I have. it grossly underestimates.
a while ago, this and other sites said I needed 120k in LA and 140k in SF to maintain my south america 40k.
turns out I moved making more than the SF salary in LA. and it still falls short on what I have money to do on short trips and night life.
I guess it is acurate if you dont go out every friday and saturday and never, ever leave the city for the longer holidays.
That's not a great QOL. For comparison, I ran the Mexico City / SF cost of living on Numbeo[0]. $38k in Mexico City would need to be $140k in SF for comparable quality of life.
(side note -- this COL calculator is super neat! anyone have any evidence of the accuracy?)
[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...