Slashdot Mirror
Where the Highest Paying Tech Jobs Are
prostoalex writes "Where would you look for a high-paying tech job? If your answer is Silicon Valley or Research Triangle, Forbes magazine suggests some other destinations. When you take the cost of living and consider the net pay adjusted for that cost, places like Montgomery, Ala., Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Fort Smith, Ark. suddenly seem quite attractive."
Sure you can get a bigger house and stuff, but what about the 'quality' of living. I like the restaurants in bigger cities personally. That and the fact that there are more jobs AFAIK.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I dislike the high cost of living, traffic, unaffordability of houses etc. in places such as Silicon Valley. But there are lot more companies where one can work for with decent salary. One's chances of finding another job with close to maximum salary in one's field are lot higher there without having to move.
These are not just idle concerns. I have been asking many such questions to myself recently as I am not in high-tech area such as Silicon Valley. There are no easy answers to such questions. These become even more difficult once one has family, house etc. and has established roots in one place.
Osho
Some of the places on this list could be fairly okay for an educated, liberal, free-thinker type.
But a lot of those places are damn scary.
Also, it doesn't make sense that Richardson TX would draw less than half the salary of Plano TX.
I mean seriously, these are both actually the same place for anyone who would be living in that part of the Dallas metro area, and for that matter, so is Carrollton. There may be a factor related to commuting on I-35 as opposed to Central Expressway, but come on... these are all the same damn place.
Also, pointing out Gilbert Arizona as if it's really distinct from Phoenix is pretty stupid too.
$226 for Scottsdale AZ (yes, it's a separate township, but snobs like to point out that it's *Scottsdale* to avoid saying they live in Phoenix)... That is a joke. Scottsdale median home price is in the $250's still, and most of the housing that a mid-career professional would be happy with are well over the $million mark.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Some might see Silicon Valley and Research Triangle as carrying the personal cost.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Lets see: cheaper housing + cheaper food/necessities + NOTHING ELSE TO SPEND MONEY ON = lower cost of living.
Sad as it is, the expensive places to live are often expensive for a reason - people want to live there.
sic transit gloria mundi
The biggest factor for me is to consider the possibility that if your job goes south (project ends, company folds, you don't like your boss), then you are stuck in the middle of nowhere. If you are relocating, you need to understand that at some point you will need to move again.
If you are used to an environment where you can lose your job today and have a new one by the end of the week, then you will be shocked when you spend 6 months unemployed.
Now don't get me wrong, I grew up in Idaho, but you need to realize that it is a complete backwater. =)
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
The article's selection of cities seems random at best. Huntsville by far has the largest tech industry base in the state, and is roughly the same cost of living as Montgomery. Growing up here, roughly 40-50% of the kids I knew had at least one parent in some form of engineering. The defense/aerospace industry is huge here, so there are plenty of SW Engineering opportunities.
Makes me smile seeing all these comments about how people would never move to a backwards place like Alabama. I make a great salary, own a very nice home on several acres of land (that I can easily afford), and send my kids to one of the top schools in the country. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7723397/site/newsweek/ We shop in the same stores, eat at the same resturants and watch the same movies that you find everywhere else in this country. So go ahead and look down on us poor backward southerners and keep telling yourself the quality of living is so much better in those over-taxed, crowded, crime ridden cities up north. I will continue to enjoy the peace and quite and breath fresh air as I laugh all the way to the bank.
Just do it, take off, travel a bit, see what you like, look for a job there or create one (or two). I did it a few years ago, just got tired of major urban living. Girlfriend came home in tears and told me she couldn't get gas for her car because of all the winos and crackheads hanging around the station near our house, they were harassing her. I said fuck it, we're moving! A month later or so we had sold off most of our junk-and that is all furniture and whatnot is is junk, easily replaceable. We stuck the stuff we really wanted to keep in a storage unit, then took off camping. Within a few weeks we had found a nice rural area we liked, not terribly wilderness, no way serious urban, an in between kind of place. Two weeks after that had a full time job. I kept my (still small) net work going the whole time hitting public libraries for access. Now, we're happy. Got plenty of space, nice little cozy house, whole comfy rural scene. Walk out on the porch see hummingbirds hitting the flowers, it's *nice* Lack for nothing. Trust your instincts, "go with the flow", look until it feels "right", settle in. Camping is cheap, gas is still affordable, just take off! if you wait for it to be perfect you'll never do it. Ya, less money, but less expenses, quality of life so much higher. Now the two or three times a year I am forced to go to "the big city" I can see how absolutely termite mound dismal it was, how dirty loud and stinky major urban areas are, and kick myself for waiting so long to make the move. That crap about big cities being "better" is consumerist bullshit. About the only thing "better" about big cities is how much you have to work to feed the pigs money habit as they suck your wallet dry. A traffic jam to me now is someone stopped next to the mail carrier to talk about something for a minute, big deal.
