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Numbeo lets one compare the cost of living between different cities. However, it makes a number of assumptions that appear to be inflexible. For example, my average spending pattern may differ considerably from the typical one. Also, in a huge city, 5 km from the core might still be considered city centre, but in a small city this would be considered to be outside. All in all, the figure "If you get X in city A, you need Y in city B" is likely inaccurate for me.

Is there any cost of living calculator that lets me assign weights to different categories? As I get around by bicycle, I can assign 0 weight to car and public transportation costs. Perhaps I spend less on restaurants, but more on internet. Et cetera.

gerrit
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I am not aware of an automated solution, but Numbeo seems to give you all the information you need. There current weighting is available at: http://www.numbeo.com/common/motivation_and_methodology.jsp. With a little bit of cutting and pasting or some creative web scraping, you should be able to calculate the cost of living using whatever weights you want. The link also says:

If you need more information about the calculations, please Contact Us.

so it might be worth asking them.

StrongBad
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  • So your answer is basically it doesn't exist, but one could use Numbeos data to build one. That is of course true, but I still hope to find something that someone has built before. – gerrit Mar 06 '15 at 18:50
  • @gerrit that is a reasonable description of my answer. It is not so useful if you want to compare a large number of cities, but if you just want to compare two for budgeting/negotiating purposes, it might work. – StrongBad Mar 07 '15 at 10:33