But are they REALLY better off? You could make 240k in CA, sure, but when you figure housing costs, you could live in Omaha on $120k at the same standard of living. I'm not denying the money factor, but I bet at least SOME of the people who live in these high-cost places would discover they'd live BETTER with a pay cut somewhere like Texas than they do in California.
Here's an interesting website, probably one of the most accurate of its type:
http://www.bestplaces.net/col/
But then you’d have to live in Texas.
I spent the first seventeen years of my life in southeast Texas. Spent about the next 10 years throughout the southeast from Lake Jackson to Apalachicola.
I always remembered that part of the country fondly until I went back to visit. LOL.
That’s when I was suddenly forced to remember chiggers and ticks and fleas and every form of flying biting/stinging insect you can imagine… yellow jackets, hornets – you name it – every color biting fly… poison ivy… on and on.
There’s a *reason* Clute has (had?) their mosquito festival.
Heat and humidity that’ll make you wilt like a lettuce leaf.
$240,000 job in southern California doesn’t really translate to anything anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
My wife has a counterpart at their operation in Portland OR. They have the same title and same job description – but they’re not really comparable positions because the southern California function is MUCH larger and considerably “harder” and it’s in southern CA so nobody wants to relocate here.
Anyway, who has a “better” standard of living – the person making $48,000 in Portland or the one making $240K+ in southern California?
Incidentally, when I put $240,000 into the calculator it claimed you’d have to pull $134,450 in Portland to maintain the same standard of living. Yet the position pays $48K and there’s no shortage of people standing in line to take it at that salary.
As someone who has lived in both places (and intend to return at some point) I can honestly state that taking the California gig will be an experience you will *not* regret taking advantage of – but that’s just me.
If you’re a young kid with a new pregnant wife and no marketable skills I don’t know how you could possibly make it here. Yet they somehow do.
I forgot to mention that we have more exceptionally top-heavy cuties per capita than anywhere else on earth. Not that it does me much good but it’s nice to know…