Make the move before millions more get the urge, the real estate bubble pop is right around the corner and all those exploiters/grifters pushing that get rich quick crap will be branching out looking for new areas to trash out with their greed. That and the morons running the foreign policy, they could screw the pooch and really bork stuff out in the middle east, better to get rural where life is more sustainable for the long haul and you can actually develop "neighbors" and local ties. Big cities can go to pure hell in one day as soon as anything gets turned off, electricty, water, food deliveries, etc. We got a well, a garden, and a generator and a firewood lot, screw it, let that other stuff back in town rot. Let them enjoy their "ambience". See if "starbucks" will support them.
Anyway, if you needed a nudge, take this as an official big NUDGE;) Good luck!
You forgot to mention the fact that Huntsville is heavily religious, conservative and their entire engineering industry is government funded defense.
Good Morning Vietnam!
;)
Well that's the time here as I post this. Anyway, it's very interesting living in Ho Chi Min (rated the #12th best major city in the world to live in and the best in Asia)*. I've got to say that, in a country that has a per capita GDP less than a tenth that of the United States a dollar goes a long way.
The key is how to make it. If you can make it by working for a major foreign corporation here (read: oil company) and get a Western salary, you will live like a king. Unfortunately local opportunities to make that kind of money are otherwise almost nil. Even if you can speak Vietnamese you will find that even a very high salary here (doing a job like coding) in not much relative to the U.S. Also you may find yourself thought of being overqualified; I do very high end media and some people here told me they were afraid to contact me after seeing my CV because they thought I'd charge a fortune.
While you can make a good living here teaching English I doubt that would appeal to the skilled professionals that make up Slashdot's readers. No, the best job is one in which you can work "at the end of a wire", that is live here but work for some U.S. company via the internet. The internet infrastructure is just sufficient to do that (which is one reason why I can't live in Cambodia). Internet telephony here is good (at least from my location). If your job is portable so you don't have to physically see your clients more than once or twice a year then this might "work" for you!
By the way, the cost of living here is not going to be one-tenth that of the U.S. unless you live like a native. Instead if you insist on all the perks of the U.S. it's probably about half the U.S. cost of living (more if you want a car!). On the other hand, wealth is relative; compared to the natives you WILL be very rich and will be treated as such. That has its own perks.
* this recent study (which, to my travelled eyes cannot possibly be true) was based on a bunch of factors including how much (or little) the average person "impacted the environment". Since Vietnamese people are still very poor they don't impact the environment very much which led to a inflated score. Still Ho Chi Minh City has its charms; zero violent crime (it's a police state), pace of life (you can actually meet people and develop friendships), scale of the city (more like one giant neighborhood than a forest of skyscrapers). But act soon, things are changing fast and in 5 years it'll be unrecognizable. In that case you'll:
Miss Saigon.
So you prefer massive amounts of concrete and small cramped overpriced apartment housing... nice. I'll take a nice big yard and no reliance on a dingy subway, thanks. -- moved to Huntsville for a programming job with one of the largest Steel companies in the world... not a gov't defense contractor.
Ah, yes, the water cascading over the concrete barriers and gently splashing into the concrete-lined culvert below. I remember going to sleep to the sound of 300 car trains hauling potatoes out of town.
s /ineel.html
Many of the software engineering jobs aren't in Idaho Falls itself, but out at 'The Site', the Idaho National Engineering (and Environmental) Laboratory. It's a convenient 75-90 minute bus ride out of town, just north of Atomic City (Quonset hut with a bar, gas station, and post office).
