Bay Area RN chiming in...
You're definitely going to pay the "beach tax" if you are working as a nurse in SD. $46/hr is about half what you get as an experienced bedside RN working in a hospital in the Bay. I think you mentioned it might even be a SNF (shudder). Those sweet patient ratios in California travel nurses talk about outside of CA are true, but do not apply to SNFs or LTCs, only hospitals. Lower acuity facilities have a serious problem getting and keeping licensed staff, primarily because the wages paid in those roles do not match the COL. So mgmt has to pick up the slack or the bedside staff suffer and hence the patients do as well. In general, working in LTC in CA is not at all like working in a hospital, the wages and laws are completely different. So be careful before you commit to something outside of a hospital.
Maybe, hopefully your situation you are looking at is better, but if you are serious about FIRE and you are both nurses (RNs, BSN better of course), you can easily pull 250-300k/year working in the Bay (lots more if you are the motivated OT working nurse type). Nurses are retiring in droves right now and hospitals need nurses. I work 3, 12s on days which leaves a lot of time for the fun stuff of California. I surf weekly, ride my bike 75-100 miles a week and can walk in a nice open space a ten minute walk from my house. Drivers here are courteous and oblige by the new 3' law (for the most part).
It's not exactly a great time to be a buyer in our region right now, but it never really is if you are coming from other parts of the country. You could certainly rent until you figure out what/where you want to be. We did that for a few years.
The RN wages in SD are very low by California standards. I work with several who all ended up in the Bay because they could make so much more. One other thing about SD i
s the climate even a few miles away from the coast is like a blast furnace most of the year. It's more like living in Arizona than SoCal. is there are significant differences in climate the further you get inland. It can be much warmer, so be sure to look at meteorological data and not listen to random people on the internets interpretations of how hot it can be. And where the climate is nicest is where housing is highest. Not sure what your kid status is... but you can live in some of the lower cost east bay communities, something like Benicia or Martinez and have a reasonable commute to many hospitals in the East Bay and be making that serious FIRE coin and be surrounded by world class road biking and about an hour from a beach (Marin County/SF/Sonoma). Check this site out for a sampling of our riding...
http://bestrides.org/rides-by-region/#baFeel free to PM me if you want more info.
Edited to add: I lived in Chicago 2001-2004, working in South Loop. You should definitely move out west.