Community & friends
The criterion expats consistently underweight before moving and overweight after. Score the effort of rebuilding it, not the fantasy of instantly having it.
Decision guide
Deciding where to live
You can visit a city. You can't visit your life in it.
Choosing where to move? Weight cost of living, career, community, climate, and daily rhythm in a decision matrix — and see exactly what would have to change for the other city to win.
The decision, weighed
A typical where should i move? matrix, scored and totaled. The line under it is the part nobody does by hand: the exact weight change that would flip the winner.
CriterionWeightStay hereExciting citySensible city
Cost of living8648
Career opportunities7696
Community & friends7856
Climate & environment5576
Daily rhythm & commute6748
Long-term fit6686
Weighted total64%61%67%
Sensible city wins at 67%. Lower Cost of living by 7 points and Exciting city wins instead.
The weights worth arguing about
Career opportunities
Weight this for the career you'll plausibly have in five years, not the one city brochures sell. Remote work changed this criterion's meaning — score it for your industry.
Daily rhythm & commute
The hundred small frictions of a place beat the ten big ones. A 40-minute commute is a criterion wearing a disguise.
How to actually decide
Score weekdays, not weekends
People fall in love with cities on vacation — restaurant density, skyline, buzz. You'll spend most of your life in the Tuesday version: grocery runs, commutes, where your friends actually live. Score the Tuesday.
Treat 'stay' as a real option
Moving decisions quietly assume the move. Include 'stay here' as a scored option with its own honest numbers. If staying wins the matrix, the question changes from 'where?' to 'why am I restless?' — a cheaper problem to solve.
Weight for the person you're becoming
A city is a five-to-ten-year commitment wearing a one-year lease. Weight 'long-term fit' — partners, kids, aging parents, industry shifts — higher than feels natural. Your future self is the biggest stakeholder without a vote.
Questions people actually ask
How do I score a city I've never lived in?
From data where possible (rent ratios, salaries, commute times) and from structured visits where not: spend a normal week, not a tourist weekend, and write scores down on the flight home. The matrix forgives imperfect scores; it doesn't forgive unstated assumptions.
What weight should cost of living get?
Convert it to what it buys: hours of your life. If the expensive city costs you 10 extra working hours a week, that's not a money criterion anymore — it's a time criterion, and should be weighted like one.
Should my partner's criteria go in the same matrix?
Keep one matrix, but build it together — argue about the weights, not the relationship. Flipweight panels let each person weight the criteria blind, so you can see where you actually disagree instead of guessing.