Salary, Adjusted.
Your $75K NYC salary is worth about $48K in Denver — and vice versa. See what your salary actually buys you across 30 US metros.
Calculating...
Where the cost-of-living gap actually comes from. Each bar is sized relative to NYC = 100. The delta column shows the % change moving from current to destination.
What "purchasing power" really means.
The salary number on your offer letter is mostly meaningless without context. A $90K offer in San Francisco and a $90K offer in Cleveland aren't the same offer. The first one buys you a tiny studio and a Saturday at the farmer's market; the second one buys you a 3-bedroom house and a comfortable retirement runway. The headline number lies.
The cost-of-living adjustment in this calculator uses Numbeo's combined Cost of Living + Rent index, where NYC is the baseline at 100. A city with a combined index of 60 means the same basket of goods + housing costs 40% less than NYC. So a $100K NYC salary equates to a $60K salary in that city for equivalent lifestyle.
Housing is almost always the dominant gap. Groceries vary by ~15-25% across US cities. Transport varies by ~30%. Rent varies by 60-80%. When people move from coastal hubs to Sun Belt metros, the bulk of the "raise" they feel comes from cutting rent in half.
State income tax is a meaningful kicker. A $100K earner in NYC pays roughly 9% combined state + city income tax (~$9,000/yr). The same earner in Texas, Florida, or Tennessee pays 0%. That's a $9K-ish raise just from the move — independent of the COL adjustment.
What this calculator doesn't capture: Federal tax and FICA (identical everywhere). The "soft" value of being in a specific city (career opportunities, family, weather, walkability). Salary differences for the same role across cities — Bay Area engineers often earn 30-40% more than the same role in Austin, which partially offsets the COL gap. Run the equivalent-salary number against what employers in the new city actually pay before deciding.