How much leftover do you need before you move?

The leftover headline on a city page or a move page is a monthly figure: take-home minus asking rent at your bedroom count minus the rest of a household your size. The move itself is not monthly. It is a weekend of cash — truck or crew, deposits, the first month of overlap, maybe a flight to look at listings.

People collapse those into one feeling (“Reno is cheaper”) and then wonder why the first quarter after the move felt tight. The leftover vs COL index guide is why a percentage is the wrong score. This page is the arithmetic after you already have leftover in dollars.

Before you treat a destination as viable, check three things on the same household:

1. Leftover is positive on the destination. If the model is in the red after tax and rent, the city is off the list unless you change the household — more pay, fewer bedrooms, remote instead of local, a partner's income. Negative leftover is not a vibe. It is the bills this page prices exceeding the paycheck.
2. The leftover gap recoups the typical move cost inside a year. Open the from-to page for the pair. It shows a truck / container / full-service range. Divide the midpoint by the monthly leftover gain. If you are moving to a city that leaves you less leftover, that ratio is infinite: you never recoup on money alone.
3. You can fund the first 60 days without the new leftover. Deposit plus first month, plus the old lease if it overlaps, plus the mover bill. Leftover next June does not pay the crew next Saturday.

That is a filter, not advice. A family move, a visa, a school year, or a house you cannot sell will beat leftover. The metro checklist is the order to run the calculator once those hard filters are written down off this site.

On the site's default household — one adult, one bedroom, local pay for a registered nurse — leftover is about $2,364 a month in San Francisco and about $3,181 in Austin. That is $817 more a month, or about $9,800 a year. IRS county-to-county returns for 2022–2023 show 1,436 households already made that move.

The modelled one-bedroom move is about 1,800 road miles. Typical ranges on the San Francisco → Austin move page run roughly $1,700–$3,200 to rent a truck and $4,000–$7,400 for a full-service crew — ranges, not quotes. Even the high end of the crew is less than a year of the leftover gain. The side-by-side is the line-by-line version: California income tax disappears, Texas does not levy a wage tax, and asking rent drops.

That is the easy case. The longer write-up is San Francisco to Austin leftover. Flip the same household to a remote software salary and the gap moves again — Austin leftover jumps because you kept Bay Area pay. Flip it to local teacher pay and the raise (or cut) is the local wage, not the tax code. Run the household you actually have.

Same state. No income tax in either metro. One-bedroom asking rent is in the same band. On that default nurse paycheck, leftover is about $2,559 in Las Vegas and $2,296 in Reno — $263 less a month after tax and rent. The truck is cheap (about 450 miles; $650–$1,200 DIY on the model). The monthly number is the problem.

People still search “Las Vegas to Reno,” and 1,064 IRS households made that move in 2022–2023. Leftover is not why. Tahoe, smoke, the Strip, a job that only exists at one end — those are off-model. The point of the Las Vegas → Reno page is that a same-state move is not automatically a raise. The longer version is Las Vegas to Reno leftover.

If leftover shrinks, the recoup test fails on money. You can still move. You should not tell yourself the COL index said Reno was cheaper and leave it there.

Debt, tuition, travel, the savings rate you promised yourself, and the furniture you will buy when you get there are not in the model. Neither is homeowners insurance in Florida or a second car you will need because the destination is not walkable. The methodology lists every rate. If a line is not on that page, leftover is not pricing it.

That is why “how much leftover do I need?” does not have one number for every household. A single adult who already has an emergency fund can live on a thinner leftover than a household that will also be paying down a car and keeping a parent on a flight. Use leftover to throw cities out. Use a spreadsheet for the last two.

1. Set the household on the homepage — job or salary, adults, kids, bedrooms, remote vs local, where you live now.
2. Open rankings and keep four metros that are in the black.
3. For each survivor, open the city page and the from-to page from your current metro. Read leftover, then the mover ranges, then the IRS count if it exists.
4. If two cities are close, use a compare such as Chicago vs Austin so both tax codes run on the same inputs.

Then look at real listings. Leftover is a filter. A lease is a contract.