> The tradeoff is that quality of life is terrible. The cities are full of petty bug people. And COL makes living standards precarious for all but the wealthy and the extremely poor (government programs). The precariousness also inhibits the formation of stable IRL (as opposed to chat group based) friend groups.
> That said, after half a decade of this I've saved enough money to go back home and use stocks, real estate, and side hustles to put down roots with a decent quality of life.
> Sometimes I feel like Odysseus on Ogygia. It's easy to be trapped in one of these hubs so long that you miss out on the chance to exit young-adulthood gracefully. (Very sad the number of friends I have who decided to start a family too late and couldn't quite make it work out). --- Good luck making it to where you want to be!
It's good to remember that different people have widely varying preferences of quality of life - urban/rural, ocean/mountain/plain, wet/dry, tropical/temperate/less-temperate, etc. I'm glad not everybody wants to live in the same place!
Definitely not Longs. I guess you could drive to the top of Evans or Pikes Peak :)
Enjoy being retired in SV 2.0
The tradeoff is that quality of life is terrible. The cities are full of petty bug people. And COL makes living standards precarious for all but the wealthy and the extremely poor (government programs). The precariousness also inhibits the formation of stable IRL (as opposed to chat group based) friend groups.
That said, after half a decade of this I've saved enough money to go back home and use stocks, real estate, and side hustles to put down roots with a decent quality of life.
Sometimes I feel like Odysseus on Ogygia. It's easy to be trapped in one of these hubs so long that you miss out on the chance to exit young-adulthood gracefully. (Very sad the number of friends I have who decided to start a family too late and couldn't quite make it work out).
What does that mean?
1) The median household income in Denver CO is $64,000. That's around 77% higher than in Altoona PA. Two locations specifically referenced in the article.
2) The opportunities that pay a lot more than that gap, do not exist to begin with in Altoona. Software, Internet, misc engineer jobs - the locations that people are fleeing from are death zones economically. Denver and Boulder are quasi boom cities; the Altoona's are the exact opposite; that means, over the next ten years your income will very likely expand nicely in those CO locations, whereas you're very unlikely to see meaningful improvement in Altoona.
3) Lifestyle is important for most people and likely that much more so for people willing to move across the country for better opportunities. Boulder and Denver are both incredible by comparison to Altoona PA, when it comes to lifestyle upgrade.
To answer your question, the people desperately fleeing from all those dying economic zones, seeking a vastly superior future, are extremely smart indeed.