Totally agree, especially regarding relative cost of living and work / life balance. That being said, cost of living is probably the most difficult to asses as

Totally agree, especially regarding relative cost of living and work / life balance. That being said, cost of living is probably the most difficult to asses as there are also many relative variables. work life balance could probably be assessed simply by an average work week length. I theorize work life balance is affected on an exponential scale with every additional hour.