I bought logitech webcam for $69.90 with a $20 mail in rebate. from Amazon.com.However I heard about AmazingWatcher.Com which is a free website that will “watch” items for you on Amazon and let you know when amazon has them in stock at regular retail price.
A funny thing happened to me 3 years ago. My boyfriend and I were driving home from grocery shopping and I was complaining about how much money we just spent on groceries. As I am driving, he start yelling, "Stop! Stop!" It totally freaked me out. I thought I ran over some animal, but he told me to back up the car and park. Low and behold on the side of street by the curb there were money just blowing in the wind. I got out and start grabbing the money like crazy in a frenzy. I looked around me thinking someone was bound to say it's their money but and no one was around and no one came running out of their houses to claim it. Everything I grabbed from the ground came out to be $109 dollars total. We decided to use the money to upgrade our old computer with more memory chips and other accessories. The upgrade didn't do much to improve the computer so we decided to just buy a new faster computer.
A friend said she wanted our old computer because she didn't have a computer. It was still good and operating. So I gave her my old computer with the speakers. Three days later she reports back to us that the computer we gave her was stolen from the back of her trunk. The computer is gone. Is this karma? Whose karma? My friend's or my boyfriend and mines? We found the money, we used it as we saw fit. We did a good deed by giving it away and then it gets stolen. Did the thief who stole it have a "good" day in his twisted line of work? Is this how "found" money works?
@Khurt, @Lorenzo, @vga
I just wanted to clarify one thing:
This post does not claim that cost of living is a myth. The post does claim that there is a "cost of living myth". While that is a fine distinction it is also an extremely important one.
This is the cost of living myth (as quoted from my article):
"The cost of living myth is that you cannot afford to move to certain cities unless you make “x” number of dollars."
I did not claim that there is no such thing as a cost of living. Nor did I claim that cost of living is a myth.
The reality is that most people go to a website to find out how much it will cost them to live in a specific city. They take those numbers as absolute truth. However, I believe if someone wants to move to a specific city, if they are willing to make lifestyle adjustments the cost of living impact can be minimized by reducing expenses - not just increasing income. In fact, I more than believe this. I've implemented it in over a half dozen moves. (see also NMPatrica's comment above).
Just like Mama used to make. Guaranteed. In fact, this is Mom’s old meatloaf recipe. Quick, economical and good: this was always a winner. I must have enjoyed this dish a hundred times while growing up. Mom 89 still makes it. It's been a favorite of her eighteen month old great grandson since he grew teeth enough to chew it.
Mom understood home economics. Her recipe used half a can of mushroom soup, so we could count on another half can recipe in a day or two. If it was Thursday, there’d be tuna casserole on Friday—a mainstay in Catholic households at that time. Otherwise, we might luck out with one of her fabulous mushroom omelets.
1 egg
1/2 can cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 cup oat meal
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Beat the egg in a large bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly using your hands.
Put the mixture into a loaf pan. Form it into a loaf—not touching the sides of the pan. Bake for 1 hour.
Adapted from The Champagne Taste/Beer Budget Cookbook
You can talk about how to deal with a change in the local cost of living, but it hardly makes sense to call it a myth. It does make a great deal of sense to find out before one moves what things cost in a new area. I know far too many people that moved to take a new job, seemingly for a great deal better pay than they had in their old location, only to discover that the cost of living difference ate up the pay difference and then some, leaving them with a lower standard of living.
The comment about all the money sent overseas comes from the fact that 90% of the scam offers received have foreign addresses to send payment to. If the payment is being sent to Great Britain, Switzerland, Australia, etc. then it is in fact being sent overseas and is in no way discriminatory.
I know this for a fact because my father is also giving all his money away to these jerks and I've seen the addresses on the envelopes.
You claim that cost of living is a myth but ... all of the tips you gave assume that it is in fact not a myth. You also assume that I want to/can/would be happy living with less house/educational choices/food choices.
New Jersey has some of the best schools in the United States especially in my area. I had thought about moving to San Diego but a similarly sized three bedroom town home would cost twice as much, the schools are poorly ranked, and our family lives on the east coast. Moving would mean moving into a one bedroom apartment or a 2 bedroom home in a crappy neighbourhood and expensive plane tickets back to the east coast to visit family.
Cost of living is not a myth. Unless living for you means nothing more than having food, water and shelter.
I usually never use instant mashed potatoes, but in a pinch they work great for the topping on a Shepard's Pie. (You know you didn't plan for dinner when...)
