We moved from a moderately high COL to a very low COL area for a job. One of the deceptive things about low COL places is that part of what you pay for in HCOLs is that they reduce externalities that cost money....
HCOLs typically have more free entertainment options including libraries, parks, proximity to national parks, free concerts, and so forth. LCOL, not so much. So you will pay more for entertainment than you would elsewhere.
Most things that are marketed nationwide cost the same in a LCOL as they do in HCOL but salaries are less (for example, my laptop costs the same wherever I buy it). So that is another sneaky charge to the balance sheet.
I say this to point out that there is no free lunch. If you are likely to want clean water and a crime-free environment, you will have to pay for it. Similarly, if you want well-staffed emergency services, that costs money too. Entertainment -- make your own at home or do without.
I do not regret moving to Memphis. Because we are in fields that companies nationwide compete for, our salaries more than keep pace with the COL and we invested the difference. However, we cannot move to California or Boston or Los Angeles and expect the same standard of living. I don't think we could even move back to Denver if we wanted to (which we don't). We plan to move out of the Crime Vortex that is Memphis, but our options are a bit limited because of our choice to live in a LCOL.
Agreed. I grew up in a slightly high-COL area in Florida and moved to a ruralish low-COL area in North Carolina approximately 9 years ago. I've endured it for this long, but now I'm desperate to get back home.
In my current LCOL area:
- Salaries are low and job opportunities are limited.
- As a veterinarian, I see far more patients who are neglected than well-cared-for.... which not only impacts me financially, but also depresses the heck out of me.
- Due to a lack of parks and other public spaces, anytime that we want to "get out of house" involves eating out at some overpriced chain restaurant. (Unless we have a full day free and decide to drive 1.5 hrs each way to the mountains.... which seemed super-awesome when I first moved here, but the idea of spending 3+ hours in the car with a 3-year-old just for a day hike means that we don't do it very often anymore.)
- High gas costs because everything is at least 20+ minutes away by car.
- The overwhelming majority of roads are narrow, two-lane roads full of potholes and blind curves, so biking is out of the question unless I want to drive 45 minutes each way to our area's one 10-mile round-trip bike path.
- Schools are awful. Horrendous. Safe, but totally ineffective at educating and very few people go on to college. Think Appalachia, not ghetto.
In my higher COL hometown:
- "Getting out of the house" typically involved a trip to a park, a walk on the beach at sunset, a picnic dinner on the beach, a family bike ride around the neighborhood, or other free/low-cost activities.
- If you do want to eat out, there are lots of local places with lower costs and more variety. (True story: My husband wanted to go out to eat "somewhere fun" last night. We left the house with no clear destination in mind and ended up driving around for 1.5 hours before finally settling on Salsarita's, which is like Moe's/Chipotle/etc, because there really isn't anything interesting in our town to eat. I was searching online as he drove, hoping to come up with someplace we hadn't heard of, but there wasn't anyplace and he kept swearing there would be something interesting just around the corner. There wasn't.)
- Better salaries.
- Travel times can be high during tourist season, but otherwise much lower than where we currently live.
- Amazing public schools.
- Depending on where in town you live/work, there is the potential for bike commuting. And even if you don't bike commute, there's plenty of opportunities for recreational biking (which I enjoy).... state parks within 15-20 minutes that have miles and miles of trails, many roads with bike lanes, a 30-mile greenway, etc.
My husband keeps getting sticker shock every time I show him the price of houses in my hometown, but I'm trying to get him to grasp how much less we'd spend on other areas of life. Fingers crossed.