Good wages AND low housing/cost of living

[pwright1]

I like Houston and Dallas. My cousin had 2 job offers, 1 in Seattle and the other in Houston. For some reason Houstons' offer was $8000 more. Houston is big, diverse, fun with great restaurants, an up and coming downtown, culture, great shopping plus its near the Gulf. Housing cost is so cheap imo. Also compared to other big cities you can find reasonably priced housing close to downtown or uptown. Not way out in the middle of nowhere. Hot and humid summers but mild nice falls and winters.

[Need_affordable_home]

I was thinking the same. I just applied for two jobs, one paying $32.5k a year and the other $38k a year. Both are in south FL and I cant afford to stay nor do I want to. I can work for the time being while looking for jobs in a location like Dallas. Houses are very affordable, small older houses can be had for $50k and huge new houses for $150k to $200k.

[MattDen]

I would say Des Moines (with high paying insurance jobs and a very low cost of housing might be one city like that)

Also, Rochester, Minnesota with its highly payed medical jobs and low cost of living is another one.

I would also add unionized heavily manufacturing cities to this such as: Appleton (Wisconsin) Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Wichita (Kansas) these cities have low population growth, so lots of housing available and a low cost of living and at the same time lots of highly payed unionized jobs.

Indianapolis, Indiana
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
These cities have a very low cost of living and have jobs that are fairly high paying compared to the national average but the unemployment rates tend to be rather high in these 3 cities

[heaton]

Nebraska and Texas have low cost of living, and cheap homes, but their taxes will get you.
My brother lives right outside of Houston in a 380 thousand dollar house and pays $8,000 a year in taxes.

[Need_affordable_home]

Originally Posted by heaton

Nebraska and Texas have low cost of living, and cheap homes, but their taxes will get you.
My brother lives right outside of Houston in a 380 thousand dollar house and pays $8,000 a year in taxes.

Then he could sell that house and get a cheaper house and pay a third in taxes. He lives in an upper class house when $100-150k will get you a nice big middle class house. $380k is insane!

[irongrl77]

I live in Lafayette, IN and I would consider the job opportunities to be good and the housing is certainly reasonable! You can get a NICE house here for under $200,000 easy. Lots of jobs available with Purdue and companies like Eli Lilly, Catapillar, and Subaru/Toyota are all in Lafayette. I also love that we have 4 seasons a year and are an hours drive to Indianapolis and about 2 hours from Chicago. I don't really know what more you could ask for! But then again, I'm Indiana born and raised so I'm a little biased.

Ashley

[KT13]

I would check out Atlanta and Richmond, VA. Atlanta is a popular destination as it has lots of jobs in many industries.

Richmond has quite a few corporations with campuses in the suburbs and its small downtown. It has its share of cute historical places and cobble stone streets and nice little neighborhoods where you can get a house within walking distance to places. It's not a big city by any means, and there are some really pretty areas there if you like trees and rolling hills. I had friends that lived close to one of their major malls in a very woodsy area, which still was very close to everything and to the river and it was a very affordable house. You can have a good standard of living there and the weather is pretty mild. There are seasons and still some snow in winter, but it's not that cold as Northeast and Midwest and summers although hot and humid aren't as long as Sunbelt. It's also close to DC and Virginia Beach which is quite nice for a day trip (if you are willing to deal with traffic of course).