Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply that you could live well on less now, necessarily. I was just trying to illustrate that it is possible to take a salary cut and live better in many ways, or get a big raise and struggle.

Why not ask these companies if they have some information packets that they can give you? And find out if there are allowances and other perks like company cars. If the negotiations get serious, ask for names of others that have made the move and talk to them.

Is this neighborhood especially good, bad, or expensive? I think you are talking about Capetown, but I lived in little Welkom, so I don't know

It may well be more expensive to live there than where you live in the US. If you were in New York City, $400,000 for house would look pretty cheap. If you are coming from a small town in Alabama...

These sorts of things are reallly hard to figure out, because it depends in part on what is important to you. Housing in particular is hard. Someone might look at the cost to rent a house in a really upscale neighborhood and think everything is too expensive when there are perfectly nice places that are much less expensive where you don't pay for prestige.

Usually, you can't replicate the lifestyle you are leaving behind. I had a maid and a gardener and a swimming pool, but I only had heat in one room, and that was unusual. It was pretty unpleasant when it was 20F (about -5C) in the middle of the night.

There are some cost-of-living converters out there, one on this site, I believe.