How to use Uprootmap before you move

The metro checklist is how you shrink 387 cities to four when you do not yet have an offer. How much leftover do you need is the recoup arithmetic once you already know leftover. This page is the week-by-week order I would actually run if a transfer, a remote-stay-put decision, or a signed offer landed on a Tuesday: take the paycheck seriously, run leftover at the destination, decide whether the gap funds the move, then go stand in the city.

It is not a packing list. It is not tax advice. It will not tell you whether to take the job. Leftover is a model; the disclaimer is explicit. The point is to stop people from flying to a metro that was only cheap on a cost-of-living tweet.

Before you touch the form, write the number that hits the bank. Offer letter, current remote salary you can keep, or a local range a recruiter will defend. If the offer is a band, run the bottom of the band. Leftover that only works at the top of a range is not leftover you have.

Then decide the switch the model cannot infer:

• Remote. You keep this salary in every metro. Use this when the employer will not re-level you for Tulsa. The remote leftover metros guide is the worked ranking at $80k / $120k / $160k if you want a preview of how flat pay behaves.
• Local. The occupation's wage in that metro. Use this when the job is in a hospital, a school district, a courthouse, or any employer that pays the local market. A remote ranking of those jobs is fiction.

If you do not know yet, run both and keep both printouts. The decision is which paycheck exists, not which leftover is prettier.

On the homepage, set adults, kids, kids under five, and bedrooms to the unit you would sign — not the unit you have now, and not the unit you could theoretically squeeze into for a month. Childcare in the model is full-time for each child under five. If a parent is staying home, set under-five to zero or leftover will look worse than your real month.

Leave the fit sliders on money for this pass. Weather and city-life are useful after leftover is in the black. Mixing them first is how a sunny metro with thin leftover becomes a favourite for no reason the bills will respect.

Set “where you live now” to the origin you are leaving. That is what leftover-versus- base on a city page is measured against, and it is what a from-to page uses as the left-hand column.

Open the destination city. The headline is leftover after tax and rent for the household you just set. How to read a city page is the longer tour. For a move decision you need four lines:

• Leftover — positive, thin, or red.
• The tax line — state income tax, city wage tax if it exists.
• Asking rent at your bedroom count.
• Leftover versus your current city, as a monthly dollar.

If leftover is red, the city is off the list unless the household changes (more pay, fewer bedrooms, remote instead of local, a partner's income). Do not negotiate with a cost-of-living article that says the city is “only 6% more expensive.” That percentage is not this paycheck. The COL percent vs leftover examples are the pairs where that sentence fails.

If you have two destinations, open the compare so both tax codes run on the same household — Chicago vs Austin is the shape, not a special case. Do not average leftover across cities. You will live in one.

Leftover is monthly. The move is not. Truck or crew, deposits, the first month of overlapping rent, a flight to look at listings — that is a pile of cash. How much leftover do you need before you move is the working rule: destination leftover in the black, a gap large enough that a conservative moving range is recouped in a few months, and a first month you can fund without pretending leftover starts on day one.

The from-to page for your pair shows a typical moving-cost range. Treat it as a range, then get a real quote. If leftover versus origin is $80 a month and the truck is $6,000, leftover is not the reason to go. If leftover versus origin is $800 a month, the truck is a quarter, not a personality test.

Same-state moves are where people skip this step. They assume leftover is a wash because the tax code matches. Sometimes it is not — same state, worse leftover is the pattern, and Las Vegas → Reno is the corridor people already search. Run the pair anyway.

Once leftover is in the black and the gap funds the move, go stand in the city. The visit is not for leftover. Leftover already did its job. The visit is for the things the model will not pretend to score: the block you would actually rent, the commute you would actually drive, whether the one-bedroom you used in the form exists at that asking rent in a place you would sleep.

Take the leftover number with you as a ceiling, not a target. If listings at your bedroom count are $400 above the modelled asking rent, leftover just got $400 worse. That is information. Re-run the city page with a custom rent in your own spreadsheet if you have to; the site models metro asking rent, not a specific building. The methodology says so.

Walk one neighbourhood the leftover page would call typical and one you actually want. If the one you want is a different county, check whether the city page has a county table. Metro leftover is an average. The county you would rent in may not be.

After the visit you should have one destination, or a clean no. The failure mode is coming home and sliding every input until a new city wins. That is the slot machine the metro checklist warns about. Change one thing only if the visit taught you something real: you need two bedrooms, the job is local after all, a partner will not have income for a year.

If leftover still works, the rest of the work is off this site: a lease or a mortgage conversation, a tax person if the pair is close, schools and licensing if those apply. If a figure on the city page looked wrong while you were there, email hello@uprootmap.com with a source. Corrections with a Zillow series or a state tax PDF get fixed fastest.

Do not request a second leftover religion from a COL index “just to confirm.” If you catch yourself doing that, the leftover vs index guide is the argument, and the worked examples are on why a cheaper COL score can still lose leftover.

1. Write the real paycheck. Remote or local — both, if you do not know.
2. Set the post-move household on the homepage. Honest bedrooms.
3. Open the destination city page. Leftover, tax, rent, leftover versus home.
4. If two cities: a compare, not an average.
5. Recoup test: gap versus the truck.
6. Visit. Check listings against the modelled rent. Then stop re-ranking.

That is the editorial use of the tool. Everything else is tourism.