Which major world city has the best cost of living to earnings ratio?

London where I live has pretty good salaries, but the astronomic cost of living makes the quality of life pretty low unless you're on serious £££. I imagine it's the same in places like New York and Paris.

At the other end of the scale, places like Belgrade or Buenos Aires are cheap, but the low salaries also make life a struggle for the majority.

So where's got the best balance?

How about Berlin? Melbourne? Chicago? Toronto? Dubai? Hong Kong?

Let's hear it from people who actually live in these places...

On this page you can compare cost of living and salaries between different cities: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp

Thanks Olabil

Just had quite and interesting half hour playing around on this tool!

What's interesting is that while London compares very badly against other cities in Northern Europe, North America, Australia and Japan for affordability when local salaries are taken into account... (eg, wages in Toronto are slightly higher than in London, but cost of living much lower on almost any measure, meaning Toronto is 32% more affordable than London. Berlin was 25% more affordable, and New York 16%.)

However we compare pretty well with most of southern Europe and Latin America - where salaries are generally much lower.

Some other surprising findings:

- Sydney is more expensive than either London, Paris or New York - and seems to be the most expensive city on earth! Is this true? When my mates were all travelling to Aus back in the early 2000s talk was of how cheap everything was...

- Moscow and Tokyo are not nearly as expensive as they're reputed to be, and compare quite favourably with London

- I couldn't find ANYWHERE on earth with more expensive rents than London at €1,413pcm for a one bedroom flat. Even Oslo didn't come close!

- In answer to my own question, the most affordable city I could find was Dallas, Texas - which was a whopping 40% more affordable than London on a local salary!

It would be interesting to see what others find!