Ozan

Which is the arithmetic behind the last line. Twelve moves means twelve arrival costs, and that alone is a rent.

The last line is the whole post and I think it deserves to be stated even more strongly.

I spent a year at roughly one city per month and a year at roughly one city per four months, on the same work and the same income. The second year cost meaningfully less and I could not point at a single thing I gave up.

The reason is boring: in month three you know which supermarket, you have a barber, you cook, you have friends who suggest the cheap place instead of the nice place, and you have stopped paying the tax on not knowing anything. None of that exists in a four-week stay, ever, by construction.

So if the number is tight, the lever is not finding a cheaper city. It is staying long enough to stop being a tourist in the one you are already in.