Estimating cost of living in new location

I kind of build my own spreadsheet for places I'm planning on going with estimates from Numbeo and:

Price of Travel

The Earth Awaits

Love the hat!

Having lived abroad for 10 years, and thinking about the same notion; my plan is to take a year or two to visit several potential places and see which I really like. In the end, you want a place you can feel like you fit in, not feel like an outsider, and it may take longer than a 3 day tour to figure that out. Not sure why it has to be so definitive if your not tied to working locally, try a place out for a month and then decide. However you calculate the cost of living, it won't exactly translate to you and your habits and in two years the economics can change drastically in many of these lower cost areas of the world.

I empathize with this. I am extremely lucky to be retiring back to a country I already lived in before. That said, inflation has changed a lot of things there. Also housing in a lot of locations has skyrocketed. Fortunately I have friends on the ground to help. But I would only say don't set up too much of a safety margin for unknowns and let that stop you. It's like the "one more year" trap or the "4% isn't safe, I'll do 3%" thinking. I'm pretty confident if I go back to the country I'm moving too and I've underestimated, I'll find other things to cut back on or there are services that will have gotten cheaper to balance it out. I'd rather have another year of living there and eat out less than to wait too long and realize I lost days of my life I could have enjoyed there.

The expatfire community on reddit can be a good resource as well.

If you're looking at overseas locations, I'd probably join some expat Facebook groups and ask there or see if it's already been addressed. There can sometimes be quirks to cost of living that aren't easily addressed by calculators. For instance, in Japan, foreigners can be charged higher rent because they are considered higher risk.