Naively adjusting CoL like this always over-corrects and favors lower cost places. This would only be a valid comparison if you saved exactly $0 each year. If you are able to save a portion of your income (as hopefully anyone with any of these salaries is), linear comparisons don't make sense.<p>You need to compare the difference in CoL as the percentage of that salary that goes towards CoL. In other words, if you save 50%, to keep the same standard, you need to CoL adjust only the other 50% (and maybe a bit more to keep your emergency fund weighted).<p><i>grumble</i>
This reflects more or less what we found, in 2016, in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey:<p><a href="https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016#salaries-and-rent-per-city" rel="nofollow">https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016#salaries-and-...</a><p>TLDR: Move to Montreal.
I suspect studies like this trail reality by a few years. Austin cost of living, particularly housing, has sky-rocketed in recent years. It's still obviously much cheaper than Silicon Valley, but it's not cheap compared to surrounding major Texas cities like Houston or Dallas.<p>It may still be a good balance of salary to cost of living, and probably is since most tech hubs are also very expensive. But, it's not like it once was (I first bought a house there in the early 2000s, and have rented, and shopped for real estate, there on a number of occasions since then).
These kind of CoL comparisons have obvious flaws as pointed out by other comments. I brushed them off when moving from Toronto to SF, only to realize later how accurate they are, if you don't plan to dramatically reduce your living standard.<p>On a side note, there are legit reasons why most people try to keep up their appearances as opposed to live frugally and save every penny.
There is no way that 73k in Toronto is the same as 153k in San Fran. I wonder if the 73k is in CAD or USD... Regardless, the average home in Toronto is around $1m CAD, plus you lose a bit more to taxes because you live in Canada. I have a hard time believing that things are 3-4X as expensive in San Fran. Are people really paying $60 for a burger?
The entire list is expensive cities. This is a typical problem for such lists. It's easy to ignore nearly all of the country.<p>Austin did best, but that isn't cheap.
This entirely depends on what you spend your money on.<p>Suppose NYC real estate is 8x the cost compared to my current city of Lehi, Utah.<p>* If I want a large house with a yard, I'll pay $500k with $1.8k/month mortgage in Lehi, or $4 million with $14.4k/month mortgage in NYC.<p>* If I want to share a smallish apartment, I'll pay $400/month in Lehi, or $3.2k/month in NYC.<p>Non-real estate items like groceries, gas, and gym memberships are not 8x more in NYC. (They're more, but not that much more.)<p>---<p>So.....what am I comparing? Good housing, or good transportation, or good hobbies, good savings, etc.? I'm assuming the measurement averages these, but people prioritize and consume these different than the average.<p>If you live in a cardboard box and save most of your pay check, you'll get an overall pay raise in NYC.
Another thing to consider about CoL comparisons is local lifestyles. Those who are living in SF or NYC are probably out of the house enjoying local nightlife a lot, those in warm sunny places are probably out enjoying nature, while those living in cold suburbs probably spend a lot more time on home and hobbies. So, in some places you can buy a lot more house while in others you need a lot less house. In places where housing is expensive there's also a lot less peer pressure to have a big house; it's not like all your coworkers in a SF startup are talking about their 4 bedroom ranch houses.
These cost of living calculators are severely flawed. It fails to capture that RSUs form a significant % of compensation in the Bay Area. It also fails to capture the exponential impact of high dual income. Also, fails to account for rapid income gain from real estate appreciation. Finally, fails to account for the ability to switch jobs quickly and climb corporate ladder.
How’s Toronto double of what it is adjusted? Toronto living is not that low. It is in real estate bubble, and food is expensive compared to US. No way that’s accurate.
Since when Atlanta is not a major metropolitan area? Based on a super quick research, I would expect ATL to, at least, lead the chart, if not land at its top.
Unfortunately one meal at Franklin Barbecue, while delicious, will immediately exhaust any extra savings one might accrue through the cheaper cost of housing.