> Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k

Or in my case, a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of $850.

We paid ~$125k for ours, in a semi-rural area, last year.

It blows my mind that people would prefer to live in the Valley or elsewhere. I put in my five years in a higher COL area (Charlottesville, VA) to build my earning potential - and then I moved back to where I grew up as soon as I was confident that I could hold down a well-paying remote dev position and could get another one if the need arose.

The disparity between the coasts and "middle America" is insane. Working for a company based in the LA area, I make literally 2-3x what my colleagues are making working for local companies - while my employer pays me probably around half of what they'd have to pay for similar talent local to them.

Very few people in the South are making 6 figs out of college, even fewer are able to save six figures a year out of college. People in the bay can do that.

And that assumes you want a 5 bedroom house, I have zero interest in that right now. Too much space to take care of. Why would I do that?

And why would I go somewhere with fewer things to do. I attend social events 2-3 times a week. I've checked elsewhere, that would drop to 2x a month in Atlanta and less in a less populated area, unless I picked up more hobbies.

What social events do you enjoy that you don’t classify as hobbies? Eg what social events does sv have that Atlanta doesn’t? Are you counting tech as all encompassing lifestyle?

They are hobbies, my point is just that currently my hobbies (social dance, among others) have a large enough presence that I could literally attend a different social partner dance event every night of the week while sticking to blues and swing. I'd be double booked most nights. Now I don't do that because they're spread all over the bay (SF, Oakland, mid peninsula and South Bay, hell there's even one in Sacramento), but there are enough close to me that I can do 2-3 a week no issue.

In Atlanta theres a couple things a month. Anywhere super rural that isn't a college town, I'd be lucky to find dance partners my age.

I'd maybe pick up other hobbies again (I used to play magic the gathering but stopped in college, FNM is in a lot of places), but it's not the same.

oh come on in atlanta there's a fun weekly swing dance in a creepy cabin in the woods. But true, it's nothing like the bay area.

> Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures

This isn't true in the slightest. You can easily make double or more in a top tier tech city like SF/SV as you can in the south. My salary is about 7X higher than when I first started in tech over a decade ago at a smaller IT consulting firm (and note that my starting salary was decent for the area, not horribly low-balled). There's no way that would have happened had I stayed where I was instead of moving to a top tier tech city offering the highest salaries.

I'm saving twice as much per year as the average developer in the country makes. That's definitely not possible in the south.

> SV math does not work out

Sure it does. For one, they're taking home an extra thousand dollars per week in SV even after all the taxes. Also, they don't have to live in Birmingham, AL or whatever the hell.

There are some attractive things to some people about living in Birmingham, or abouts.

Your hell hole is other people's heaven; navigable traffic, lakes galore, proximity to clear, warm, clear oceans. Backyards with trees, playsets, green grass.

Warm to hot 10 months of the year.

I would so have a full fab and electronics shop by now if I lived in a place like birmingham.

Last year for thanksgiving we were in Knoxville. Was looking at abandoned warehouses that I could flip. Downtown is tiny but nice and supplemented by the university. I’d have to take up rooting for the vols tho.

Moved from Knoxville to the Bay Area recently. If I had my own startup, it would definitely be in one of those old brick buildings near downtown.

I will say the traffic along the main highway and series of strip malls is not fun though. Nor is the lack of any mass transit to the airport. However rental cars are dirt cheap there.

I was LUSTING over this place though (https://www.google.com/maps/@35.9679553,-83.9199396,3a,60y,4...) was for sale at $2.2M when I was there last year. If only I could sell my house for 2x and I could think of a business to keep that place maintained would be about as dream of a place as I can think of.

Not having to live in SFBA is worth much more than that to quite a few people. In my calculus, it'd be at least $15K a month for me to even think about moving back to SV.

and what would you do with all of that space? In the bay, I am living a bit far out (25 minutes) and tradeoff for a bit more space - but I'm also going out to social events 3-4 times a week. I would not be doing that anywhere else, heck when I was living in DC I only managed 1-2 events a week unless i tried really hard.

Some people prefer saving and looking for other forms of stimulus other than the acquisition of space. For those of us, the fear of living "some place in the south" amounts to:

"The cells just say, 'that's it', and you, the unwary victim of cellular ennui, are quite literally bored to death."

Right, but then you’re in the south, which is why the cost of living is cheaper — it’s not as desirable. And if you’re a marginalized group, it’s not going to be a pleasant place to live.