INE(E)L is located so far from town so as to provide a buffer zone in case of a little mistake in one of the engineering projects. Interesting place, if you ever find out what went on in some of the widely separated facilities out there. (Hint: the original name was Reactor Testing Station...)
http://www.idptv.state.id.us/buildingbig/building
http://nuclear.inl.gov/52reactors.shtml
First, there's travel. If our friend in Manila wants to go skiing in Whistler, then he's going to have to save his spare cash for a long time. On the other hand, if the Canadian guy goes diving in the Philippines, he's going to be amazed at how far his money goes.
Then there are imported goods. If you have a taste for French wine, or Japanese electronics, or Italian furniture, the price may vary a bit due to shipping, exchange rates, import duties, etc., but there's a fixed minimum amount that you're going to have to pay, no matter how low the rest of your cost of living may be.
Finally, you have to ask whether you're really planning to stay in the same place forever. That may be the case for a lot of people; but if you dream about living in another country one day, then you also need to consider the cost of living there. It works both ways, obviously: plenty of North American retirees move to Mexico, Singaporeans go to Malaysia, and so on, partly in order to make their savings go farther. But if you're picturing a villa on the Côte d'Azur, you won't get there by working at a relatively well-paid job in a less expensive country.
Job A:
$50,000/year, $10,000 annual rent.
Job B:
$100,000/year, $40,000 annual rent.
Relative to the cost of rent, Job A is phenominal: You're making five times the cost of rent. Job B sucks: you're only earning 2.5 times rent. By this measure, job A is far and away the better option - by a factor of 2.
The thing is, once you've paid the varying rent, where do you spend the rest of your money? The decent spec new PC will be $2,000 in Rancho Santa Fe, Manhattan or BFI. The new $25,000 car will be $25,000 wherever you buy it. The big TV is the same price wherever. And, most important of all, the internet porn subscriptions run the same wherever you are too.
At that point, would you rather the job that's 5 times "cost of living" but only leaves you with $40,000 or the one that gives a sucky 2.5x but leaves you with $60,000 extra.
Next, on the simple level, let's look at that cost of living. Assuming you get on, buy and pay a mortgage off, in 20 years time the place with the poor salary relative to cost of living will leave you with a $500,000-$1,000,000 home vs. the $200,000-$250,000 place in the "better" area. Now, aged 40, you can up and move to the cheap place, selling your home, buying one of the nicest places in the cheap area and having a nice large nest egg lfet over to let you get to retire early. My in-laws have just done exactly that and apparently a lot of people in Texas are getting seriously pissed at all the Californians coming in, buying huge homes after selling up smaller places in CA and pushing up the Texan cost of living for people who're still paid no more.
And, finally, there's a reason rent and property are so expensive in some areas. Go to California and look out of the window. Rumor has it that other parts of the world have a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder. Land is expensive in California because you never shovel snow, you rarely deal with crazy humidity, you rarely have the insane heat of Arizona, you rarely get mosquitos the size of Volkswagens and you can sit on the beach on New Year's Day. In short, supply and demand means that when there's a crazy price, there's generally a great reason for it.
So, yes, some areas have high costs of living and lower salaries in relation to that cost. But I.T. is famous for the fact that we out earn most other professions and, once you get past earning about three times cost of average rent, everything else is gravy. Sure, you reach that point faster elsewhere - but once you do reach it (and you do in I.T.), you keep going even further when the numbers are bigger.
I've watched a lot of friends leave California because they're in other fields and it's just too expensive to live here if you don't earn well. But once you get to the kind of salaries I.T. tends to pay, the cost of rent becomes a relatively minimal part of the total cost of living a great life.
The problem with the smaller places is that they tend to be one horse towns. They usually have one big employer (like Micron in Boise) and a few much smaller companies that rarely hire and that is it. If you moved there to work for the big company and got sick of it or they had a layoff you'd basically have to sell the house and move. Your choices are just too limited in those places. Also the cost of living might be lower but so would your pay. Ok you say? But the cost of cars, plane tickets, computer toys, etc doesn't go down for you. You generally pay the same as the guy in NYC. They aren't going to sell you that cool new car at half price just because you live in East Belch MO.
