[glory]

I'm sorry, but I am still not getting this. My husband had been laid off to(in another industry) and we packed up(while we had the money) and moved. He got a job here that is a lot harder, we face the prospect of a decreasing salary because of the nature of the business, yet that move allowed us to very slowly go through our savings, much slower than staying in our previous area without a job would have done to us. Not to mention we sold our home while the housing market was still moving.
I'm sorry but people make very poor decisions because of an attachment to an area. Frankly, I'd rather live in a place I'm not so fond of in a home, able to put food on the table, in a nice middle class lifestyle, than living out of a trailer in an affluent area. With all due respect, by doing the same things over and over again and not really making any positive changes, you all seem to be banging your head on a wall over and over again. Moving is a big change, but you do what you have to do in lean times. You can always move back when the jobs get hot again. As someone else stated, so many is SV could have taken off when they were laid off or not long before and moved to fly over country, taking a fairly menial job for insurance and lived comfortably in another area on interest from their savings(more ways to earn money on that than a bank's 2%--again that shows a lack of financial sense--we've made about 10% on our portfolio this year with some good financial stategies in this type of market--it beats the bank and has been helpful to get us over the hump) or at least spent the savings at a much slower pace, maybe even long enough to get over the hump and still have some savings. I don't understand why folks let the water fill in the tub until they are drowning. And I'm not saying I'm perfect, we still have a good amount of debt to take care of, but we are surviving and still have a substantial savings in comparison to what a lot folks save over a lifetime of working) I think, God willing, we will make it over the hump, but it took a LOT of change to do it.

[clamper1797]

I'm sorry, but I am still not getting this

Ok ...

1. Most areas where the high tech jobs are ... are expensive to in. I live in a somewhat cheaper area 70 miles away from my job. If you make a high salary one has to invest it in a house or like investment for the tax write-offs or the taxes will eat you alive. You therefore buy a house which will shelter your income. It DOES NOT MATTER if you live in a trailer or an expensive house because you will spend about the same amount .. either in mortgage or in taxes. I would prefer paying the mortgage.

2. Some one who has invested a lot of time and money earning advanced advanced degrees in an industry and has twenty some years in that industry is NOT going to give it all up at the drop of the hat (or economy) to move his family to Podunk (away from the jobs) and try to get a job that pays 1/4 of his old salary. I'm sorry but to me that would be idiotic.

3. NO ONE is going to hire an obviously well educated, well qualified candidate to take a low paying job, because they know that as soon as the industry recovers that person will be gone. A person can falsify a resume but it is very very hard to hide an education and life experience that shows the potential employer that the candidate is out of place. I know cause I tried ... a whole lot ... while I was unemployed. I would have happily swept floors.

3. Most people invested in the stock market for good return.
There are very many that invested in "safe" mutual funds and a great many in 401K's. Most of these people lost almost if not ALL their investments in the 3 market crashes since 1999. I know cause I lost over 1,000,000 in very well diversified and non-speculative investments. Sure there may be 1-2% who did well BUT for the most part people lost almost everything.

4. The high tech industry is hurting granted ... BUT it is NOT hurting that bad. The problem is that companies have been laying off high tech workers and have been replacing them with low paid (and lower qualified) H1B foreign workers. They do NOT like the foreigners just because they will work cheap cause many an American worker would also work for that lower wage. They like the foreign worker cause they can ceorce them into doing a lot of things that the American worker won't do (some of which is illegal) on threat of revoke of their visa. They know that the foreign worker can't just go down the street to an other employer if they don't like the job or their present employer. That is a form of servitude not employment.

So ... do you "get it" now. Do you wish that America's high tech talent move to Podunk to become dishwashers and leave our high tech industry to foreign workers, or would you rather we hang tough and try to reclaim what is ours.