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The best jobs are always in the major cities, which are the places I want to be most. For years I was stuck in a crappy low paying job in a crappy redneck small town.
I have a brutal job. It's high stress and a lot of hours. But I'm financially comfortable and I get to live almost wherever I want because I work from home.
Now, I don't exactly hate my job - it comes with a lot of other perks. My coworkers are awesome, my schedule is flexible, and occasional business trips mean I get to travel back to see my family on a regular basis.
But what keeps me in this job is the fact that I get to love in a part of the country that I absolutely love while making a really good income.
Right now I'm in a job that is okay and kinda pays the bills and living in a place I HATE!
So, as of this very moment I would like to have a job I can tolerate in a place I want to live. I can always keep my eyes open for another job. It's not so easy to move.
But, I've also had terrible jobs in places I like and that sucks too.
Right there with you. Moved to a place where we don't fit at all for a job that got me under contract and had basically lied about the duties and requirements. Now I have a job I really like, but it's in a cultural desert, so outside of work there's not much to do or to look at, and I can't believe how hard that is on one's outlook. Travel is a great way to deal during the meantime, but I won't make the mistake again when it comes time to settle elsewhere.
You spend a lot of time at a job so you would want to like doing it, but on the other hand you want to come home from that job and enjoy your home and enjoy your free time in the location you live.
Happiness/displeasure at one of those can spill into the others, unfortunately. Money isn't everything though.
I think I would pick love the place where you live, especially if you have a family. I'd feel awful if my family loved the place I didn't. Plus it is harder to change locations than jobs, IMO.
From personal experience I can with certainty say that the place of residence is, to me, far more important than job satisfaction. Full disclosure; I never held a job that sucked, and I have had jobs such as stocking shelves at a grocery chain at night or frontline customer service where I had to put up with very unreasonable people, but every job I had was somewhere between good and awesome.
Life is what you make it, and it's 10% of **** that happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.
Attitude is everything.
So pick a place where you like to live and then find something to do.
Whether you hate or love your job, things can always change. New management can come in, you could get a new boss, or they might change your duties or even transfer you to another location. These factors can make it either better or worse and you don't have a lot of control over this. You do have much more control over where you choose to live and the quality of your life outside of work.
I've lived in Houston all 30 years of my life and there's nothing great about the city itself besides an abundance of jobs and a relatively low COL. It is a hot, humid, polluted, congested city that sprawls for miles and miles in every direction, flat as a pancake and completely devoid of any charm (except for the museum district which is nice). If you want scenery and natural beauty, you won't find it here.
I have family here and a stable job that lets me invest half of my paycheck for retirement. Once my parents are dead and I retire (aiming for early-50s), I'm moving to Seattle. A tiny studio apartment an hour outside of town will be fine, as long as I can reach the mountains within a couple of hours. I just love the Cascades. Recently, I hiked halfway up Mt. Rainier and hiked around some of the trails in the Northern Cascades National Park. I would probably spend the majority of my retirement hiking around in that area until I am no longer physically able to do so.
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