Thanks for this post. It's especially relevant for people like us who moved to a more remote part of the country where daily expenses (groceries, utilities) may be higher due to location, but one of the major expenses (housing) is much lower than more urban centres.
Our strategy has been to minimize our lowest recurring cost (housing) by buying an inexpensive home with no mortgage and using the strategies mentioned above for dealing with the fact that our monthly bills are a little higher.
I really need to cut back on how much soda I drink. I don't think I'm ready to give it up completely, but I can definitely work on decreasing the amount that I drink and replacing it with water.
Like the other folks have said this is a great reminder to never stop, never give in and to just keep going. The power of small steps is that they build momentum and you reach a point were it is easier to complete the task then to stop.
Another thought I would add to your list is connect with others. When we face difficulty we so often take steps to hide the problem from those around us, I know i do, but this just increases the stress. When we sit down and tell people our problems it helps especially when that trusted friend tells us in there own way "I know you can handle this"
You're absolutely right that you by adapting, substituting, adjusting, and downsizing you can make living just about any place affordable. But I don't think that means that you should just ignore the different costs of living when deciding where you want to live.
That's not just because you can live better for less someplace where things are cheap (although that's true). The big win comes from the "design snowball" effect of how things depend on one another.
For example, if you choose a town with moderately priced housing, you might be able to find a place to live that's not only bigger (higher standard of living), but also close enough to work that you can walk. If that means you don't need to have a car at all, you can save thousands of dollars a year. (Living someplace with good public transit can have the same effect.)
If living someplace with good schools means that you don't have to pay for private schools for your kids, you can save thousands of dollars there too. If you spend some of the money on stuff that broadens/enriches your kid's learning and experience, you can give them a leg up that would have cost a lot more if done other ways.
Layer a few of these things on top of one another (good library, good museum, good parks, good natural areas nearby, good university...) and you can live much better for a lot less.
Sure, you can adapt to whatever circumstance you find yourself in. But you can also be strategic about choosing your circumstance.
The ideas in this post are exactly what we are using to live well enough with our six children on one income. No, the two-year-old won't get an iPod Touch for Christmas. Other than that, we have pretty much everything we NEED.
As the primary artist Sierra talked to for this article, I'd like to chime back in to the discussion before it goes too far astray.
Sure, many of us may have stories about poor choices of artwork that well meaning people have given us in the past. But, then again, how many of us also have ten-times that many examples of poor choices of mass-produced items from well-meaning, or even careless people in our lives? I have certainly yard-saled, re-gifted, deep-storaged, or otherwise dealt with plenty of items carelessly picked up off the shelves from Target for me. Clothes I won't wear, knick-knacks that assume I have desk-space for them, books I'll never read... this happens to everyone, I imagine.
The point about buying original art for someone is not that it's a fool-proof gift that suddenly frees the giver from having to worry if their gift is well chosen, or the receiver from having to accept a well-intended gift graciously. The point is that *if* you are attentive and thoughtful in your gift giving, then giving original art has the potential to be far more meaningful than a mass-produced item.
Gifts always have the potential to be "hit" or "miss." When I receive a seriously "miss" gift that's mass-produced, I'm thankful for the thought, but also a little sad that the money and the environmental resources went into the manufacturing, shipping, packaging, etc. of this thing that to me feels like a waste. When I receive a "miss" gift that's original art, I still get a bit of extra joy knowing that an independent artist was supported and the world is a little more of the kind of place I like to live because of it.
When I receive a "hit" gift that's mass-produced, hey, that's great, here's this thing I wanted and now I have it: joy! But when I receive a "hit" gift that's original art? Wow! Even more Joy! Something I didn't even know I might like, someone really paying attention, and showing me something they see in me, and sharing something unique in the world with me.
Original art may be, in fact, sometimes harder to select than mass-produced items. And certainly not everyone on my list will be getting some this year. But a few will, and that's because I saw something special that made me think of them. I'm confident they will appreciate it.
I agree. If you really want to live in a certain area, just think a little outside the box. It can easily be done.
This recently just happened to me. We bought a house in nicer neighborhood than we lived in previously. An online COL calculation would have said that this was impossible. However, are fixed costs are the same as they were before.
I completely agree with the take on cutting at the fringes. For a lot of people, the real budget busters are in the fixed costs--the house, the cars, the student loans, etc. A lot of households could cut out all the fringe stuff they can and still be underwater.
For the long term the big fixed expenses have to be on the table. With a big house come big utility and insurance costs, with an expensive car there are large repair and insurance costs. It might be best to start with these expenses and work back from there for the greatest savings.
