I didn't mean to suggest you should actually move to the US. Life in the US definitely feels pretty backwards compared to some European countries these days, an

I didn't mean to suggest you should actually move to the US. Life in the US definitely feels pretty backwards compared to some European countries these days, and your examples show that pretty convincingly. I only meant that, despite just being basic arithmetic, it's somewhat paradoxical that savings rates can go up in extremely high cost-of-living areas. It "feels" like you've gained nothing if your income increases by 4x but your cost of living does as well, but in reality you might actually save considerably more money.