Thank you for mentioning how linearly scaling income with CoL is inaccurate. This comes up a lot in /r/personalfinance and /r/financialindependence and people are always getting it wrong. This particular paragraph really rankled me:
> In Austin, the average salary for a software engineer on Hired is $110K. But this is the equivalent to making $198K in San Francisco when you consider the cost of living difference between the two cities.
Sure, I'm willing to believe that the CoL is 80% higher in San Francisco than Austin, if you take no measures to control expenses. But for the reasons you point out, by no means does that mean that your salary is effectively 80% higher in Austin. The only way this calculation makes sense is if you are spending 100% of your income, and only on goods that are more expensive in the higher CoL area! Rent would count for that, but electronics sure don't. Most of the physical things that you buy, and of course any vacations you take, don't get more expensive at all in a higher CoL city. Hell, the vacations likely are less expensive in a high CoL city, because you're near a big international airport with lots of outbound flights.
> In Austin, the average salary for a software engineer on Hired is $110K. But this is the equivalent to making $198K in San Francisco when you consider the cost of living difference between the two cities.
Sure, I'm willing to believe that the CoL is 80% higher in San Francisco than Austin, if you take no measures to control expenses. But for the reasons you point out, by no means does that mean that your salary is effectively 80% higher in Austin. The only way this calculation makes sense is if you are spending 100% of your income, and only on goods that are more expensive in the higher CoL area! Rent would count for that, but electronics sure don't. Most of the physical things that you buy, and of course any vacations you take, don't get more expensive at all in a higher CoL city. Hell, the vacations likely are less expensive in a high CoL city, because you're near a big international airport with lots of outbound flights.