Cost of Living Calculator

The tool uses location cost indices as the primary scaler. A cost index is a relative number (baseline 100) that summarizes typical local prices across representative spending categories. Where available, use published indices from national statistics offices or reputable economic research sources.

For higher fidelity, the budget-weighted method applies category-specific multipliers to reflect that housing, food, and transport can change at different rates than the overall index. The living-wage style estimate divides scaled household spending by household size to provide a per-person annual figure.

This implementation follows software and data handling best practices drawn from NIST and ISO guidance for data integrity and system reliability, and applies engineering quality principles consistent with IEEE recommendations for numerical software. Results are estimates and should be validated against local official sources for compliance or formal decision-making.

If you earn 60,000 locally, your current city index is 100 and the target city is 120, with zero planning years and a 20% tax rate: cost_ratio=1.2, nominal_required=72,000, required_gross≈90,000.

If housing in the target city is much higher relative to other categories, increase the housing_multiplier and use the budget-weighted method to reflect that your housing-driven budget will require a larger salary uplift than the simple index implies.