I turned my finance-tool collection into a relocation decision product — then used its API to rank 8 countries
I recently changed the positioning of Obolus.
It started as a collection of tax, salary, budget and investment tools. Each tool worked, but the product did not answer one clear user question.
The new focus is:
Does your job offer abroad actually make financial sense?
The product now connects salary, taxes, housing, healthcare, living costs, budget and savings potential into one relocation flow.
To test whether this positioning could also produce useful content, I built a new data-led article:
“Best Countries for Expats in 2026 — Ranked by What You Actually Keep”
Instead of creating another lifestyle ranking, I used the Obolus API and existing cost benchmarks to compare the eight countries currently supported by the platform:
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada and Australia.
The primary scenario starts with the same €80,000 gross salary in every country.
For each country, the model calculates:
gross salary
→ net income
→ housing
→ external healthcare where applicable
→ essential living costs
→ estimated monthly amount remaining
I deliberately avoided creating an arbitrary composite “expat score”.
The main ranking metric is simply the estimated amount left each month.
The article also includes a second view based on local median salaries. That changes the question from:
“Where does the same international salary go furthest?”
to:
“Where does a typical local salary have the strongest relationship to local costs?”
Those two views can produce very different results.
The interesting product lesson for me is that content becomes much more defensible when it is generated from the same calculations as the product.
The article is not just written around keywords. It demonstrates the actual workflow and lets readers replace the benchmark scenario with their own job offer.
There are still important limitations:
- national rent benchmarks do not represent cities such as London, Dublin, Zurich, Sydney or Toronto;
- tax residency and visa eligibility are separate questions;
- household size can change the result significantly;
- employer benefits and relocation packages are not fully represented.
The next logical versions could therefore be:
1. national benchmark vs major-city rent;
2. single person vs family;
3. rankings for specific professions and salary levels;
4. the salary required for a move to break even.
Here is the article:
I would especially appreciate feedback on two questions:
Does the distinction between “same salary” and “local median salary” make sense immediately?
And would you trust a transparent monthly-remainder ranking more than a weighted score?
