I think you did follow! I was talking about housing costs, not the rest of living costs, because in general housing is (a) your biggest expense and (b) most tie

I think you did follow! I was talking about housing costs, not the rest of living costs, because in general housing is (a) your biggest expense and (b) most tied to the region you're in. Sure: gasoline, utilities, and groceries are certainly more expensive here in Santa Clara than they would be if I was still living in Tampa, Florida. But the difference is much smaller in magnitude than the difference in housing costs, and the absolute amount of money that I'm spending on those things is also less. (e.g., I pay around $3.60 a gallon in gas right now; in Tampa it's around $2.40/gal, which is a pretty astounding difference objectively, but it's not eight times less. if I drove 15,000 miles a year in a car that got just 30 mpg, I'd pay about $50 a month more here. In general, everything else follows similarly. If the $30K number you produced is "stuff Person A spends on non-housing costs," in practice Person B, even in the most expensive area, isn't spending anywhere close to $240K on the same things. It's extremely unlikely they're spending anywhere close to $60K on the same things.