The real mitigating factor is the car. When you cut out car payment/car depreciation, insurance, gas, maitenance and take that money and put it towards your hou

The real mitigating factor is the car. When you cut out car payment/car depreciation, insurance, gas, maitenance and take that money and put it towards your housing, it evens out. No. I moved from a 1800sf 3br house, 2 cars lifestyle in Austin, TX to 650sf 1br apartment and no cars in NYC. And the cost of living difference was still huge. I'd say even more significant than 90-vs-140 ratio proposed above. It's hard to pinpoint a single reason for this though. Honestly, if you're an engineer in Austin TX and you're moving to NYC you should stop even attempting to calculate the "comparable" salary. You can't have an equivalent of a 1800sf house in NYC on any engineering salary. Frankly, it's kind of pointless anyway since the difference in lifestyles are so vast that the meaning of "comparable" becomes fuzzy. And no, it's not easy to have a kitchen in NYC for $1900 (in many neighbourhoods you may like), and most likely your A/C situation will drive you nuts: I never owned a window-mounted unit until I moved and my first summer I was cursing every night. Just for the record: the COO of a hedge fund lived on the top floor of my building and he had the same shitty, noisy window-mounted units but he didn't even notice the noise. Finally, to throw some numbers out there, just for fun: after 10 years in Austin it _felt_ like 200K/year in NYC was what I needed to feel comfortable there. YMMV.