I am Lin Hai, a financial analyst with 25 years in corporate financial management. I gather publicly available cost data from Numbeo, Wise, government utility tariffs, and transit authority fares, and build original analytical frameworks to explain what those numbers mean for daily life. This is not a price table: every guide traces costs back to their causes, a city's history, infrastructure, and economy. So you can decide whether a move actually makes financial sense.
Independent cost-of-living research — analyzed, not aggregated
An aggregator gives you a city's cost as one tidy index. It can't tell you whose income that number sits next to, what the low price quietly costs, or what your Tuesday would actually look like. We build original frameworks — not tables — to close that gap.
One of the cheapest cities we've measured to live in. Also the one where rent eats 49% of the local wage — the hardest to actually afford. Cheap is not the same as affordable.
Start here: the five kinds of "cheap" in this project →The four questions behind every guide
Insights · Match
Personalized City Recommendation Engine
Answer a few questions about your budget, climate preference, and career goals. Our algorithm weighs cost-of-living data against local wages, infrastructure, and lifestyle factors to return a shortlist of cities where your salary actually works.
Find your city →Insights · Browse
Multi-Dimensional City Comparison Tool
Filter cities by cost, opportunity, culture, climate, and history. See which destinations overlap across your priorities. A research tool for remote workers, expats, and relocators who need data-driven shortlists.
Browse by category →Relocation Cost Calculator
Before-And-After Salary Comparison by City
Enter your current city, target city, and take-home pay. Calculate your monthly gain or loss, break-even timeline, and hidden costs of moving. Built on verified government and market data, so you can decide if the move actually pays off.
Open the calculator →Reading frameworks
Most cost-of-living sites aggregate prices and stop there. These two frameworks explain what those prices actually mean — and what they hide. Read them before you pick a city.
The same low rent-to-income number means five completely different things depending on the city. A framework for telling them apart — stagnation, choice, exodus, health, and design.
Read the framework → Cost FrameworkThe quiet monthly drains — visa renewals, property fees, climate-driven spending, language-gap markups — that never appear on Numbeo-style tables but completely reshape real affordability.
Read the framework →Research highlights
The one Chinese city that isn't cheap for anyone — where a single index number hides a dozen different lives.
Read the deep-dive → City · ChinaA porcelain town that keeps rent low on purpose. Here cheapness isn't decay — it's infrastructure, pulling makers in.
Read the deep-dive → Compare · China × USATwo frozen cities, one paradox: the more expensive one is where people actually have room to breathe.
Read the comparison → Compare · China × USAOne city is generous at the entrance and expensive at the exit. The other is expensive from the very first day.
Read the comparison → Study · ChinaA rule-based gate, in a city that rations almost everything else the same way — what it actually takes to get in.
Read the guide → Study · ChinaWritten by someone who actually has a degree from it — the one guide in this series researched from the inside.
Read the guide →Want the whole picture instead of six examples? Read the full China cost of living guide →
Three ways in
One deep-dive per city — the numbers, the history behind the price, and what an ordinary week there actually costs.
Browse all cities → Section · CompareChina's cities set side by side with their structural twins abroad — same shape, different rules for who gets to stay.
Browse all comparisons → Section · StudyOne flagship school per city, cross-checked against its own admissions materials — what it costs to actually get in.
Browse all universities →The story behind the story
Every city guide leans on the same infrastructure to actually work day to day — how you rent, how you pay, how you move, how you get online. That's not a fourth content pillar sitting next to Cities, Compare, and Universities. It's the machinery underneath all three, documented once in the full systems index so every city guide can point back to it instead of re-explaining it each time.
What we're working on
The roadmap
18 city guides published and ready to read. Each is a full cost-of-living deep-dive with original analysis, not a data table. Click any solid dot to read. Have a city in mind that we haven't covered? Suggest it — we queue the next research based on reader demand.
Current votes — open candidates
Before you go
One short email when a new guide goes live — the real numbers, and the life behind them. Written by someone who lives in China and does the math in yuan.
No spam. One click to unsubscribe.
How to read these numbers
From public data to the life behind it.
Every figure is analyzed, not aggregated. Data comes from public databases and official sources — Numbeo, Wise, government utility tariffs, transit authority fares — then traced back to its causes: a city's history, infrastructure, and economy. We do not republish price tables. The systems section documents the infrastructure that makes the numbers work in practice.
Every guide tells you whether I am writing from lived experience, repeated visits, or research alone — perspective is stated, never faked. The frameworks — Five Kinds of Cheap and Hidden Recurring Costs — are analytical tools for reading public data, not borrowed categories.
Our stance on AI: While AI tools may occasionally assist with routine technical tasks like grammar refinement or data formatting, they do not generate our insights. Every analysis, cost comparison, and narrative is written by a human author. AI handles the mechanics; the judgment and final conclusions are entirely human. More about the method →