs Public University Tuition Buff State 5570yr vs San Jose State 7000yrSome things will be less labor for contractorsmechanicsplumbers etc, and some things will be more Airfare, and some things will appear less but in reality end up about the same gas may be cheaper, but youre probably not walking to the store in Buffalo. In summary that leftover 58,000 is going to feel like you have a lot more of a buffer, and give you a better ability to save for retirement, than the 30,000 a year. Even if purchases in this category of non-living expensive were more expensive across the board, its extremely unlikely that it would be twice as expensive. If we assumed an even cost of items in this category, you would need to earn 80,000 a year in Buffalo to feel like you were earning 100k a year in San Jose. ConclusionOf course this is greatly effected by your spending habits; what you do with that leftover money will effect how much more expensivecheaper a certain area would be to you. If you guys could help me refine this a bit, we could come up with a spreadsheet that would help people compare job locations. Im sure Ive made logical or mathematical errors somewhere here, so feel free to point these out and correct so people can get the best advice.  <response>: Good post. If youre into being frugal to save money, you will almost always do better in the higher income, more expensive city. Cost-of-living surveys dont usually consider living in a small apartment with a transit pass. You indirectly touched on a couple more things as well: airfare: if you live in a hub city, air travel is much more convenient and you can take advantage of seat sales. If your hobby is traveling this can be a big difference. cars: what car?It takes a lot of research to compare cost of living for your personal situation, but if you are somewhat frugal the answers will probably surprise you. For example, cost of living surveys usually include big houses or apartments. Cost of living indexes always include gas prices, but in a big city you probably dont need a car.In my case, I moved from Alberta, land of move here for a job to Vancouver, BC, known for being extremely expensive and found that my living expenses decreased while my quality of life increased. It turned out that while houses are unaffordable in Vancouver, rents were similar and food and hanging out were cheaper. Now i live in Japan, and my cost of living is roughly half of what it was in Vancouver.What I needed a car to access within 30 minutes in Alberta was accessible by train in Vancouver. What I needed a train to access within 30 minutes in Vancouver is accessible on foot in my current city.I dont think you can condense this into a spreadsheet because its so variable per person. You cant just compare costs directly because different cities require different transportation, etc. Tools like walkscore help you compare lifestyle and housing costs at the same time.The huge things to look at are car and house ownership. The default position seems to be well obviously I need to own a car and house but some cities have lower rent vs mortgage costs and some dont. 