For the past 6 years I have lived in the Silicon Valley getting paid less than anyone I know. I live in one of the most expensive places in the USA. I work for a national company and they don't understand how low my pay is. If I get a 25% pay raise I would make about what my contemporaries make. I never thought about how much I make. I never thought about how much further my paycheck could go if I lived in other parts of the country. I live here because it is where my ex-wife chose to live after we got divorced and I want to live near my children. I don't like big cities and crowds of people.
The last 2 companies I worked for were national companies and paid me well for other parts of the country. That has been my biggest problem, people that don't live here don't understand how expensive it is here. The average price of a home here is $500,000 and that is for a small 3 bedroom 2 bath house. I live in a mobile home and that costs between $50,000 and $150,000 and then you have to pay for space rental. I pay about $1,700 for a mobile home. I am looking at moving to a small town in Pennsylvania. In fact, they don't call them towns they call them boroughs.
I have been looking at homes to buy in that area and I can buy a home for less than I paid for my mobile home. I can buy a duplex for about the same price as I paid for this home. I was looking and found a beautiful home on the river and I would pay about twice as much as I did for my mobile home and that would be monthly payments for less than half of what I pay monthly here. Now I realize that the amount of pay I have made in the past few years is great for other parts of the country. If I lived in another area I would pay $1000 less for housing and that would mean I would be making $1000 more to put in my pocket.
I don't know if I will get this job in Pennsylvania, but if I do I will be getting about twice as much as the average salary in the area. I can imagine that people in the new location would ask me why I would leave one of the most popular and beautiful areas of the country to go to an area that everyone wants to leave. I guess some people want to live in large cities and some people want to live in a small town. I have always thought I wanted to live in a small town except I have never lived in one so I'm worried that I have a corrupted view of life there. I am just excited to move to a new area and have new experiences!!
It's a bit of a drive from the beach, I'm guessing!
ReplyDeleteI moved from the SF Bay Area to a small town in the midwest for a few years. What you may miss are all the wonderful, culturally diverse restaurants we have here in the Bay Area. Where I went there was only one Chinese restaurant about 15 miles away, and it was very expensive for small portions. There was one Italian restaurant maybe 10 miles away. If you're going to be in a college town, it may have a little more cultural diversity, though. Or maybe there will be large towns close enough to go in the evening/weekend.
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