I think it would help a lot to focus on what we want in life--who we want to be--apart from money. If we can settle that, the money issues would fall into place. Money has become a substitute for many things in life, but in the end, life is more about what we do and who we are than about what we have.
Sarah, thanks for this post. It's well timed here in the middle of the holiday season when many people see their incomes fall and expenses rise.
Really good point about taking small steps. The important thing in a crisis or when facing a difficult task is forward motion. Usually when we're in the middle of trouble, we have neither the assets nor the emotional mindset to do anything dramatic, and we probably shouldn't.
But if we can break the problem down to small chunks, focusing first on what's either most important or most threatening, then working our way from there, improvement will come.
It's hard to have that perspective when we feel overwhelmed or when the roof is caving in, but there often is no other choice.
If you are single, there are many more opportunities for you to deal with adjusting to a higher cost locale. You can get roommates in Manhattan and figure out a way to make the financial math work. With a family, it gets much more difficult. If you move to an area with terrible public schools and you have kids, private school isn't cheap. The other option, going out to the suburbs, also has its expenses even though you can get "free" public schooling.
Boil it down, housing and taxes are typically as much as 50% of your gross income in high cost places. You can save on ice cream, fruit, etc. but the reality is that they represent very small parts of your gross income.
I think there are some good points here that sometimes the cost of living is overblown, but I don't think its a myth. How do people live a reasonable life in super expensive places:
- They rent instead of buying
- They vacation less, especially if their locale is nice
- They focus on getting deals more on everything they buy
Cost of Living is no myth, it may be overstated, but you can't say that Manhattan or Los Angeles isn't super expensive just because a homeless person can live there.
The tips on how to reduce your cost of living in these places are solid, but for people that do them already, there isn't any savings.
Where to begin I got sick 3 years ago not sure what happened but it devistated my life I had a Salon and ran a Plumbing Business and when I got sick I could not even balanced a check book. My husband saw what was happening and wanted to save himself so he went behind my back and got divorce proceedings started I found out accidently he said it was on paper only and that the state could take care of me and I could file bankruptcy and then later he would remarry me well it was not on paper only and it eneded up in our paper and all our friends and family saw it and he never got me the bank ruptcy or a paper stating he would leave everything to me when he passed on. I did not want a divorce and it mind blanked me to me he took my idenity away my independence my credit screwed because he stop paying my bills and credit cards and he said he did it all so I could get state aide that never happened he pays my insurance premium so really what did this do for us. I turned to a dear friend and became intimate with him and now Im being austrciesed by family and friends Im lost I live with the Ex but I want out how can I. I have nothing since I got sick I had to close the Salon and have no income . I have been with this man 16 years married 8 never in a million years would I have thought he would do this to me. Help anyone what can I do to better this situation.
Living in Atlanta, there's kind of a reverse cost of living factor. The cost of living here is generally lower than it is in most of the country.
This is especially true in regard to housing. Atlanta may be the lowest priced large metro area in the country when it comes to housing. But what a lot of transplants do, rather than buying something comparable in size but lower in price, is to buy something comparable in price. That can wipe out the cost of living advantage.
For expample, they might sell a three bedroom, two bath house in the NYC area for $500,000, and rather than buying a equivalent house in Atlanta for $250,000, they spend %500,000 to buy a five bedroom, 3.5 bath house.
It should go without saying that the larger house will "require" a good bit of new stuff to fill it, creating an entirely new expense category.
In that situation, even though you could take advantage of the lower cost of housing to lower the cost of living, it seems most people don't.
I can totally relate. A few months ago, my wife and I had to move back from Malaysia to the Philippines. Even though the Philippines is our home country, a seemingly simple "coming home" move was not nearly as simple as we originally thought.
First, we had to worry about how to ship our stuffs (tables, chairs, LCD TV, and many others) from one country to another.
Second, we had to figure out, whether to rent or buy a house once we get back. This becomes tricky, especially when you have to decide within a month because your new employer requires you to be in the office at exactly 1 month after you tendered your resignation from your previous employer.
And lastly, we had to wonder for many nights whether it was the right decision to move or not.
These may not directly translate to monetary costs...but the amount of time you have to spend worrying about things...has its own associated cost (albeit mentally & emotionally).
I bought logitech webcam for $69.90 with a $20 mail in rebate. from Amazon.com.However I heard about AmazingWatcher.Com which is a free website that will “watch” items for you on Amazon and let you know when amazon has them in stock at regular retail price.
try this site:
http://www.clickfiller.com
make sure use its category listing feature.
