Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I will do this asap after my big law gig is over. I look at friends in IT, engineering or HR and just don't understand why they stay. The marginally higher income doesn't cover the higher costs.
Jobs. Perhaps not engineering, but other white collar jobs aren't easy to come by in flyover states. Speaking only for myself, I don't stay for the marginally higher income (especially given my income probably isn't even considered marginally higher), but it's very hard to find white collar jobs elsewhere that would pay enough even for the COL in those areas.
While housing costs are lower in other parts of the country, health care, food, cars, those things cost the same. If you own your house outright here, then perhaps you could make it work by selling for a profit and buying a house cheaper in another part of the country. But we have a mortgage here, so if we sold, we aren't at the point (especially with transaction costs and taxes) where we would make enough off the sale to make that work.
Sure, our salary here would qualify for a decent place somewhere else, but we'd be moving. So we'd have to find work somewhere else.
The reason people come to the DC area is that there are a lot of white collar jobs here (due to govt. and the organizations related to govt.) that are difficult to find elsewhere.
I think that a lot of people underestimate how difficult it is to find suitable work in another state or city. I've looked at jobs that utilize my skill set in other regions of the country. They not only are few and far between, but the pay is much lower. And the cheaper COL isn't enough to make that work.
I would love to move down south or out to the southwest, but I'm not sure how to make it happen. I could never live in the midwest because it just gets too cold. I have nothing against the people there or anything, but I can't take hard winters.
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