I get that the Bay Area is nice, but a lot of expensive housing is expensive because of its proximity to high-paying jobs. If you don't need one of those, you can live more cheaply.
(Unfortunately, proximity to smart, creative people also seems to correlate with housing costs. I wonder what US cities have the best "proximity to interesting people to living expense" ratio?)
I think Mr. Money Mustache lives in some Colorado suburb, and he was able to buy a nicer house for less money specifically because it's not in the immediate vicinity of a major economic hub.
> I wonder what US cities have the best "proximity to interesting people to living expense" ratio
I wonder what place, worldwide, city or not, has the best "proximity to interesting people" : cost-of-living ratio. I'm at a place in my life where I'd be willing to both immigrate and learn a language if it meant finding myself in this century's Venice.
I don't know about worldwide, but don't believe what you've been told about U.S. flyover country. Understand that when somebody says a state is a "red state," we're still talking about a ~45% liberal population, almost all of which is concentrated in cities.
Your Kansas Citys and Cincinnatis and so on are full of interesting people. And they have a lot of what you'd expect from larger coastal cities, albeit on a smaller scale.
And, despite what the HN crowd thinks, they got the WWW 25 years ago there, too.
Probably true enough, but isn't very useful information to me: I don't live in the US in the first place, so it's not easier for me to pick a US city than one anywhere else. :)
He lives in Longmount, CO, which is 15 miles northeast of Boulder, CO. He might have picked one of the best "proximity to interesting people to living expense" ratios places.
One of his ideas he highlights is to be choosy where you live and be open to moving. He is from eastern Canada originally and highly recommends the Colorado Front range cities and towns for the quality of life. The Denver area has lots of high tech and quite diverse. Oil and gas, satellites, computers, mining, scientific research, and a small VC/startup scene in Boulder. You can build a lot of housing on the nice and flat great plains and still see the mountains.
(Unfortunately, proximity to smart, creative people also seems to correlate with housing costs. I wonder what US cities have the best "proximity to interesting people to living expense" ratio?)
I think Mr. Money Mustache lives in some Colorado suburb, and he was able to buy a nicer house for less money specifically because it's not in the immediate vicinity of a major economic hub.