Dear Helaine: I’m in my early 30s. Three years ago, I had two job offers. One was close to home and near my friends and family, paying $50,000. The other was on the other side of the country, paying $72,000, in an area with a higher median income.
I was fresh out of grad school, frustrated with living with my parents and thought it would be nice to make some good money and explore a new life. So I took the higher offer and moved. Three years later … I am miserable. Yes, the work is moderately interesting and offers great experience and skill-building, but I have no friends here, my co-workers are uniformly awful people, and I just overall hate living here.
The job situation is not much different than it was three years ago. The jobs I am a match for don’t pay more than $60,000 back where I am from, and that’s a generous estimate. The cost of living is higher, so even if I could make it work, my margin for savings, investing and traveling, which I’ve done a lot of the past three years, would get a lot tighter.
How much of a pay cut is it worth taking at this time in my life? What do I need to consider to help me make this decision? I don’t want to go any longer being financially secure but personally miserable, but I might be putting myself in the reverse situation if I move back.
