CNN has a cost of living calculator that seems to take grocery , housing, utilit...

ChuckMcM · on Oct 21, 2012

So the key is get hired by Google in the bay area and "work from home" in Minneapolis! :-)

At both Sun and NetApp where I was familiar with the compensation practices there was a 'modifier' applied to bay area jobs which increased their compensation, but even with the modifier the 'net' take home pay was less than it was elsewhere.

That said, when I was at Google they had a really interesting pay practice for engineers which consists of a base salary and a 'bonus', the bonus was affected by a personal multiplier and a company multiplier. The system was designed to make it impossible to figure out what the multipliers were so basically is simplified to the old fashion 'tweak the folks we like' non-accountability that you got elsewhere but it certainly gave the impression to people that they were going to earn more money than they actually did. (And yes, it annoyed me, but Lazlo Bock the VP of HR didn't really care that it did :-) Perhaps when they did that whole 10% across the board thing they normalized things a bit (which would have been a good thing, the old system was causing good people to quit when it should have been rewarding them)

alaithea · on Oct 19, 2012

Just an FYI for those in DC: on that calculator, Washington is listed under the state of Virginia. Geographic boundaries are tricky business, but c'mon, CNN. You could at least pretend District of Columbia is a state.

bmelton · on Oct 19, 2012

But it's not a state, it's a district. I'll grant you that it's obviously a place where people live and work; but a state it is not.

alaithea · on Oct 20, 2012

I did say "pretend." I'm not interested in debating DC statehood, rather I am interested in a good user experience. In my case, I actually live in Maryland, yet I had to pull up Virginia to find my metro area.

Evbn · on Oct 19, 2012

Still missing the point. Consider the common case of earning and saving in NY and retiring to FL.

One has to distinguish cost of living for a non-saver from cost-of-living for a saver.

joezydeco · on Oct 19, 2012

And I'll assert that it just doesn't matter for this discussion.

Look, as someone said elsewhere, this is an impossible problem. You have too many factors to figure out. Have a family? Want to own a house instead of rent? Do you need a car? What lifestyle do you maintain?

The point here is that we're trying to assess what it would cost to maintain a similar standard of living in two different cities. Food. Transportation costs. Housing. Rents. Healthcare. Forget 52" TVs and trips to Paris for the time being.

blacksmythe · on Oct 19, 2012

  >> what it would cost to maintain a similar standard of living in two different cities.

What is would cost to maintain a similar standard of living, when spending all of your money where you live. (like most families with kids :) )

Someone who saves $20k/year or spends large amounts on travel would have a much higher standard of living in SF than Minneapolis.

joezydeco · on Oct 19, 2012

Try the algebra from the other end.

"I have a wife and two kids. I want to own a 3 bedroom house with a yard. I need a car, and I drive 15,000 miles a year. We eat <x> number of meals at home each week, and <y> at restaurants. We do <z> things as a family including movies. This takes up 80% of our net income."

Okay, now what would that cost in Minneapolis, and what would that cost in San Francisco? That's all we're trying to ask.

rada · on Oct 19, 2012

On the other hand, consider the more realistic scenario of renting in NY vs. building house equity elsewhere. Given that house equity is the prevalent savings scenario in the US, the average New Yorker has a higher cost of living and a lower savings rate.