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Comment by stanford_labrat | Hacker News Reader

I’m going to assume you live near the coast, probably in the Bay Area or NYC or Seattle?

I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized the American Dream has changed. The coastal cities are no longer available even for relatively middle class families, you’ll have to move inland if you want land and property consistently and for relatively cheap.

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Yep - was barely scraping by it felt like, while in a coastal city. After we had kids, it was way worse. We moved inland, bought a house, and can afford an in-home nanny. It feels closer to what the cumulative household income we have is supposed to feel like.

I think it was always supposed to be "work hard, adapt, and you'll have a good life." This is out of reach for many, certainly, but it's not so far out of reach that a BLS.gov average tech salary can't live comfortably.

I'm always reminded of my sister in law who, with her husband, has a 5 bedroom house, two kids, brand new cars, hunting land, and a family lake cabin ... off a teacher and electrician salary. Her father has even more and sold cattle feed. The secret sauce was location. They live in southern Minnesota and never bothered to chase the coastal dream.

People tend to underestimate the cost of living in a high demand place.

You could make top 10% incomes globally, but if you are living in a top 1% location then you are being priced out by the 9% of the population making more than you.

If you want to live with a certain lifestyle of cars/vacations/personal services etc then you can’t be spending up on the other parts of your budget like housing location.

Yeah, there's a telling degree of overlap between the "The American Dream is dead crowd" and the "I refuse to live anywhere but an expensive coastal city" crowd. Not to say that the latter can't be caused by the former, but it indicates a frustration with a particular experience that isn't really fully representative of what the "American Dream" is supposed to offer. Notably, for all of their complaining the actual emigration rate of this population seems to be very low.

While not unique, the Bay Area is also something of an outlier in that it's hard to drive out of extremely high housing prices from not only SF but the South Bay generally.

I live 60-90 minutes outside of the Boston metro and, while were I am isn't many areas of the Midwest cheap, it's pretty affordable. Except for one short stint, I've never had to commute into the city, so living in the city would be a lifestyle choice which has historically not been one that a lot of middle class families made--even when a lot of urban CoL was lower.

The coast is only a correlation. There is a direct tradeoff between economic opportunity and cost of living. I live in an East Coast city with a crap local job market and a 2 hour rush hour commute to the high-wage regional economic center. Living here is pretty cheap. Living in Chicago isn't. If you are professionally and financially established enough to pick and choose remote work or have a pied-à-terre, then sure, moving to a less expensive area is a great move. If you're working in a structured trade that will yield work most anywhere, that works too. Beyond that, it just doesn't work. Cost of living is so much higher now than it was 20 years ago that is just not feasible for most young people to build up enough money to break away from professional hubs. Most people's wages are not double what they were 10 years ago, but getting a room in a shared apartment is way more than double, as is health care, and other major expenses— not to mention student loans. The difficulty that imposes when accumulating capital for down-payment is not linear. Hovering around the break-even line is stressful, but falling below it pulls you under fast, like an undertow. A few overdrafts leading to a missed credit card payment plus a broken car or illness can fuck you over for a few years if you're treading water.

>you’ll have to move inland if you want land and property consistently and for relatively cheap.

Except that I live inland and apart from people coming from the coasts, it's gotten too expensive for "local" people. That $500K house is cheap if you've made your money elsewhere (or work remotely), but for anyone working in the limited local industry, it's out of reach.

Also hard to attract doctors / lawyers / professors / other white collar professionals who aren't on the brink of retirement age because they realize that while the cost of living is better here, they are giving up career opportunities and money not being in coastal cities.

Yes, okay, I am on board with leaving the big city for lower cost of living. Where are the tech sector jobs outside of coastal cities? You might find some in Austin or Arizona, but those places are already two feet in the door for a cost of living crisis.

They are all over the country.

No, they don't pay as much as the Bay Area. You wouldn't expect them to.

That's fine but two factors stand out: how secure is my employment opportunity and what is the wage compared to the cost of living? In both cases the rural option is worse than in cities and it also comes with the drawback of being far away from humanity.

That’s fine but understand the choice.

A lot of the housing complaints read like people saying, “my grandmother bought shares in MSFT for $0.12 and now I have to pay $330!”

Of course desirable, developed areas with high paying jobs are expensive. It’s not a fairness thing it’s a false comparison.

These are all major US metros where you will easily make > $100k as a software engineer ($125k median), while you'll find many Single Family Home options for $300k - $400k. That kind of home price / income ratio with low tax rate for that housing space is practically unheard of in the world (in the good way).

Chicago: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

Atlanta: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/atlanta...

Pittsburgh: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/pittsbu...

Raleigh-Durham: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/raleigh...

Boise: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/boise-a...

Nashville: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/nashvil...

Dallas: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

Minneapolis: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/minneap...

I'm reasonably wealthy and live in a single family home on the coast. (Well 1 mile from the coast.) So this is not about me. But the truth is, I probably couldn't live anywhere else (beyond living a couple hours away and having a horrendous commute) because:

1) My job is here and they won't let me work remotely. While I don't need this specific job, I've lived in cheaper areas and the jobs available were few and far between. You can find them, it's just a huge pain in the ass and they don't treat their employees nearly as well. I've even worked for myself, but it's a lot more work and not everyone is cut out for it. I threw in the towel after 5 years because it was burning me out so much.

2) My spouse has medical issues that even the best doctors in the big cities are having trouble treating. There's no way they'd be able to treat her in the sticks. You just can't get the types of services needed for some things in lower-cost-of-living areas.

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