A funny thing happened to me 3 years ago. My boyfriend and I were driving home from grocery shopping and I was complaining about how much money we just spent on groceries. As I am driving, he start yelling, "Stop! Stop!" It totally freaked me out. I thought I ran over some animal, but he told me to back up the car and park. Low and behold on the side of street by the curb there were money just blowing in the wind. I got out and start grabbing the money like crazy in a frenzy. I looked around me thinking someone was bound to say it's their money but and no one was around and no one came running out of their houses to claim it. Everything I grabbed from the ground came out to be $109 dollars total. We decided to use the money to upgrade our old computer with more memory chips and other accessories. The upgrade didn't do much to improve the computer so we decided to just buy a new faster computer.
A friend said she wanted our old computer because she didn't have a computer. It was still good and operating. So I gave her my old computer with the speakers. Three days later she reports back to us that the computer we gave her was stolen from the back of her trunk. The computer is gone. Is this karma? Whose karma? My friend's or my boyfriend and mines? We found the money, we used it as we saw fit. We did a good deed by giving it away and then it gets stolen. Did the thief who stole it have a "good" day in his twisted line of work? Is this how "found" money works?
@Khurt, @Lorenzo, @vga
I just wanted to clarify one thing:
This post does not claim that cost of living is a myth. The post does claim that there is a "cost of living myth". While that is a fine distinction it is also an extremely important one.
This is the cost of living myth (as quoted from my article):
"The cost of living myth is that you cannot afford to move to certain cities unless you make “x” number of dollars."
I did not claim that there is no such thing as a cost of living. Nor did I claim that cost of living is a myth.
The reality is that most people go to a website to find out how much it will cost them to live in a specific city. They take those numbers as absolute truth. However, I believe if someone wants to move to a specific city, if they are willing to make lifestyle adjustments the cost of living impact can be minimized by reducing expenses - not just increasing income. In fact, I more than believe this. I've implemented it in over a half dozen moves. (see also NMPatrica's comment above).
Just like Mama used to make. Guaranteed. In fact, this is Mom’s old meatloaf recipe. Quick, economical and good: this was always a winner. I must have enjoyed this dish a hundred times while growing up. Mom 89 still makes it. It's been a favorite of her eighteen month old great grandson since he grew teeth enough to chew it.
Mom understood home economics. Her recipe used half a can of mushroom soup, so we could count on another half can recipe in a day or two. If it was Thursday, there’d be tuna casserole on Friday—a mainstay in Catholic households at that time. Otherwise, we might luck out with one of her fabulous mushroom omelets.
1 egg
1/2 can cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 cup oat meal
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Beat the egg in a large bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly using your hands.
Put the mixture into a loaf pan. Form it into a loaf—not touching the sides of the pan. Bake for 1 hour.
Adapted from The Champagne Taste/Beer Budget Cookbook
You can't imagine how lucky I was running into this post.
I'm going to WalMart now! The other posts are just icing on the cake.
You can talk about how to deal with a change in the local cost of living, but it hardly makes sense to call it a myth. It does make a great deal of sense to find out before one moves what things cost in a new area. I know far too many people that moved to take a new job, seemingly for a great deal better pay than they had in their old location, only to discover that the cost of living difference ate up the pay difference and then some, leaving them with a lower standard of living.
The comment about all the money sent overseas comes from the fact that 90% of the scam offers received have foreign addresses to send payment to. If the payment is being sent to Great Britain, Switzerland, Australia, etc. then it is in fact being sent overseas and is in no way discriminatory.
I know this for a fact because my father is also giving all his money away to these jerks and I've seen the addresses on the envelopes.
"Your post just confirmed the cost of living myth."
Exactly.
You claim that cost of living is a myth but ... all of the tips you gave assume that it is in fact not a myth. You also assume that I want to/can/would be happy living with less house/educational choices/food choices.
New Jersey has some of the best schools in the United States especially in my area. I had thought about moving to San Diego but a similarly sized three bedroom town home would cost twice as much, the schools are poorly ranked, and our family lives on the east coast. Moving would mean moving into a one bedroom apartment or a 2 bedroom home in a crappy neighbourhood and expensive plane tickets back to the east coast to visit family.
Cost of living is not a myth. Unless living for you means nothing more than having food, water and shelter.
I usually never use instant mashed potatoes, but in a pinch they work great for the topping on a Shepard's Pie. (You know you didn't plan for dinner when...)
