I saw an article the other day about a woman in California who rents a studio apartment (i.e. no dedicated bedroom) for $1900 a month, and was worried it would jump up to the usual $2,300 a month after the covid special pricing ended.

Meanwhile, for $2,000 a month in the upper midwest you can rent a house with multiple bedrooms and bathroom on 40 acres of land, or a nicely remodeled house with a small yard and river views in a town if you prefer. Or, with enough for a minimum down payment saved up, you could also buy a small house on 5 acres in a forest.

Granted, you'll pay more for owning a car, but... deciding between studio, or a prime house for $300 less per month, and the car doesn't sound too unreasonable.

> Meanwhile, for $2,000 a month in the upper midwest you can rent a house with multiple bedrooms and bathroom on 40 acres of land,

Probably do that in rural CA, too (certainly you can get a nice single family home in many CA suburbs), and not be as far (but probably still too far) from the job the individual in question has that enables paying $2,000/mo in the first place. And similar work closer (to either rural CA or the upper Midwest) would pay less.

Eh, most people near me commute less than an hour to a metro area with pretty much any job you could want available, if you didn't like what nearby jobs were paying. I'm not quite rural, but not suburbia either (nearest burb is 15 minutes of driving once you get to the highway).

If you went really rural, you would be able to get much more for your money.

That was the stereotypical pattern for decades, but gentrification has somewhat reversed it in first tier cities. Families with small children do still tend to move out to the suburbs in search of better quality schools and more living space.