Now if I could get a job in, say, Grand Junction CO so I could hike in some incredible terrain every weekend I might be willing to make an exception.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
This is off-topic and maybe a pitiful pitch but your company's website doesn't seem to be 100% functional in Firefox, seeing how I work at a software company that specializes in website development... yeah :).
One problem with cost of living arguments is that many items nowadays are priced nationally, not locally. If I want a brand new MacBook Pro, for example, its going to cost the same whether I live in New York City or Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. Same for HDTV sets, and many other things that we geeks like to buy at a much higher rate than the "typical" family whose needs are used to figure cost of living.
This is a great study but there is soo much more that goes in to cost of living. How about paying off student loan debts? Its easier to do with 75k in a more expensive area than 40k in a cheap area. The payments are the same but are a smaller percentage of your budget with a higher income. Also, a car costs the same almost anywhere. Electronics are the same way. A 35k difference is not going to be made up exclusively on cheaper utilities and rent.
I know you meant "Des Moines is just super awesome" as a jab, but it really is a great place to live. Granted, it has terrible weather just like the rest of Iowa, but if you can get past that, it's wonderful. And, I'll have you know, that as of 2004 Des Moines officially employs more people in the insurance industry than any other US city -- Hartford, CT is now the Des Moines of the east. Mind you, that only employs tens of thousands of information technology people, but no worries. Wells Fargo is moving 30,000 jobs here over the next few years. Terrible life for a programmer, I know. Sadly, each year, my salary just keeps going up and up as competition for talented IT people increases.
Really, though, it's a great size (about 400,000 people), has fantastic restaurants for a city its size, great shopping and attracts great entertainment (the Iowa State Fair excepted) Oh, and did I mention that you can get wherever you want to go in a matter of minutes? That's right; the city is spread out enough that traffic is rarely a problem. Well, OK, traffic won't be a problem as soon as they finish the vastly new and improved Intersate 235 through town.
And, if you're smart like me, you live in one of the bigger nearby suburbs (ahem... Ankeny) where the housing is cheap, plentiful, and largely new construction. If that's not your thing, you could live in one of the dozens of new lofts they've built in downtown Des Moines.
It annoys me when people who live on the coasts, and have never lived anywhere else, can't imagine that life in the square states could be anything but hellish. I've got firends and family who live in California, and you couldn't pay me enough to live there. Mind you, there's nowhere else in Iowa where I'd want to live, but Des Moines is, in my estimation, the shiznit. Living in sunny California is not without its problems too. What's that you're paying for gas there? And it takes you how long to get to work? My house has an attached garage, a big yard and is twice the size of your place and you pay three times as much?
Both of the jobs I've had while living in Des Moines have paid quite well relative to the cost of living. I've actually turned down job offers elsewhere -- you know, in the "good" part of the country -- because I simply couldn't live as well there.
But wait! What am I saying? People are going to want to live here and increase the demand for the same supply of housing and then I'll have to pay more! California is the shiznit. Coolest place ever. I'm in Iowa and it's terrible. We have to walk uphill both ways -- in the snow, mind you -- we have blizzards every day. Even in the summer! California's the place. Los Angeles is just super awesome. Off you go!
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Going to church has nothing to do with crime. I'd bet you just about anything that several of the Enron guys were regular churchgoers. It's all a matter of need and opportunity. It sounds like you live in a relatively low population density area, in which pretty much everybody is relatively well off. Those two things are really all you need to make the crime rate plummet.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Do you know why there's no crime? Most of these people go to church!
...
:)
Most spanish people go to church at well, try to lose the sight of your backpack for a second in Barcelona, you'd be surprised
I think it's down to the people themselves, not where they go or what absurd religion they believe in. AL has nice and smart people, the weather is too iffy for the `bad people`. They prefer Florida (godspeed and stay there...)
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
There is absolutely no way that the relationship between morals and church-going is causative and it is contentious whether it even has a correlative effect. Please stop propagating the myth that religion makes people better, it doesn't. This has been proved historically time and time again and continues to be proved in strongly secular countries across the world.
Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people thinks it's a joke; also cool.
The quality of life than many Americans does not require public transportation. In fact I would be a good number actually see public transportation as a sign of where NOT to live.