Thanks for this post. It's especially relevant for people like us who moved to a more remote part of the country where daily expenses (groceries, utilities) may be higher due to location, but one of the major expenses (housing) is much lower than more urban centres.
Our strategy has been to minimize our lowest recurring cost (housing) by buying an inexpensive home with no mortgage and using the strategies mentioned above for dealing with the fact that our monthly bills are a little higher.
I really need to cut back on how much soda I drink. I don't think I'm ready to give it up completely, but I can definitely work on decreasing the amount that I drink and replacing it with water.
Like the other folks have said this is a great reminder to never stop, never give in and to just keep going. The power of small steps is that they build momentum and you reach a point were it is easier to complete the task then to stop.
Another thought I would add to your list is connect with others. When we face difficulty we so often take steps to hide the problem from those around us, I know i do, but this just increases the stress. When we sit down and tell people our problems it helps especially when that trusted friend tells us in there own way "I know you can handle this"
You're absolutely right that you by adapting, substituting, adjusting, and downsizing you can make living just about any place affordable. But I don't think that means that you should just ignore the different costs of living when deciding where you want to live.
That's not just because you can live better for less someplace where things are cheap (although that's true). The big win comes from the "design snowball" effect of how things depend on one another.
For example, if you choose a town with moderately priced housing, you might be able to find a place to live that's not only bigger (higher standard of living), but also close enough to work that you can walk. If that means you don't need to have a car at all, you can save thousands of dollars a year. (Living someplace with good public transit can have the same effect.)
If living someplace with good schools means that you don't have to pay for private schools for your kids, you can save thousands of dollars there too. If you spend some of the money on stuff that broadens/enriches your kid's learning and experience, you can give them a leg up that would have cost a lot more if done other ways.
Layer a few of these things on top of one another (good library, good museum, good parks, good natural areas nearby, good university...) and you can live much better for a lot less.
Sure, you can adapt to whatever circumstance you find yourself in. But you can also be strategic about choosing your circumstance.
The ideas in this post are exactly what we are using to live well enough with our six children on one income. No, the two-year-old won't get an iPod Touch for Christmas. Other than that, we have pretty much everything we NEED.
As the primary artist Sierra talked to for this article, I'd like to chime back in to the discussion before it goes too far astray.
Sure, many of us may have stories about poor choices of artwork that well meaning people have given us in the past. But, then again, how many of us also have ten-times that many examples of poor choices of mass-produced items from well-meaning, or even careless people in our lives? I have certainly yard-saled, re-gifted, deep-storaged, or otherwise dealt with plenty of items carelessly picked up off the shelves from Target for me. Clothes I won't wear, knick-knacks that assume I have desk-space for them, books I'll never read... this happens to everyone, I imagine.
The point about buying original art for someone is not that it's a fool-proof gift that suddenly frees the giver from having to worry if their gift is well chosen, or the receiver from having to accept a well-intended gift graciously. The point is that *if* you are attentive and thoughtful in your gift giving, then giving original art has the potential to be far more meaningful than a mass-produced item.
Gifts always have the potential to be "hit" or "miss." When I receive a seriously "miss" gift that's mass-produced, I'm thankful for the thought, but also a little sad that the money and the environmental resources went into the manufacturing, shipping, packaging, etc. of this thing that to me feels like a waste. When I receive a "miss" gift that's original art, I still get a bit of extra joy knowing that an independent artist was supported and the world is a little more of the kind of place I like to live because of it.
When I receive a "hit" gift that's mass-produced, hey, that's great, here's this thing I wanted and now I have it: joy! But when I receive a "hit" gift that's original art? Wow! Even more Joy! Something I didn't even know I might like, someone really paying attention, and showing me something they see in me, and sharing something unique in the world with me.
Original art may be, in fact, sometimes harder to select than mass-produced items. And certainly not everyone on my list will be getting some this year. But a few will, and that's because I saw something special that made me think of them. I'm confident they will appreciate it.
-Rachel Mello
visual artist, art instructor
I agree. If you really want to live in a certain area, just think a little outside the box. It can easily be done.
This recently just happened to me. We bought a house in nicer neighborhood than we lived in previously. An online COL calculation would have said that this was impossible. However, are fixed costs are the same as they were before.
I completely agree with the take on cutting at the fringes. For a lot of people, the real budget busters are in the fixed costs--the house, the cars, the student loans, etc. A lot of households could cut out all the fringe stuff they can and still be underwater.
