I think there's a lot to location relative thinking on this, but if you're generating a surplus, it's worth thinking about the actual value of the surplus, beca

I think there's a lot to location relative thinking on this, but if you're generating a surplus, it's worth thinking about the actual value of the surplus, because your savings are portable. Ex: if everything is relative, and you can make double the average and save 10% regardless of location, you'd have a lot more savings if you lived where costs were much more, because 10% of $200,000 is a lot more than 10% of $24,000. And then after several years of working, you might move to the low cost area and retire. More likely, things aren't really that equally relative. So you'd want to estimate how many dollars you could save in low cost location and the high cost location (and add in factors for non-monetary concerns, like stress, natural beauty, access to things you like to access, and work authorization)