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One thing I notice with the calculator is it is a simple scaling factor. While this scales for an employee's cost of living, it also scales how much they can sa

One thing I notice with the calculator is it is a simple scaling factor. While this scales for an employee's cost of living, it also scales how much they can save. An employee on $200k in San Francisco spending 50% on their lifestyle and no kids can retire by 40 to a more economically sane region with similar facilities. A similar employee doing the same job in that more economically sane region for $100k spending that same 50% is working until they are 50. Which ends up meaning that in the cheaper regions you are only recruiting from the pool of people unable to move to wealthier regions with higher pay (which granted is a high proportion due to family).

zippergz 7y ago
Yes, this is a common issue that I find is missed in conversations about cost of living and location (even outside of remote work). Yes, the cost of living in the Midwest of the US is much lower than the West Coast. However, I find that the lower pay there more than offsets the difference. First, because of the savings issue you mention, but also there are major things that cost approximately the same no matter where you live in the country. Cars, computers, vacations, often even medical procedures (certainly not cheaper in line with the pay difference), etc. Between being able to save less for retirement, and having large purchases (even if infrequent) consume a significantly higher portion of my income, I've never been able to make the math truly work out in terms of moving to a lower cost of living area and keeping a similar quality of life. For those who it works for, that's great, but it's not as simple as it's made out to be when you consider all of the factors.