I have to disagree with that pretty much completely.
I moved to Minneapolis from the Northeast 15 years ago and from the very beginning I felt I should have done it 10 years earlier.
The real estate is lower by far. Even with higher heating & cooling costs in my first, poorly insulated, house (built in 1951) in a desirable area in Southwest Minneapolis, the total cost was less than living in Connecticut. Although I didn't use them often, I had buses two blocks from my house. My commute to work in the outer suburbs averaged 25-30 minutes.
There is simply no way "you'll lose all the money you're supposed to be saving." At one point I had two car payments and even all that combined with my housing costs, the total was still less that I would be paying in Connecticut for a small house. Of course real estate in Mpls has gone up, but it's also increased in all those other places people are looking at.
Could I make more money in the Bay area, or Seattle, NYC, etc? No doubt about that, but my quality of life would be far lower. I lived in NYC for years: I'd much rather be here. And I think that's really the key.
More than cost, it boils down to "where do you want to live?" For some, it's worth the astronomical costs to live in coastal cities, for the rest of us we prefer a slower paced life and get the benefit of lower cost of living along with it.
I moved to Minneapolis from the Northeast 15 years ago and from the very beginning I felt I should have done it 10 years earlier.
The real estate is lower by far. Even with higher heating & cooling costs in my first, poorly insulated, house (built in 1951) in a desirable area in Southwest Minneapolis, the total cost was less than living in Connecticut. Although I didn't use them often, I had buses two blocks from my house. My commute to work in the outer suburbs averaged 25-30 minutes.
There is simply no way "you'll lose all the money you're supposed to be saving." At one point I had two car payments and even all that combined with my housing costs, the total was still less that I would be paying in Connecticut for a small house. Of course real estate in Mpls has gone up, but it's also increased in all those other places people are looking at.
Could I make more money in the Bay area, or Seattle, NYC, etc? No doubt about that, but my quality of life would be far lower. I lived in NYC for years: I'd much rather be here. And I think that's really the key.
More than cost, it boils down to "where do you want to live?" For some, it's worth the astronomical costs to live in coastal cities, for the rest of us we prefer a slower paced life and get the benefit of lower cost of living along with it.