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Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

...being an H1B programmer in Houston doesn’t seem to be all that lucrative...

The 'Avg. WAGE_RATE_1' table puts the Houston salary at 67K, the NYC Salary at 112K.

But Houston has no city or state income tax, and much cheaper housing, food, transport, and other goods. In fact, according to the Cost-of-Living calculators at...

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm... ...or...

http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/moving-cost-of...

..earning 112K in Manhattan is equivalent to earning only 48K in Houston. (112K in Brooklyn = 57K in Houston; 112K in the NYC suburbs of Bergen-Passaic NJ = 79K in Houston.)

So in terms of standard of living, 67K in Houston isn't so bad.

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I don't trust these cost-of-living calculations. Every time I've lived somewhere with a supposedly great cost-of-living I've felt poor (had to conserve my money) and every time I've lived somewhere with a supposedly bad cost-of-living I've felt wealthier. I can't think of a single exception.

I think it's because many things are constantly priced anywhere, such as cars, food etc. The only thing that is expensive is local, such as housing.

Food prices vary greatly by region. Of the two cost calculators I referenced, one identifies Houston groceries as costing 45% less than Manhattan, and the other has a long list of representative food prices, many of which are around twice as much in NYC. This roughly matches my personal experience comparing Bay Area grocery prices to those in the Austin, TX region.

Same goes for cars — though less so for new cars, even there, when you check prices at a site like Edmunds, there are regional adjustments. For used cars, the same model/year/mileage combinations go for much less in Texas than California. And that's before transfer taxes and registration.

I haven't seen that much difference in basic food prices, at least not enough to account for the huge disparities in cost of living I've seen in calculators like these. I lived in Brooklyn for two months earlier this year and restaurants and little boutique organic foods shops were very expensive there were also big supermarkets that were pretty affordable. The only thing that was far more expensive than, Houston, for example, was rent.

Or the COLA calculations include many areas where you wouldn't want to live. Where I live now has a low COL according to the statistics, but that's only because it includes the poor areas nearby. The only place anyone would want to live is very expensive, and more than some of the bigger cities I've lived in.

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