I must have misunderstood:
Cause everyone else is also doing that so a lot of those smaller cities and outlying areas are starting get the same cost issues.
There is definitely work that is not so portable, but I would also contend that there is other work available in these lower cost of living areas. I’m also saying this as someone who moved away from my hometown, because I did not see any opportunities for me to do the work that I wanted to do. So, I get it.
There is definitely work and art and shit to do after 6PM in this 10k population town. Get your friends to move with you, and that’s covered, too. Or, you know, make some new friends. And if there’s things that are only available in a major metropolitan area, it’s not likely the sort of thing that you would be doing every day, anyway, so an hour drive to get there ain’t all bad. Especially when you consider the short commutes you’ve got to get to work.
Look, I’m not saying the arrangement would work for everyone. I am saying, though, that it would work for quite a few people that just dismiss the idea out of hand.
Which is fine. But ignores the costs of changing careers, which if you’re already economically pressed can often be prohibitive. Plus in places with limited job markets these things often pay much less. I mentioned paralegals in another reply for a reason, back when I was actively seeking work around here (instead of greener pastures) I saw a couple postings for paralegals that seemed to linger for a while.
The pay range for a paralegal according to the googles is $43-75k. The couple jobs advertised here paid like $27-32. Which is about what I made as a bartender, but would require additional schooling i couldn’t afford as a bartender.
My perspective on this is heavily influenced on the fact that I grew up in (and currently live in) a failing fishing and farming town in the NY Metro area. The area has become a tourist mecca, the major industries are currently construction and service/food bev. Most residents here are part time seasonal. The average age is over 60. Most people who don’t own a business, work for government, or construction or in food/bev actually make a 2 hour commute towards or into NYC. Which I did for a while.
A lot of people have a lot of difficulty understanding how limited the job market is in huge chunks of this country. Even affluent ones.
It could go either way. I like to quote Malcolm Harris from “Kids These Days” on the topic:
If, as blockbuster audiences seem to both fear and relish, America is quickly headed for full-fledged dystopia, it will have gone through us Millenials first, and we will have become the first generation of true American fascists. On the other hand, were someone to push the American oligarchy off its ledge, the shove seems likely to come from this side of the generation gap, and we will have become the first generation of successful American revolutionaries. The stakes really are that high.
I love that movie.
Im 36, and I never had any equity.
I’m still paying my student debt and probably will be for the next decade or more, and I’ve rented my entire life because I can’t afford to buy a house, though at this point now that I understand how Equity works and I don’t think the housing market will explode again quite the way it did at least anytime soon, I am looking to get a house next.
I don’t think that everything that has happened to me in life is somehow bad fate because I’m a millennial but I’m not going to lie I feel like I have been fucked over many times by the generation above me, I am being fucked now by the ignorant among us making a man like Trump undo a lot of decades of good work, and I am worried about taking care of my parents soon and one of them lost most of their life savings in the recession, and have since become an alcoholic.
So yeah for some people the article cap is kind of true.
I feel like I have been permanently held back by everything that has happened to my kind, I am beginning to doubt I will ever be able to afford to have kids, and I imagine myself growing old with no one to pass on a multitude of skills to.
Fuck the boomers. And fuck all the good that was left by many of the ignorant ones voting for Trump and making things even worse
Yup! Me too, at 30 I’m looking at it, and I think to myself: It’s irresponsible for me to have kids. I’d never be able to afford to give them an enriched life. I’d be dooming them to grow up and live in a world with a destroyed global climate.
“Millenials are killing the family” man, no. The boomers destroying the economic opportunity of future generations has made building families seem like a terribly irresponsible and untenably expensive thing to do.
OOPS, our whole society is based on a zero-sum pyramid scheme 
Well, we moved our family out of super high priced Vancouver to a small town about 10 years ago and I can say definitively that it was a great choice for us.
Lower cost of living was one factor, but being in a smaller town made for a much more economically diverse social life than the city. In the city we tended to socialize with people in our rough professional/educational/age demographic, while in the town I have friends ranging from 21 to 75 in all sorts of lives.
I find it extremely refreshing, and I also found that the cross pollination of experiences and approaches/ideas about work created whole new options for my own work life. There are professional limitations to smaller towns, but there are also huge opportunities to be creative in how you make a living.
It took us a long time to get out of the idea that city life has ‘all the things I like to do’, but the reality is that most of those things become rare/never once you have kids anyway, and other things become very appealing as you age as well.
Or be “lucky” enough to have your pension dry up or disappear, or have one of those chronic illnesses that aren’t really expensive but fall under the fine print of health insurance. Even the best financial planning can’t predict the greed of the top capitalists, and what trickles down from that greed.
I do too. It’s one of my top 10, easily.
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