I found this on CNNMoney - you plug in your salary and where you are living and then you plug in the town or area your want to compare to. It gives you what you would need to earn to make the equivalent of what you are earning in your present town/city. When we compared Boston to Jacksonville...I almost fainted!!! DH could make $20,000 less and we'd supposedly be able to live as comfortably as here. Mind the fact that we could pretty much pay cash for a home in FL or at the very least carry a small mortgage. Housing is half of what it is here and health care is I think almost 40% less expensive (I'll have to recheck that). Now that is interesting. If you have a major health insurer HMO type in the FL area like Jacksonville...do you know approximately how much your monthly insurance cost is...even if your employer pays it. For example our Blue Cross HMO health insurance was $850 a month.
Sorry don't know how to make this a clickable link, if anyone else does, feel free:
http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html?step=form
aahhhhh duhhhh on edit, realized it linked itself!!
Here's another one and you can get more info including crime rates, school systems etc.
http://www.homefair.com/homefair/calc/salcalc.html (//%22http://www.homefair.com/homefair/calc/salcalc.html%22)
that's a great site. The crime rate part will scare the pants off you if you come from somewhere with a relatively low crime rate!!!