Opting out of coast madness to live a low overhead life

[Anonymous]

Good of article, thanks for posting.

[Anonymous]

We visited a friend in the country part of Wisconsin.

She has like 20 acres of farmland that she leases out to a local farmer.

We went out for lunch and it was very inexpensive. 8 of us ran up a 50 dollar bill. Granted it wasn't "fancy", but we sat down, was served, and walked away full.

Everyone drove around in a beater, so I figure I would have some social pressure to fit in. Kids play out in the street, and they don't lock their doors even during a week long vacation.

They live on about $60k a year and have a very relaxed and stress free life. Not my cup of tea, but I see how someone could be drawn to it.

[Anonymous]

This is my fantasy but I suspect I would t like it in rrality

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We visited a friend in the country part of Wisconsin.

She has like 20 acres of farmland that she leases out to a local farmer.

We went out for lunch and it was very inexpensive. 8 of us ran up a 50 dollar bill. Granted it wasn't "fancy", but we sat down, was served, and walked away full.

Everyone drove around in a beater, so I figure I would have some social pressure to fit in. Kids play out in the street, and they don't lock their doors even during a week long vacation.

They live on about $60k a year and have a very relaxed and stress free life. Not my cup of tea, but I see how someone could be drawn to it.

People. America is a big county. There's a wide world of possibilities in between DC and rural Wisconsin!!!

Cities with a population of 1-2 million (including close in suburbs) are an excellent place to start if you're looking for middle ground.

[Anonymous]

I was just home visiting my family in the pop. 1 million small city where I grew up. Life there is ... much cheaper. There are some nice things about it, but honestly, there's a lot of downside too. People are pretty provincial. And the jobs pretty much suck, unless you're a doctor or nurse (which you can pretty much do anywhere, I think).
And, oh Lord, what people would say about how people in my hometown dress! That gave me a few giggles imagining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once you leave a high cost of living city you can never go back. I can never return to London because I got off the property ladder, and houses appreciated so much that I could never afford to buy there now.

I completely agree. Our house in our lower cost of living city could never appreciate enough to be able to cover a down payment on, for example, a house in Arlington.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents left the DC area for a small town in a couple of hours away when my sister and I were in preschool. Having grown up there, you couldn't pay either of us enough to go back. Even though we lived there for over a dozen years, we always felt like outsiders - if your grandparents hadn't grown up in the town you were "new" and often "different" and that wasn't a good thing. Diversity was very limited (one Jewish family, no Muslims, a few Asian families) and the general mindset was that anything over a 30 minute drive away was a huge trip so virtually no one went to the nearest big city more than once a year, if that.

I am profoundly grateful that my father was transferred to a new city 30 years ago. The house they bough there for $215k was a stretch, but has more than tripled in value. The house that I grew up in was sold for $140k and in the past 30 years has increased in value to about $165k. The difference in real estate appreciation alone makes a huge difference for my parents' retirement. There are definite downsides to living in an expensive urban area, but there are upsides as well.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's all about perspective and where you're coming from. Lots of NYC friends have opted out of the NYC/North Jersey/Long Island/CT madness and have settled here in DC and LOVE the cost of living, esp. real estate. But then I know DC folks who are moving off to Houston bc the DC COL is too much and they can get more house in Texas.

That's my husband, a NY to DC transplant.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once you leave a high cost of living city you can never go back. I can never return to London because I got off the property ladder, and houses appreciated so much that I could never afford to buy there now.

I completely agree. Our house in our lower cost of living city could never appreciate enough to be able to cover a down payment on, for example, a house in Arlington.

This. We want to have the flexibility later when we are older and/or retiring. If we did it now, we would be stepping down too soon. Living here gives us more flexibility in our next choice. My sister-in-law lives in Indianapolis (much lower COL) than here and she has a friend who says she is "livin' the dream" there after having moved from the NYC area, but they are stuck now. They can never go back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's all about perspective and where you're coming from. Lots of NYC friends have opted out of the NYC/North Jersey/Long Island/CT madness and have settled here in DC and LOVE the cost of living, esp. real estate. But then I know DC folks who are moving off to Houston bc the DC COL is too much and they can get more house in Texas.

That's my husband, a NY to DC transplant.

+1.

[Anonymous]

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.

Have you checked this out? http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/ It's not just housing costs that are lower. Housing is the big one, but in the places that I would/am considering moving, everything else is also less expensive (except healthcare for some reason). But it is true that there just aren't as many jobs to go around elsewhere. My goal is for my DH to find something, since his line of work is less flexible, and then take the plunge. My line of work lends itself much more to working from home or freelancing while I look for a permanent position.

[Anonymous]

It's immediately apparent who has never lived in a non-coastal city (not counting your insulated 4 years at Williiams, Carleton or Oberlin)

Why, there are no JOBS in Dallas / Minneapolis / Phoenix! None at all, I tell you!

Since people in my hometown aren't into fashion, that means nobody outside of DC/NYC/LA knows how to dress!

Everyone not in a coastal metropolis must be -exactly- like that court clerk in Kentucky who hates gay people. Yep. I know that is true.

[Anonymous]

Right, but some of us are from DC! our families and aging parents are here. It makes it very hard to move, even if theoretically we could save a lot of money.

[Anonymous]

It helps to be an academic. Then you can live in lovely little college towns that are shielded from the economic chaos that rules the rest of the world. It's a great place to raise kids because everyone is so relaxed and there is no rat race.

* And we know exactly how to dress: khakis, crew neck sweaters, comfy shoes. Tweedy blazers with antelope elbow patches! Never goes out of style!