Quote Originally Posted by CavSct1983 View Post
I was looking at Rapid City. Housing costs are not drastically lower and the only real IT job I could find at the time was for Strider sports (the little kid bike company). They wanted a generalist (SQL DB, Network, and Sys admin w/ experience etc.). Salary? 20-24 dollars/hr. I laughed.
Do what the Commiefornians did...

Sell your house with a ton of equity. Move. Buy new house for cash and have a similar lifestyle with less cost requiring less income. Less income also means less taxes.

Or invest it and let it help supplement a lower salary. Buy a rental property (again, for cash) and cash flow $800-1K/month.

I know we're all different, but I put a $2K check in the mail each month for my mortgage (extra principal payment, the required is much lower than that). So not having that mortgage means I could make $24K less each year. But the cost of making that $24K is much higher than $24K. Figure taxes and such and I probably need to make around $30K to bring home $24K net to pay housing. So I could do without $30,000 in salary if I had a paid off house.

Can you tell I have the same thoughts as some of you?