Six figures in the rust belt is the life. I live in a beautiful historic home for a tenth of the cost of the ones shown in the article. I can afford to have my wife stay home while our kids are small. I'm dumping close to a quarter of my income into retirement savings despite still having significant student debt. I'm close to family members to help with the kids (a problem for my childhood friends who fled to the coasts after college.)
People talk about amenities being better on the coasts, but I'm an hour from downtown Chicago, which is easily the second-most spectacular urban center in North America. Plus I'm close to great weekend destinations like St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Nashville. As for outdoor amenities, I'll put the great lakes up against any other region of the country when it comes to natural beauty. Western Michigan has some of the nicest beaches in the country. It's one of the many hidden-gems of the flyover states. Yeah the winters suck in the upper midwest, but they also end and the summers are spectacular.
You don't even have to make six figures to have a good life in the mid-west. My first job was in a mid-sized Michigan town. Starter homes were 150% of my annual pre-tax salary. Schools were very good. Of course the town couldn't offer what a big city could, but it had enough.
My boss was making under $200,000/yr and he was living a similar life to someone making over $1M on the coasts.
I lived in Buffalo for a while and can attest to the accuracy of this account. The great lakes region is beautiful and underappreciated, and in many ways superior to SeattleSanAngeles, and not just as a matter of cost.
Amen to that. Every time somebody starts talking about making the Midwest some sort of Silicon Prairie I just wanna smack them and ask why we want that sort of nonsense and baggage coming out and dragging us down and then having transplants act entitled to the right to live here.
