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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

In particular, you shouldn't adjust for CoL any parts of your salary that will be spent on (nonlocal) trips/vacations, or on nationally priced consumer goods. The cost of big-screen televisions or Xbox games doesn't get any cheaper when you move from San Francisco to Fresno, for example, and neither does the cost of taking a trip to Paris.

The CoL calculators, as they're usually implemented, make the most sense for people with no real disposable income beyond living expenses, but they don't make a lot of sense for Google-level salaries.

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> they don't make a lot of sense for Google-level salaries.

Yes. This was my point.

> you shouldn't adjust for CoL any parts of your salary that will be spent on trips/vacations, or on nationally priced consumer goods.

Indeed, the real comparison of salaries should take into account what you plan to do with the income above the CoL. To the above I would also add that the interest on the rest of your cash stash (you don't plan to spend all of it on LCDs and trips?) is pretty much independent of where you live.

Are you counting sales taxes? How about income taxes? Both affect your ability to buy even national goods, especially now that states are starting to enforce sales taxes on out-of-state items.

Anyone from CA want to chime on what state income and sales taxes are compared to the rest of the country?

I can't speak for California but for New York vs. Minnesota, the taxes breakdown is roughly: 50% in NYC vs. 35% in Minnie. When you look at mortgage deductions - a far more common scenario in the "rest of the country" - the difference is even greater.

I'm getting much lower rates when I plug them into tax calculators. For example, if you make $100k, are single, and take the standard deduction, you pay an overall $18k in federal income tax (18%) and just under $7k in MN income tax (7%), for 25% total. YMMV if you have a spouse, kids, or a mortgage, of course.

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