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Things are great, better than they ever have been.
That is, if you ignore
1) Cost of housing far beyond inflation
2) Cost of health care far beyond inflation
3) Cost of education far beyond inflation
Everyone will need #2 at some point. Everyone has to have #1. You generally need #3 for any hope of a decent job that enables you to purchase #'s 1 and 2. It's possible to make it without a college degree, but getting harder.
But we have cheap Korean HDTVs and we have internet on smartphones. Yay!?
That housing is cheap in some other part of the country like Indianapolis does not help me. My job is in Oregon, not Indiana. I just looked and there are no jobs for me in Indiana at the moment. If there were, they would probably pay less commensurate to the housing costs.
I'm in education and there is a limit to how much of a premium the public sector pays due to CoL. Typically schools in low CoL regions use lower housing costs as an excuse to low-ball salaries. I could have gotten a number of jobs back in my home-state Texas, but they pay 10-15K less. I could make that much as a bartender in Texas. Housing is indeed less there, but not 15K a year less. I've rejected offers like that in the past.
Things are great, better than they ever have been.
That is, if you ignore
1) Cost of housing far beyond inflation
2) Cost of health care far beyond inflation
3) Cost of education far beyond inflation
Everyone will need #2 at some point. Everyone has to have #1. You generally need #3 for any hope of a decent job that enables you to purchase #'s 1 and 2. It's possible to make it without a college degree, but getting harder.
But we have cheap Korean HDTVs and we have internet on smartphones. Yay!?
That housing is cheap in some other part of the country like Indianapolis does not help me. My job is in Oregon, not Indiana. I just looked and there are no jobs for me in Indiana at the moment. If there were, they would probably pay less commensurate to the housing costs.
I'm in education and there is a limit to how much of a premium the public sector pays due to CoL. Typically schools in low CoL regions use low housing as an excuse to low-ball salaries. I could have gotten a number of jobs back in my home-state Texas, but they pay 10-15K less. I could make that much as a damn bartender. Housing is indeed less there, but not 15K a year less. I've rejected offers like that in the past.
Things are great, better than they ever have been.
That is, if you ignore
1) Cost of housing far beyond inflation
2) Cost of health care far beyond inflation
3) Cost of education far beyond inflation
Everyone will need #2 at some point. Everyone has to have #1. You generally need #3 for any hope of a decent job that enables you to purchase #'s 1 and 2. It's possible to make it without a college degree, but getting harder.
But we have cheap Korean HDTVs and we have internet on smartphones. Yay!?
That housing is cheap in some other part of the country like Indianapolis does not help me. My job is in Oregon, not Indiana. I just looked and there are no jobs for me in Indiana at the moment. If there were, they would probably pay less commensurate to the housing costs.
I'm in education and there is a limit to how much of a premium the public sector pays due to CoL. Typically schools in low CoL regions use low housing as an excuse to low-ball salaries. I could have gotten a number of jobs back in my home-state Texas, but they pay 10-15K less. I could make that much as a damn bartender. Housing is indeed less there, but not 15K a year less.
If you can't find a job in an entire state, yet complain about where you live, you need to enter a less specialized field or be less picky.
Things are great, better than they ever have been.
That is, if you ignore
1) Cost of housing far beyond inflation 2) Cost of health care far beyond inflation
3) Cost of education far beyond inflation
Everyone will need #2 at some point. Everyone has to have #1. You generally need #3 for any hope of a decent job that enables you to purchase #'s 1 and 2. It's possible to make it without a college degree, but getting harder.
But we have cheap Korean HDTVs and we have internet on smartphones. Yay!?
That housing is cheap in some other part of the country like Indianapolis does not help me. My job is in Oregon, not Indiana. I just looked and there are no jobs for me in Indiana at the moment. If there were, they would probably pay less commensurate to the housing costs.
I'm in education and there is a limit to how much of a premium the public sector pays due to CoL. Typically schools in low CoL regions use lower housing costs as an excuse to low-ball salaries. I could have gotten a number of jobs back in my home-state Texas, but they pay 10-15K less. I could make that much as a damn bartender. Housing is indeed less there, but not 15K a year less. I've rejected offers like that in the past.
True story.
My health insurance has almost doubled.....
Yet I went to get a prescription the other day...
$60
How in the Hell do I pay more now for prescriptions that ever before under the guise of Obamacare??
Even when I talked to the nurses & docs about it-
They all agreed-
We got screwed by this scam
If you can't find a job in an entire state, yet complain about where you live, you need to enter a less specialized field or be less picky.
I'm sure there are some, just none posted to the site I briefly looked at this time. I am in a specialized field, however.
That said, lower CoL typically means lower salaries, so wherever you go, there you are.
The way to beat that is to purchase a house in your high CoL area that you can afford, probably a major fixer, wait a number of years, sell high, cash out your equity and live low-cost or rent-free in a place like Indiana or Iowa. But that doesn't advantage young people, does it? It advantages people who are established.
I seriously considered Iowa because selling my house would have almost bought me some pretty nice farm-houses there in cash, but ultimately my wife did not want to live there. She went to school there and doesn't like tornadoes.
Buffett is correct....we didn't have internet, PC, smart phones, youtube, etc. when we were younger. Young people need to quit crying and enjoy their good fortune.
YouTube and smart phones make up for perpetually stagnant wages and the disappearance of manufacturing in this country? It used to be that a family could live a comfortable, middle-class life on one manufacturing salary. Now there are basically no manufacturing jobs to be had and the manufacturing sector hasn't been replaced by anything. Millennials have to work multiple jobs just to pay their half or third of rent for a shared apartment and don't make enough to ever get ahead. Buffet is just another detached, oblivious old-timer, and he's clearly not alone.
I'm sure there are some, just none posted to the site I briefly looked at this time. I am in a specialized field, however.
That said, lower CoL typically means lower salaries, so wherever you go, there you are.
The way to beat that is to purchase a house in your high CoL area that you can afford, probably a major fixer, wait a number of years, sell high, cash out your equity and live low-cost or rent-free in a place like Indiana or Iowa. But that doesn't advantage young people, does it? It advantages people who are established.
I seriously considered Iowa because selling my house would have almost bought me some pretty nice farm-houses there in cash, but ultimately my wife did not want to live there. She went to school there and doesn't like tornadoes.
Assuming it appreciates rapidly.
A better way is to rent cheaply in the high COL area and stockpile your money from the high-paying job, then buy when you move to the LCOL area.
I grew up in a place with tornadoes too (Arkansas) and would not be afraid to go back. Unlike hurricanes, they only hit a very narrow path so it is far, far less risky than the risk of a hurricane if you go to Miami.
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