[mrmekon]

Taxes are easy to look up. There are calculators where you input your salary and the state you will live in and it'll spit out a pretty close number. Expect somewhere around 30% income tax for a middle-class salary.

Numbeo is ok for comparing the cost of items, but it's not clear how your consumption will change. My consumption is much lower in Stockholm.

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

Cars are expensive, but hopefully you don't need one if you're looking at NY metro.

The big differences that are harder to predict are insurance, healthcare, and retirement. Healthcare costs can be sudden, large expenses ($2-20k USD) even if you have insurance through your employer... to be safe, you need to keep a pretty gigantic emergency fund. If you don't have insurance through your employer, you will probably bankrupt.

Children, college, and retirement cost more than you will ever earn. Don't do any of those things!