Some of course will take that and run off spouting racism,bigotry, or whatnot. The simple fact is that at the end of the day many aspire to nothing more than being away from it all. Stand alone housing and visual separation from the "business world - read: minimarts/gas stations/grocery stores" is key to the happiness of many. Sure we want them to still be convienent and a short hop in the car isn't an impediment.
I'm even moving further out simply because where I bought has changed so much in 9 years that its no longer the area I desired to live in. Lots of good people are here but the little businesses have creeped down the road to where its no longer "open".
As for your "pay and arm and a leg to massively pollute". Yeah, whatever. Three dollar, heck even 5 dollar a gallon gas isn't going to change my behaviour and I doubt that it will change that of others who live where I do. Cars are far better today than ever and that simpleton slight of yours is just silly. If I want massive pollution I will go to the big city with its public transportation because even there in the land of so called "enlightened" thinking a great many of them seem to not use that very public transportation they deem "good for others". I can go see the trash piled in alleys and cigarette butts lining the sidewalk. Oh yeah, massively pollute. Cities have no ground to stand on.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Sure, MAYBE the cream of the crop is better (and I say Maybe), but are you going to be hiring Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison or Scott McNealey (or Bill Hewlett, RIP)?
Stanford was a great producer of educated people, but educated people don't necessarily equate to talent on the job. And the gold rush of the late 90s brought a lot of VERY untalented people out of the woodwork and into silicon valley.
The average silicon valley wonk is far below the talent of what you can find in middle America if you just conduct a reasonable candidate search. And the average wonk in silicon valley is paid 40% more.
My experience? I used to interview and hire people across the country for a MAJOR silicon valley-headquartered company. Hiring in Silicon Valley was the hardest spot I had to hire in - not because there wasn't some talent there, but because there were so many wanna-bes who job hop to rack up their salary and hide their deficiencies.
Most spanish people go to church at well, try to lose the sight of your backpack for a second in Barcelona, you'd be surprised ...
Most people in Spain do *not* go to the church, even if they say they are catholic. Less in Barcelona (there are other things to do). Much less the ones taking your backpack (I don't think they go to the mosque, either).
This does not mean that high church attendance implies less crime, only that you don't know what you are saying.
I have a buddy who is a UK citizen, has lived in several contries, and spent his teen & college years in the US (Maine). He recently took a job in Provo, Utah and works in a small tech company with mostly Mormons. He is a big partier and drinker, so I don't know if Utah is really the place for him, but he has no complaints about how he is treated by Mormons. His company is opening up a branch in England and they asked if he'd be willing to be transfered out there and he jumped at the chance, so it worked out good for him.
I once oversaw moving a firms's HQ and IT functions from Silicon Valley to San Antonio, TX because of the "math" some white collar genius put together like this Forbes nonsense. Sure, the "average" wage was one-half of what it was in Palo Alto, but because of the "quality" of local talent, we ended up hiring THREE TIMES as many staff to do the same amount of work. (For the math-challenged, that meant productivity sucked by 50%.) This wasn't just a drain on company resources, but on the few people who DID know their chops and had to hoist it in for the dullards. Those that made the move and saw the disaster had to in turn move completely out of the area to restore sanity to their careers. And the "icing on the cake" is that San Antonio is the only place I've stood hip deep in mud and had sand blow in my face. No thanky-thanky.
This just tell's me that your firm doesn't know how to hire people. There are plenty of talented people in Texas. Heck, there are plenty of talented homegrown people in the Litte Rock, AR area. If your company can't find them, don't blame the area. I personnally believe this applies to all of the US. There are plenty of trainable college grads in most major US cities. If you think the talent/gurus are much better in a tech hot spot, then you are willing to pay a premium for equal talent not better talent. I'd think that most businesses that move to area's where the cost of living is lower end up hiring more people not to do the same amount of work. They hire more people because its cheaper and can get more done if the organization is properly run.
That's odd. Southwest Research Institute is based in San Antonio and although they primarily do a lot of government funded research they have a lot of talented people working for them. There are also a large number of smaller technical companies based in San Antonio. I have a number of friends who still live there working in various tech jobs.
San Antonio is a great place to live if you don't mind the slow pace of the city. It is one of the few cities I've lived in where you can do pretty well for yourself making around $30k. There is also a lot of cultural diversity, and I'm not just talking about the hispanic influence.
