Ask HN: How to gauge salaries in a different country?

If you're moving to Germany, and you have never been there before, how can you know what salary to ask for, and what standard of living it will afford?

What sort of data, information or visualisations would help you make a decision?

I am asking this because I help people move to Germany, and compensation is an important aspect of it.

This would be my current approach:

1. Look at the minimum wage, median income, or household income distribution [0].

2. Use the Office of Statistics tool [1] to find average salaries for your job. It's really good.

3. Put your expected salary in a tax calculator [2] to know how much you actually keep, after all contributions.

4. Get an idea of the cost of living in your area. Rent could be harder to measure.

5. Build a rough budget based on this.

I was thinking of combining most of this into a simplified income tax calculator: enter your salary, get a report. Drag the salary slider left and right to see what happens. Add more details about your situation to improve the accuracy.

How would you approach this?

[0] https://www.iwkoeln.de/fileadmin/user_upload/HTML/2019/einkommensverteilung/index.html

[1] https://service.destatis.de/DE/gehaltsvergleich/beruf.html

[2] https://www.arbeitnow.com/de/tools/salary-calculator/germany