[ryandrake]

Cost-of-living is only one cost to consider.

I also used to work in Nowhere, USA and now work in the Bay Area. While my "cost of living as a percent of salary" is much higher, so is my "salary minus cost of living" which is a more important measurement. To put it into concrete hypothetical terms:

Person A lives in rural Iowa, makes $50K a year after taxes, and their cost of living items (housing, gas, food, etc.) add up to $20K. Person B lives in the city, makes $100K a year after taxes, and their cost of living items add up to $60K. All other things being equal (I know, that's a stretch), who's doing better?

One school of thought is that A is better off because while they're making half the salary, their cost of living is 1/3rd. My school of though says that B is better off because he has $10K more to do things that cost the same as they do for person A: Investment, travel, Netflix, anything you buy on Amazon, whatever.

[tcoppi]

If you can take a job somewhere with more than double your after-tax salary(what you would have to do to go from $50k after tax to $100k after tax) and only double your living expenses, of course you will come out ahead. I don't think that is a common situation for a family unless you either downgrade your standard of housing(smaller, add roommates, less desirable area, increase commute, etc) or are seriously underpaid. For single people it might be more commonly possible. Probably explains why a lot of people seem to come to my relatively high CoL area straight out of school and move away as soon as they start a family.