First, our income increased drastically as a result of the move After training, I considered multiple job opportunities and narrowed down to one in NYC and one in Buffalo. Most aspects of these dream job opportunities were very similar — academic practices associated with medical schools with a high focus on reconstructive surgery.
Second, I can't directly compare the proportion of money invested in these two time periods since I hadas a trainee. I spent up to my paycheck and didn't invest. So even if I only invested $1 this year, the increase would be infinity. But this isn't a fair comparison — we save approximately $300 per month in this calculation, but it wouldn't have been sustainable to stay in the same apartment over time. Our kids each got the bedrooms and my wife and I slept on an air mattress.
The rest of our average $6,100 monthly expenditures are laid out here. We already know that the cost-of-living index in NYC is almost 30% higher than in Buffalo. Therefore, we would expect our monthly expenditures on items like groceries, eating out, clothing, entertainment, insurance, taxes, and other monthly expenses to be around $3,500 higher if we were in NYC .