You can get a studio apartment for $700, no problem. You can get a cookie cutter 4 bedroom house in the suburbs in the $200's.

You'll need a car, of course, and as long as you're not eating at trendy places downtown, everything else is pretty cheap. Bars have $1 beers and burgers at happy hour.

Doesn't the city fine you for not having a green lawn though? Power also seemed to be significantly more expensive at nearly 14 cents per kWh, which can get spendy with AC being nearly mandatory with how hot it gets in the summer.

Additionally, another downside I noticed when I was there was that around 2am in the summer, the streets are often flooded due to people watering their lawns. Besides the absent or poor pedestrian infrastructure, this made my after work walk quite a bit more complicated.

I've never heard of the city fining you for not having a green lawn. You can get in trouble for not mowing, and if you're in an HOA, maybe they require watering, but my lawn stays plenty green without any sprinkling.

My electric bill is about $80 in the summer to keep my $125k, 2000 sqft house at 72F. Not too bad IMO.

And everyone (40% of the houses in my neighborhood?) who waters their lawn does so at dawn and dusk, not 2AM. If you water in the middle of the night when the grass is cold and dormant, you can get mold.

If you think that's expensive, try living in Australia.

Air conditioning is mandatory some areas, with temperatures in Sydney peaking over 40 C (105 F) in the summer, and electricity costs 27 cents per kWh (US$0.20).

That's ridiculously cheap electricity! I assume that's just the lowest tier? Can most people make it through the month at that rate, or do the rates typically jump mid-way through?

It's not really cheap. 20 cents per kWh is double the US average.

Australia has some of the most expensive electricity prices in the world, as Australia is completely incapable of managing its infrastructure properly.

Mine starts at 27 cents for the cheapest tier, then jumps to 48 and 55 cents for higher use. I'm looking forward to paying the US average some day.

Ridiculously cheap power to me means 2 to 4 cents per kWh. I consider 11 cents per kWh (which is what Seattle's rates are) to be extremely high, especially compared to areas just outside Seattle proper.

Well, I guess I'm in for a price cut someday when I move to a different part of the country. My electric starts at $0.27/kWh, then goes up to $0.48, then $0.55 for higher usage. I have no idea what the cutoffs are for hitting those higher tiers, as I've never done it.

Why would you care about the ratio?

Imagine that salary in San Francisco is $9000 / month and cost of living is $7000 / month. The ratio of salary : cost of living is 1.286.

Imagine salary in Grand Rapids is $3000 / month and the cost of living is $2000 / month. The ratio has "improved" to 1.5, but the more important figure of (income - expenses) has fallen in half.

I don't think the GP meant to ask about the ratio. The slash was probably just shorthand for "and".

I wasn't looking at the slash so much as the question "No surprise that both will be a lot lower in Grand Rapids, but I'm wondering how the ratio looks".

There are four numbers to compare, salary_SF, salary_GR, living_cost_SF, living_cost_GR, and two obvious ratios you could take. You chose to divide salary/living_cost for each, but you could also divide salary_SF/salary_GR for ratio_1 and living_cost_SF/living_cost_GR for ratio_2.

So, you might find that it's a 50% lower salary, and an 80% lower living cost. That would be informative.

Numbeo is a great site for cost of living comparison. Here's SF versus Grand Rapids[0]. To sum, if your takehome is $7800 in SF, you can live a similar lifestyle on $3700 in Grand Rapids.

So, about half the cost of living.

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

That of course depends on what you're going for. The 'lifestyle' comparison only takes into account basic goods. It doesn't take into everything else that actually affects your personal quality of life (cities vs more rural life each have vastly different benefits).

Not only that, but many things have a constant price: international air tickets, cars, and computers don’t vary in cost much between GR and SF (some are even more expensive in the lower cost place).

> international air tickets

Air tickets are significantly cheaper in NY than ruralish areas in my experience

Yes, I’m sure tickets to SFO to Asia are often cheaper than from Grand Rapids or even Detroit.

Arbitrary example: GRR -> Copenhagen roundtrip is ~$1,100 USD. From NYC or SF I can do that for ~$400-$500. Pretty much anywhere else I could pick has a similar differential.

That's a massive cost difference, especially when you're looking at 2-4 person vacations. That's a problem in pretty much every rural area (flying out of Ithaca was expensive as heck). I'm able to travel way more as a result.

All good points! And since each person has their own take on these other factors, I guess it explains why people live different places. (Besides our west coast snooty "flyover states" attitude -- lots of people really do want to live where they live!)

> computers

It's true, the market is becoming pretty flat with globalization for costs in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZs4NDC4yrI

You have never flown anywhere but Canada, then. I Have to come to GR 2x per year from abroad, and in order to afford it I fly into Chicago and take the train, or buy separate tickets on the 45 minute puddle jumper (which is an Embrayer Air 150, most uncomfortable plane in service in the states). Flying into Detroit or Grand Rapids from SFO is always 50% higher than flying to New York.

I had to buy a family member a flight from Seattle -> Detroit for next month, it cost $600. I'm about to fly myself from Istanbul to San Francisco, that flight cost $500.

There's a reason they're called the flyover states.

I also notice that is the cost for renting in both places. If you want to buy a house, and if (for example) you wanted that house to have a yard, it might impact that differential. But, interesting site, thanks!

I have no experience with SF but if you are a software developer with a year or two of experience you can easily afford to live well here.

That said, you can probably move from here to a non-SF tech hub and get a 50-100% bump in your salary with only a 20% increase in cost of living.