Hi all,
My wife and I (both early 30's, no kids yet) live in Seattle, and are hitting a point where we're feeling ready to move on to a different city. We've had enough of the endless grey during the winters, and it's increasingly/outrageously expensive just to exist here. One of the cities we're considering moving to sometime later this year or early next year is Nashville for a handful of reasons.
However, my biggest concern is the pay cut I would have to take if I were to move there.
Here's an overview of what I make now, in Seattle:
- Currently, in Seattle, my gross annual income is $89k
- My net take home pay is ~$4760/month, after taxes, health insurance, 401k funding, etc.
- Our monthly rent is ~$1600 for a 1BR, which I know is stupidly expensive, but it's actually not too bad compared to what else is available. Welcome to the Seattle housing market :( We're dying to get into a 2BR or, ideally, a house since we've long outgrown our current place, but it's impossible to afford on our budget, unfortunately. I try to keep housing costs around ~30% of my take home pay, we're currently at ~34%. Not great, not the worst, either. But it's only going to go up the longer we live here.
- I'm putting ~$1000/mo. into my 401k (VFIFX).
- Over the last 12 months or so, I've put between $1000 and $1500/mo. toward my student loans, and just paid them off last week. So now that money will go toward saving up for a down payment on a house, stashing it in my Barclay's online savings account @ ~1% interest, on top of our emergency fund to boost the meager interest earnings as much as possible.
- $19k in our emergency fund. I work in a field where layoffs happen fairly often, and I like the peace of mind a larger emergency fund provides.
I'm not providing info about my wife's income since she works as a freelance photographer and the numbers are way too unpredictable to base anything off of. So let's just use mine.
My job:
I work as an Art Director and have worked in advertising agencies, design studios, and in-house companies over the course of my career. My current gross salary of $89k is pretty average for my position, nationally. In Nashville, however, it would likely be difficult to get paid what I do now. I would expect to get paid between $45k to $70k, gross, per year. I've heard stories of people in higher positions than mine making only $60k/year, which is terrifying because in Seattle that same position would make easily over $100k. But! That figure also largely depends on which agency a person works at, time of year they're hired, etc. Lots of variables, really.
Some Googling tells me that the cost of living in Nashville is about 30% less than Seattle, on average, and that housing is roughly 46% less, depending on the area of town. Several of those online salary comparison calculators say that I would need to make between $60k and $64k to maintain the same standard of living as I have now. But I have no idea if those calculators are accurate at all.
My concern/question:
Assuming I make a salary proportional to the decreased cost of living in Nashville (which kind of seems like a big assumption to me right now?), I would expect that that would also decrease the amount of my 401k contributions as well as the amount of money for a down payment on a house that we're just starting to save up for. I'd like to assume we'll want to save ~$50k so that we have a 20% down payment on a $250k house someday. $250k is definitely a reasonable house price in Nashville as of right now, and impossible to find in Seattle.
Since the Nashville housing market seems to be in the earlier stages of taking off, I'd really like to have that down payment money ASAP so that we can buy earlier in the rise. So is it dumb to move to a place where I could be paid considerably less, since I won't be able to save as much toward retirement and shorter term savings goals like a down payment? Best case scenario, the percentages might be proportional, but the actual dollar amount would be less.
I hope this all made sense... Any thoughts, advice, words of wisdom, etc.? I'm at the point of thinking myself in circles over it and need an outside perspective.
Thank you!