I myself would have been happy to stay there after graduating but I just couldn't handle the slow pace that everyone lives at there. Also, the city itself is pretty poor and the roads are in horrible condition, there is a large gap between the rich all bundled away in Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, etc and the rest of the population. The crime there is also relatively high compared to what I've experienced while living in Houston and parts of Southern California. I've had my car broken into at least twice, witnessed a robbery at a gas station, and saw my friend get pistol whipped in the face and pulled out of the window of his car by would-be theives. So, if you're thinking about moving there, buy a gun and stay in well lit areas.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
I think a lot of people have been missing something here. If you work in I/T in Silicon Valley, your wages may be lower, but you also have a low switching cost. On the other hand, if you work in Montanta in I/T your wages may be higher, but there is also a higher switching cost. Example: If you get layed off in Montana, it will take longer to find another job in the I/T field, and if you get laid off in the Silicon Valley, it won't take you as long. This is basic economies of agglomeration. So while it may seem wages are higher/lower in one area or another, what is really happening is that firms in Montana have to pay more because of the high switching cost associated with finding a new job in the field. More than likely the person will end up having to move and/or spend some time unemployed.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. -Elliot Carver
The criteria for the list is flawed. Looking at the number of AP tests students take doesn't indicate the quality of education, just that kids are encouraged to take AP exams. Look at the E & E% score of the #2 school. Even though the school averaged almost 10 test taken/senior, only 50% of seniors passed a single test!
My biggest issue is how the scoring ignores the truly best schools. From the FAQ: "The Challenge Index is designed to honor schools that have done the best job in persuading average students to take college-level courses and tests. It does not work with schools that have no, or almost no, average students."
When I looked at the list I was surprised I didn't see my old high school on the list, then I went through the FAQ and saw schools with average SAT scores over 1300 were excluded (I thought the list was for the top schools?). Even with that I think my school would have been artificially low on the list, since many students skipped some AP exams simply because they would not receive credit (eg MIT does not give credit for AP Chem or CompSci)
I do agree with some of the reasoning behind the list: "Studies by U.S. Department of Education senior researcher Clifford Adelman in 1999 and 2005 showed that the best predictor of college graduation was not good high-school grades or test scores but whether or not a student had an intense academic experience in high school. "; but there has to be better criteria.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Who cares what your neighbors believe?
It matters if you kids go to the same school, and they start trying to push ID. Or ban alcohol sales on Sunday. Or prohibit just about anything else they find 'unethical.'
Oh? So you have deer, pheasants, foxes, hawks and other assorted wildlife for neighbors?
/you/ want is what everyone wants.
Why would I want wild animals as neighbors? But yes we do have fox and hawks around.
Fishing on a lake with no one else in sight?
I find fishing an mindnumbing waste of time. But I do have a lake which I can go boating on, or a beach which I can even walk to. The larger beaches may be crowed, but the smaller ones are empty or have only a few people.
Woods to ramble in?
We also have trees here, believe or not. There's a wildlife preserve, so you can't go in it, but there are woods nearby, with a bike path through some. If you mean a huge forest, I had that growing up; there's only so much you can do in the woods by yourself..
Hunting within walking distance?
I don't hunt, so its not a big deal. Hunting seems rather pointless to me anyway; I fail to see how stalking something to shoot it is fun, especially if there's no chance of you really being in danger..
Neighborhoods where you know everyone personally, and their back door is always open for visitors?
Most people suck, why would I want to know them personally? Why would I want to visit them, I have everything I want in my own home. If I want to visit someone, I visit my friends, not someone that just happened to move in next to me.
Don't automatically assume that what
Where did I say that I was speaking for everyone? I wasn't, and my post was trying to illistrate that yes, some people DO like living in a city.
I always see these comparisons of the best places to live, how to get the most value for your dollar, etc. In most places where the cost of living is very high, it's usually because a lot of people want to live there. Why? Because it's a great place to live. Places like San Diego, San Francisco and Boston are beautiful cities which offer a style of living and things to do that can't be found in Idaho or Alabama. If all you want to do is save your pennies and have a big house, then these are good places to live. But money is most definately not everything.