For the long term the big fixed expenses have to be on the table. With a big house come big utility and insurance costs, with an expensive car there are large repair and insurance costs. It might be best to start with these expenses and work back from there for the greatest savings.
I think it would help a lot to focus on what we want in life--who we want to be--apart from money. If we can settle that, the money issues would fall into place. Money has become a substitute for many things in life, but in the end, life is more about what we do and who we are than about what we have.
Sarah, thanks for this post. It's well timed here in the middle of the holiday season when many people see their incomes fall and expenses rise.
Really good point about taking small steps. The important thing in a crisis or when facing a difficult task is forward motion. Usually when we're in the middle of trouble, we have neither the assets nor the emotional mindset to do anything dramatic, and we probably shouldn't.
But if we can break the problem down to small chunks, focusing first on what's either most important or most threatening, then working our way from there, improvement will come.
It's hard to have that perspective when we feel overwhelmed or when the roof is caving in, but there often is no other choice.
If you are single, there are many more opportunities for you to deal with adjusting to a higher cost locale. You can get roommates in Manhattan and figure out a way to make the financial math work. With a family, it gets much more difficult. If you move to an area with terrible public schools and you have kids, private school isn't cheap. The other option, going out to the suburbs, also has its expenses even though you can get "free" public schooling.
Boil it down, housing and taxes are typically as much as 50% of your gross income in high cost places. You can save on ice cream, fruit, etc. but the reality is that they represent very small parts of your gross income.
I think there are some good points here that sometimes the cost of living is overblown, but I don't think its a myth. How do people live a reasonable life in super expensive places:
- They rent instead of buying
- They vacation less, especially if their locale is nice
- They focus on getting deals more on everything they buy
Cost of Living is no myth, it may be overstated, but you can't say that Manhattan or Los Angeles isn't super expensive just because a homeless person can live there.
The tips on how to reduce your cost of living in these places are solid, but for people that do them already, there isn't any savings.
Where to begin I got sick 3 years ago not sure what happened but it devistated my life I had a Salon and ran a Plumbing Business and when I got sick I could not even balanced a check book. My husband saw what was happening and wanted to save himself so he went behind my back and got divorce proceedings started I found out accidently he said it was on paper only and that the state could take care of me and I could file bankruptcy and then later he would remarry me well it was not on paper only and it eneded up in our paper and all our friends and family saw it and he never got me the bank ruptcy or a paper stating he would leave everything to me when he passed on. I did not want a divorce and it mind blanked me to me he took my idenity away my independence my credit screwed because he stop paying my bills and credit cards and he said he did it all so I could get state aide that never happened he pays my insurance premium so really what did this do for us. I turned to a dear friend and became intimate with him and now Im being austrciesed by family and friends Im lost I live with the Ex but I want out how can I. I have nothing since I got sick I had to close the Salon and have no income . I have been with this man 16 years married 8 never in a million years would I have thought he would do this to me. Help anyone what can I do to better this situation.
Living in Atlanta, there's kind of a reverse cost of living factor. The cost of living here is generally lower than it is in most of the country.
This is especially true in regard to housing. Atlanta may be the lowest priced large metro area in the country when it comes to housing. But what a lot of transplants do, rather than buying something comparable in size but lower in price, is to buy something comparable in price. That can wipe out the cost of living advantage.
For expample, they might sell a three bedroom, two bath house in the NYC area for $500,000, and rather than buying a equivalent house in Atlanta for $250,000, they spend %500,000 to buy a five bedroom, 3.5 bath house.
It should go without saying that the larger house will "require" a good bit of new stuff to fill it, creating an entirely new expense category.
In that situation, even though you could take advantage of the lower cost of housing to lower the cost of living, it seems most people don't.
How do you get an old queso dip stain out of nylon? The stain has been on the coat for a year.
I can totally relate. A few months ago, my wife and I had to move back from Malaysia to the Philippines. Even though the Philippines is our home country, a seemingly simple "coming home" move was not nearly as simple as we originally thought.
First, we had to worry about how to ship our stuffs (tables, chairs, LCD TV, and many others) from one country to another.
Second, we had to figure out, whether to rent or buy a house once we get back. This becomes tricky, especially when you have to decide within a month because your new employer requires you to be in the office at exactly 1 month after you tendered your resignation from your previous employer.
And lastly, we had to wonder for many nights whether it was the right decision to move or not.
These may not directly translate to monetary costs...but the amount of time you have to spend worrying about things...has its own associated cost (albeit mentally & emotionally).