Quote (AspenSniper @ Oct 12 2017 03:09pm)
The point that i'm making is, you can always move. There are absolutely low cost cities that are a bit outside the standard suburbs. For DC, where I'm from, yeah Potomac, Bethesda, Mclean, are all insanely expensive. Reston, Rockville, Alexandria, are all pretty expensive. Gaithersburg, Germantown, Clarksburg, Sterling, Fairfax are all moderately affordable, but then you get to Frederick, Sterling, Leesburg, etc., and those are all pretty fuckin easy to afford especially with the way DC pays even low-end work.
Meaning, yeah your commute might suck, but you can definitely live in a place that pays high wages. Or, you can go live in a place that costs nothing and pays nothing and still get by, like post 2 in Oklahoma.
It isn't impossible, isn't even hard, just have to be willing to move to a place that makes sense for you. I make tons of money and I still would struggle to get by in San Francisco, so that's why I don't live there. Before I made tons of money, I lived in Frederick because I wanted to save up my money. It's about life decisions.
...Yeah, you can also go outside and dance naked in the street, but that doesn't mean just because you CAN do it, that you SHOULD. As I mentioned in my previous response, there are some additional factors you aren't considering here, and really what it comes down to is whether the overall net amount of money you're making is going up or down. And as the article states, for a lot of people, it actually goes down (largely due to housing, but also partially due to some of the things I mentioned).