I'm often curious why more people aren’t moving to low cost of living areas. I don’t know if I’ve just been fortunate, but I’m a college drop out who honestly hasn’t tried very hard in my “career”, but I moved out to Cincinnati which has a low cost of living at 23 (8 hours from my family) and I’ve managed to do very well for myself with a modest paying job (20ish an hour). I have 40k saved up and plan to buy a house this year. I wonder if other people who have went or started on a similar route are doing well for themselves.
And if you are in a high cost of living area, would you ever consider moving somewhere significantly cheaper?
financially, great.
mentally, I am not well
physically, also no
spiritually? no.
As someone who was suicidal for about 4 years but has come out the other side very well, I feel you friend. Honestly, if you ever wanna chat or vent hit me up.
I’m often curious why more people aren’t moving to low cost of living areas.
Low COL areas typically have lower wages and they tend to not have all the pros of the larger city either. With WFH becoming more and more popular this is changing, unfortunately due to the detriment of those previously living in the LCOL areas who are now competing with 100k salary management yuppies.
This is basically me atm
My small town has one overpriced and poor quality grocery store, can't buy fresh produce there because it's usually spoiled already and everything that's not chips is far pricier than driving the 20+ minutes to Wal-Mart
When it comes to other amenities, we have two gas stations, four liquor stores, two dispensaries and five pizza places
It's a little fuckin crazy that I have to drive ten or more miles to get a goddamned tomato
This shit sucks, worst part of where I live. We got a Dollar General, which does have food, but it doesn't have produce. I guess the tradeoff being that I have ample space to grow produce, I have fruit trees, whatever. But still, it sucks.
Like the grocery store is 1-2 dollars more expensive on like every item.
"low CoL areas" seems like a rugpull these days...
People don't move for lots of reasons. Maybe they can't afford it (moving is expensive), or they don't want to lose friends and family, they don't have job to go to, etc, etc...
Add legal protections to that list too. Ohio's cheap and all, but if you're sitting in the crosshairs of the state, then maybe you prefer to struggle financially where you live than to worry about state violence somewhere cheaper.
I have a friend who really wants to move somewhere cheaper, but they're a care provider for trans kids. Sooo...
Unfortunately, when you look at where's cheap plus where's legally hospitable, it gets pretty limited. If that handful of places don't align with the rest of your life, then you're just sol
As someone who absolutely loves living in Cleveland, you're spot on. I have to seriously consider if I can spend the rest of my life here, given the direction the state is going politically.
Most people don't leave the region they grew up in. People like staying where their friends and families are.
Tbh I haven't really had a close knit group of friends to keep me in one place for a while. But the job finding I haven't found too bad, and I've moved long distance 4 times now.
The family does suck but my siblings all moved away anyways so even staying I just would've been near my parents.
I am in a unique situation in that I moved to the sticks and bought what most folks probably would have called a teardown with cash for next to nothing. I have been able to work from home though, and my partner and I have been able to do most of the renovation ourselves. So that's been our only substantial expense for the last few years. This is the sort of place where if you aren't working remotely there is very little decent work available though. Former logging town, then former gas town. Now mostly just a place where people hunt, fish, and do opioids. Or just drive through on their way to regional resort communities. Has worked out well for us, since we are outdoorsy types, and trying to set up a little homestead, but without remote work it would be a very different story.
Man I don't know why but it just clicked for me that remote work would potentially mean the revitalization of a lot of small town communities which I'll be honest is where I'd like to be if it was feasible for someone like me. Which I know they get a lot of hate, but I grew up in a small appalachian town and I'll always deeply love them.
Yeah, there's a lot that's really nice about them. But it's sad to think about how much more alive they were when there was an actual economic base. Ours in particular doesn't even really have a downtown anymore. Main street is basically a highway. I'm sure more remote work would help, but it's hard to imagine any significant revitalization happening when the only reason this place existed in the first place is because of industries that are long gone. Obviously not every small town is like that, but I feel like the demographic trends are toward most of these populations getting, smaller, older, and poorer.
Pretty much describes me. Live in a tiny town close to my family. I work remotely for a pretty solid wage. My wife is a teacher and also genuinely makes pretty good money for the area, despite teachers being underpaid.
It's also a town hollowed out by lack of industry. Drug use very high. Sad seeing what's become of my home, but I've always liked living in a small town. Don't have a single traffic light for miles, lol.
this thread is a telling look into the demographics of this website
Telling in which way? My autistic brain never likes these vague types of comments.
Have you considered pulling up the old bootstraps so you can be financially comfortable? Work an honest day (8 hours) for an honest day's wage ($2.67).
I think one thing is that affordability looks different in different places. The suburbs in the midwest may still actually be more expensive than the ungentrified parts of the urban core. But I've gathered that in places like Cali, and much of the east coast, distance from the city is almost like, proportional to the rent you pay and nothing in/near the city is affordable. That's never been true for me.
