cost of living

The average income in a town or city vs. the expenses required to live there = the cost of living. New York City, for example, has a wicked high cost of living. So you have to make more to live there. (ie, less than $40K won't get you far.) But in, say, Charlottesville, you can live quite nicely on $20K.

Here are some cost of living figures for different world cities, taken from homefair.com. If you live in New York City and make $100,000 a year, it's effectively the same as making the following amount in the following cities...

• New York City: $100,000
• Geneva: 100,000
• Tokyo: 98,000
• Chicago, Illinois: 96,000
• Hong Kong: 96,000
• Boston, Massachusetts: 90,000
• Mumbai: 85,000
• Dublin: 82,000
• Anchorage, Alaska: 82,000
• Seoul: 81,000
• Istanbul: 81,000
• Washington, D.C.: 78,000
• London: 74,000
• Seattle, Washington: 74,000
• Moscow: 72,000
• Miami, Florida: 72,000
• Buenos Aires: 71,000
• Shanghai: 71,000
• Los Angeles, California: 71,000
• Dallas, Texas: 66,000
• Cairo: 65,000
• San Juan: 65,000
• Singapore: 62,000
• Rio de Janeiro: 62,000
• Prague: 62,000
• Atlanta, Georgia: 62,000
• Paris: 61,000
• Toronto: 61,000
• Honolulu, Hawaii: 61,000
• Tel Aviv: 60,000
• Sydney: 58,000
• Vancouver: 58,000
• Montreal: 56,000
• Kolkata: 56,000
• Sioux City, Iowa: 55,000
• Helsinki: 54,000
• Munich: 52,000
• Lagos: 51,000
• Kabul: 41,000