I'm often curious why more people aren’t moving to low cost of living areas. I don’t know if I’ve just been fortunate, but I’m a college drop out who honestly hasn’t tried very hard in my “career”, but I moved out to Cincinnati which has a low cost of living at 23 (8 hours from my family) and I’ve managed to do very well for myself with a modest paying job (20ish an hour). I have 40k saved up and plan to buy a house this year. I wonder if other people who have went or started on a similar route are doing well for themselves.
And if you are in a high cost of living area, would you ever consider moving somewhere significantly cheaper?
I live in Cleveland and once or twice a week take the train to a MLB game ($15 tickets) and/or concert directly connected to transit. One of the best art museums in the country is a fifteen minute bike or bus ride from my house (and free to get into); behind it is an excellent but less prestigious natural history museum, botanical gardens, one of the best symphony orchestras in the world, and a modern art museum. My house cost $120k newly renovated.
It's no NYC or Chicago (very little is open past midnight; train lines basically just go E/W on a few parallel routes; doesn't attract nearly as many big touring musicians), but I can get a pretty damn good big city experience here. The biggest problem here by far is not anything to do with the city itself but the state it's in. Ohio is reactionary as fuck right now, to the point I don't know if I can stay here as long as I'd like to.