What you say is that bigger cities have bigger inflation. If you live in a smaller city, earn half, but everything costs half, then, you don't have any incentive to move to a big city.

True if you save zero or negative percent of your earnings.

If you always save 10 percent of your earnings, then clearly the multiplier works in your favour.

If inflation is higher than what you can earn from a saving account, then how is it rational to "save" anything? You’ll have a bit bigger number on the account, but in the end you can actually buy less.

You can of course go with more risky placements and hope to go higher than a saving account, but then you have to spend attention on the market circus with additional worrisome mental load that you can actually lose everything.

>If inflation is higher than what you can earn from a saving account, then how is it rational to "save" anything?

general security? You don't need to (nor should you) hoard 10% of your finances for all 40+ years of your career into a low interest savings account. But you do want to keep a decent amount in case of various downturns. a high CoL city where you pay not much more for "things" can help with that.

Can also help pay for an financial advisor who will happily play with the monopoly money for you. Delegation is a great "experience" to consider when comparing costs of living.

When you buy car, fly planes, or shop at Amazon, you do not get a discount for living in a low cost of living area.

So the bigger number matters because many products are the same price ecerywhere in the world.

> but then you have to spend attention on the market circus with additional worrisome mental load that you can actually lose everything.

Not true. You can just buy a slice of the whole economy.

Then the only situation in which you lose everything is that in which your dollars would be worthless anyway.

No, just VTI and chill, it's the FIRE / Bogleheads model, and it works very well. No one who saves money for retirement should literally be doing so via a savings account. Sadly, not too many people know this then wonder why they're poor when others are rich come retirement age, not understanding the power of compounding in the market.

Where do you learn about these things? Having grown and living in France, I was never given a word about it, not even at university. We are supposed to have state managed retirement plans, but given the shady future of France, I’m starting to wonder what I should do to ensure I can either reach a retirement that also take into account being able to backup my two kids as they grow up.

Look up for Ben Felix on YouTube. Lots of free useful guidance!

Reddit. /r/personalfinance, /r/financialindependence (for Europeans, /r/eupersonalfinance and /r/EuropeFIRE) etc. Read their wikis.

2x salary, 2x costs, 2x savings. The savings are far greater if they compound in investments, and if you're remitting income to someone who lives in the lower cost of living area, it can be worth it.

100% this. Maxing out the 401k annually at the relatively low salary of 150k in NYC is easy. Doing that in St Louis at 50k livable wage is super hard. Car payments? Ditto.

2x savings does not matter if you have 2x prices.

I does matter if you plan to move to a cheaper area after a retirement. Or even if you are buying a car which costs about the same from California to Virginia - only local goods/services (and housing of course) are more expensive in high cost high salary places. Everything else if about the same within a given country.

>I does matter if you plan to move to a cheaper area after a retirement.

Likewise, you can be employed in the big city and work from home living in the small city.

The post-covid silver lining. Ask anyone who understands retail market trends and they 100% agree.

This is the bulk of the "soft landing". As usual on the shoulders of the middle class.

Schools, restaurants, and infrastructure like public transport are better in big city than small.

Also the industrial revolution happened, which massively drove down the cost of things. Nothing comparable happened for experiences. A restaurant today needs a similar amount of labor to make your meal as a tavern did 400 years ago. Their ingredient costs went down, but waiters and cooks do about the same amount of work, and property values haven't gone down. Meanwhile the amount of work to make a knife has been drastically slashed through technological progress.

environmental awareness, map of the whole world in your pocket, ebooks, 20Ah power banks, good thermal clothing,

skiing/snowboarding, surfing, slacklineing (highlineing), biking, motorcycling

cinema, 4K/HDR, IMAX, streaming, youtube, single multi tabletop gaming, VR/AR/geocaching

music, festivals

psychedelics

sex (toys, porn, acceptance)

...

ordering basically any kind of AMAZING food for ridiculously cheap in most big cities.

There was some story once that a quality handmade tailored suit costs about the same amount of gold centuries ago compared to today.

Would love to see this fact checked.

Given the volatility of gold prices, you can just pick a date when that was true.

You could, but then that would be bad analysis.

A more reasonable approach is a linear model.

True. If I had to, though, I'd bet that the article didn't do that.

Here is house to gold ratio: trend is surprisingly cyclicle

https://www.longtermtrends.net/real-estate-gold-ratio/

>Nothing comparable happened for experiences.

it kind of did. Fast food sacrificed the experience for the core consumption. Then you have chain restaurants like Denny's that exist to give the bare minimum "experience" without throwing it all away like modern drive-thrus.

Did they cut down enough to eliminate fine dining? Doesn't look like it. But I haven't done a deep dive into the ecnonomics of that. Just general wisdom that food as a business has always operated on razor thin margins.

There was fast food 2000 years ago with no real "experience". Nothing has changed in that regard.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55454717

> Fast food sacrificed the experience for the core consumption

Going to fast food restaurants is a social outing for a lot of people. McDonald's is one of the best hangout spots, really.

By 2032, that era will be over. https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/mcdonalds-will-remove-se...

I'm not 100% sure that not being able to refill your own soda will kill it, but I suppose it might.

Combine that with the loss of the dollar menu, it's dead for me. The competition is great.

The equivalent to the industrial revolution's impact on material goods pricing, in the domain of labor, did happen. It was slavery. Clearly, that did not persist.

Also explains why housing is a "thing", but not cheap at all.