But 20% of $200k/yr is $40k/yr, while 20% of $100k/yr is $20k/yr. If you make twice as much while saving the same rate (i.e. cost of living goes up proportionally), you'll still end up saving twice as fast. Then move to a LCOL area, and you've got twice as much saved as the people who've lived there all their lives.

Yep - this is what a lot of people who suggest moving to a cheaper area as a solution for not being able to buy a house don't seem to think about.

Earning (made up numbers because I don't even live in the USA and I don't know what is reasonable) $100k and spending half of it on rent with no hope of buying a house is still better than earning $50k in an area with much cheaper housing.

Of course if you can score a remote job then you can have the best of both worlds, but that isn't always possible (and some companies seem to pay differently based on your COL now).

I think it's a pretty big unsourced assumption that savings rates are similar between LCOL and HCOL areas. I'm curious if that's really true; I wonder if there's any research/polling done on this.

Even if the saving rates are the same, the higher salary in a higher COL wins because you can always move before retirement.

However, today’s high inflation rates make all these computations iffy, and if you rely too much on inflation beating stock market returns, you won’t be able to ratchet down on risk as you get closer to your preferred early retirement date (a crash can dump you back in the workforce at a bad time). Also, many people in HCOLs don’t want to downgrade to LCOLs after they retire.

Too bad Medicare doesn’t transfer to low cost but nice southeast Asian countries.

Why do you assume a LCOL area is a downgrade. Those asian countries have still have pretty cheap private healthcare.

Many people in HCOL areas think LCOL areas are a downgrade, and…they are cheap for a reason. If it’s just lack of jobs, for a retiree that’s fine, but high crime bad weather poor infrastructure bad schools bad scenery are also possible. You don’t want to stop living in retirement, especially if you retire early.

Desirable places to retire like Santa Fe are already getting expensive.

Cheap private healthcare works for small things, but you are paying out of pocket for everything and if something big comes up you might not even be able to access the care you need. Guam might work instead, but they aren’t cheap and are pretty far away from anything.

I still don't see you mention a reason for the (rather US centric) assumption. Fact is many LCOL areas are upgrades if you don't need to work.

> Fact is many LCOL areas are upgrades if you don't need to work.

Sorry, having lived in Mississippi for 4 years, that is not really true. Or I guess it depends on what you mean by "many", because there are many bad cheap places out there (e.g. Gary Indiana, Port Gibson Mississippi, Monroe Louisiana, ...). It also depends on what you mean by upgrade: many people like big city amenities (food and cultural options) and would see moving to the sticks as depressing, just like many would see the opposite (they love the country side, hate big cities).

Internationally, LCOL areas are generally in developing countries, and even a city like Bangkok will get expensive after awhile (though big cities in the west might get more expensive faster). It is still a trade off, many can't make (and many can, good for them).