But comfort has something to do with it too. I used to live in the cheapest place I could find that I didn't think was going to kill me with mold or whatever (and this was always still in the city, short of leaving the state, going suburban/rural didn't seem to actually be much if any cheaper on rents, and you pay for it in gas and groceries). Now I live in a place that costs like 25% more than the absolute cheapest options, because I've become more financially stable
Everywhere I go gentrifies within 5 years. I would call myself a trend-setter, but I'm just a lower-middle class white kid who slips in right before the trust-fund kiddies, banks and leasing companies kill the area. I'm about two or three years out from another move, and already the avg. rent has doubled in the three years I've lived where I am now. I get it, it's a nice area, but what made it great was that you didn't have to fucking scrimp on stuff, you could spend money on community owned businesses without worrying about making rent. I mean, it was always a fool's game to expect it to last (as I keep telling all of my neo-libertarian hippie friends) but it sucks having to watch it happen over and over again.
Watching the banks vampire the community it just so... exhausting. This shit is going to be as boring and dead as Oakland in another decade.
wait is Duluth MN expensive? compared to NY??? (even upstate I assumed it would be more expensive than MN)
I know people (well, person) with nice places in Duluth for way less than say, chicago or probably even milwaukee/minneapolis
But I have no frame of reference for Rochester NY
Ah. My perspective is skewed because I mostly think about renting.
I’m in a very high CoL area in California and am contemplating moving to a very similar city to OP’s, mainly as that’s where my partner’s family is from.
Our main concerns are around healthcare/education, as our kiddo has some significant needs that California is surprisingly great at (free PT+OT until the age of 21)…but as we can only afford to live in a rented 1 bedroom apartment here, it’s a complicated trade off!
We’d miss the hiking/camping that we can do here, and as deeply and monstrously neolib as this place is, trading it for somewhere that’s more outwardly fashy doesn’t feel promising.
well you could move to the cheaper areas of california, but the weather's much worse and the people get pretty fashy
still get the protection of the state laws, though
And if you are in a high cost of living area, would you ever consider moving somewhere significantly cheaper?
Fuck no. I enjoy going to sports games, going to concerts, going to big museums, etc all without having to drive 2+ hours to the nearest actual city
Laughs in maine, where it’s expensive and there’s also no culture at all.
lol I legitimately had no idea that show took place here. All I knew about it was "that's the boring show where the white lady is always typing on her typewriter." And that it inspired the name of one of the most annoying twitter accounts.
You should absolutely watch an early episode or two to hear the dad from happy days do a Mainer accent, it's very funny. It's like he heard "bert and I" once and was like I got this
There are a ton of places thats feasible without a high cost of living. Cincinnati where I'm at for example has every major sport, has multiple museums and music venues, is traversable without a car. Same goes for Cleveland, most of Philly, Louisville, Detroit, St Louis, Milwaukee...
Yes but all those places suck. I’ve lived in St Louis and Milwaukee and couldn’t have been more happier to have left.
Well that's not what you originally said though... And they don't suck they're just maybe not for you.
Nah they suck pretty bad. If any midwestern town cost as much to live in as any american city, no one would live there
I live in Cleveland and once or twice a week take the train to a MLB game ($15 tickets) and/or concert directly connected to transit. One of the best art museums in the country is a fifteen minute bike or bus ride from my house (and free to get into); behind it is an excellent but less prestigious natural history museum, botanical gardens, one of the best symphony orchestras in the world, and a modern art museum. My house cost $120k newly renovated.
It's no NYC or Chicago (very little is open past midnight; train lines basically just go E/W on a few parallel routes; doesn't attract nearly as many big touring musicians), but I can get a pretty damn good big city experience here. The biggest problem here by far is not anything to do with the city itself but the state it's in. Ohio is reactionary as fuck right now, to the point I don't know if I can stay here as long as I'd like to.
I'll be moving to somewhere cheaper when I finish my apprenticeship and get my ticket
I've lived all over the southeastern US in "low cost of living" areas, but now I live somewhere high cost of living. My mental health improved a lot when I moved to where I am now. I think it's not because of the price specifically, but because of the walkability + things to do. Lots of suburbs are expensive, but unwalkable with nothing to do.
I wouldn't move back to the southeastern US for any amount of money.
I get what you mean. I was in Philly for like 5-6 years, in a really bad part (Kensington). It was walkable and had a lot going for it, but it was so incredibly full of heroin addicts, homeless people, gun violence (had a man bleed out on my stoop) and litter (like to the point I'd regularly have to wade through it) and being around that all the time just sucked the joy out of my life. It was so depressing that I couldn't do anything to fix these serious problems surrounding me and I had to get out of there. There's no way I'd ever move back.
But yeah it's not cost of living either, there's no amount of money that could get me to live in Manhattan either, I feel claustrophobic being there for more than like 3 days.
Semi-recently moved to a lower cost of living area from a more expensive one. Probably wouldn't have been able to afford it if everything didn't align.
We both had work from home jobs that allowed us to keep our incomes through the move. Before covid sent us home, we would never have been able to pay for the move plus an uncertain period without dual incomes. I honestly don't know how people do it.
We were able to do downpayment and we're in a house now, in the city, which is nice. Mortgage is less than I was paying for a 1br in a suburb in the more expensive area. Rents there keep rising which is what finally made us bite the bullet.
I miss my family and friends quite a bit though. Still a bit bitter that the only way I could afford the security of a home was to leave my whole life behind.
