http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html

I posted this on the Denver thread, but for the rest of you out of staters: Is this pretty accurate for where you live vs. Texas? I know we have it made in Texas as far as cost of living, but is, say, 50,000 in Denver equal to around 43,000 in Houston? There are plenty of other examples with even bigger discrepancies...

i just plugged some numbers in, and the figures they show, i would guess are relatively true. what it misses on is being back in texas, we'd probably travel alot more (on a weekly/monthly basis) than we do living 1200 miles from family.

Wow ... if I moved back to Dallas from Portland my housing costs would go down 48%

Well, on the most part, Texas is easier on the pocket book than most states. Here in the SF Bay Area, I'm paying 10% of my income on state taxes. In addition, a two bedroom apartment here goes for 2k a month. So, you can guess on how much more expensive it can be in other parts of the country.

Should you expect a higher salary in states with an extremely high cost of living, such as Cali? In other words...If you get an offer to make 50,000 in Texas, should you expect to automatically make say 60-65K for the exact same job in Cali? Sorry if thats a stupid question, ha, but I can honestly say we've never had a class, even in the business school, that really talked about this.

Depending on where in CA, I would think you could expect a decent amount more than that.

Depends on the industry, but there are some (including accounting) that pay higher in Dallas and Houston (as a general rule) than other higher cost of living places.

From what I've seen, the increase in pay isn't close to offsetting the higher cost of living.

Honestly, if you aren't making at least 95k in the SF Bay Area or in Los Angeles, it is very hard to have the same standards of living as you would back in Texas. Two things drive up the cost of living out here in the Bay Area, housing and fuel. Right now, we're paying 4.20 per gallon and an one bedroom apartment is going for 1600 per month. I have a decent two bedroom and it is costing me 2000 a month.

I think someone else brought this up but what I find makes a huge difference is paying to travel back to see family. Airline tickets all seemed to go up recently which makes family obligations like Christmas and weddings a bit more painful on the wallet.

^
VERY good point. Our tickets doubled in 2007 compared to 2006 and earlier.