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The other life hack people do is to move to SF or NYC out of college, try to "make it", live like a grad student, bank a large savings cushion, and then retire to a cheaper place with a high quality of life when they want to have a family.

I have a few friends at Google who, after working there for close to 10 years, now are thinking about retiring to Portland, or Vermont, or North Carolina. The idea has certainly crossed my mind, that if I wanted to live in a rural area I could buy a house free & clear and be set for the rest of my life. I met an innkeeper in Alaska once that had worked in tech for 20 years, lived like a grad student, and when his kid was a teenager, bought a sailboat, sailed around the world, and came to settle in Seward, Alaska because they'd fallen in love with the town. I've heard it's pretty common in investment banking to have "your number", work for ~10 years until you hit it, and then retire to Fiji.

This is pretty much what I'm doing right now. When I moved to Seattle for a new development job I found roommates on Craigslist instead of paying about twice as much to rent a 1 BR. I'm now saving way more money than I otherwise would have, and I don't fall into the high spending trap because the people I spend most of my time with have more reasonable incomes that encourage frugality.

I don't have a target net worth or age for when I'll call it quits but the way I see it, I'm buying flexibility for the future without sacrificing any happiness today.

Three hours, seriously? That is no longer within the metro area of NY, not even close. If you're talking about suburban commuting, houses upstate in Westchester are still $1 million with a fat 3% property tax bill. The trains suck and have a history of safety issues and you have to spend 2 hours a day on one. No thanks.

Don't try to settle in the NY metro w/ a family unless you are in finance, your quality of life will suck. If you aren't living in the city there's no point to being here, I would much rather be somewhere like Utah, California, Wash state.

I live and work in Albany. I drive 5 minutes to work.

My family gets to hop on the Amtrak and enjoy the cultural advantages of NYC about once a month. We drive to places like the Bronx Zoo and Boston for various things.

When I was a kid in Queens, getting to Manhattan via transit easily took 2 hours. My son gets all of the benefits of not living in NYC, and many of the advantages.

There are basically five jobs in all of Albany outside of state government. Yes, many of us would love to live in quaint smaller/medium towns within sight of a major global city but there tends not to be much career opportunity there

It's within range to work remotely and come in a couple days every couple weeks, while living in a lovely village in the mountains, and to take relatively easy weekend trips to the city, while paying Midwest-level real estate prices on lovely old houses.

Not everyone's choice of lifestyle, but it's certainly a nice one.

Yea, NYC has a HUGE advantage because of the train system going into and out of the city. You can easily commute south to Jersey or north to Connecticut. Each stop going away from NYC drops ~$20K on comparable houses (with a few exceptions like Greenwich). I've heard in the bay area the train system is terrible.

> Three hours north of NYC, a house costs 60-80% less, and you have the essentially the same access to NYC cool stuff without the hassle of NYC.

You really don't need to go that far. In fact, you shouldn't. You'll hit Lake George and the prices will start to go back up.

An hour or two out and you'll be closer and the houses are just as cheap. You can also go West into NJ and you'll experience the same price drop.

The problem is that you'll be 30 min away driving from a decent grocery store. In fact, you'll be 30 min away driving from pretty much everything.