⚠Unreceptive to pings ; AFK Creator

📢Resolved to N/A : Criteria is personal and resolution is vague.

@AaronBergman18 Can you please resolve?

I was a true believer about this since forever. I resisted, rationalized, and coped (the problem with large brains is they can fit arguments with a lot of steps in them). I'm quite done! In my "can't beat em join em" era.

Chicago's a major US city right in the middle of the continent and on top of a major air hub, and its cost of living is pretty reasonable. Philly has a lot of the same advantages, plus being next to NYC, but it also risks getting lost in the noise of whatever's going on in NYC or DC.

There's no way to easily short Cavendish, but it's a small town of about 1,000 people which is just way too small for me for anything more than like a summer.

@AaronBergman yeah, Tulsa's probably better now if you want major city infrastructure, whereas Cavendish is more of a ground-up science city, where you should come back in ~3 years

@SpacedOutMatt Look it's much cheaper than SF or NYC

@Alana how is San Francisco or San Diego low cost of living?

@RobertCousineau

Check Zillow for rent. It seems like San Diego has nice studios for less than $1k/month. 1 bedrooms for $1400 ish.

San Francisco is cheaper than people assume. I found nice studios for $1500/month. The city is walkable and public transit is abundant. It's also served by the Caltrain, which is much nicer than the BART.

@Alana FWIW San Diego was a real suggestion. San Francisco was somewhat trolling.

Vote San Diego

I think a big point in favor of Tulsa is the amount of philanthropic funding that basically goes into subsidizing quality of life for residents here. Most of this is funded by George Kaiser's Family Foundation. He's an interesting figure — an oil/banking billionaire who is sorta EA in the sense that he's taken the giving pledge and cuts checks totalling billions of dollars, but anti-EA in the sense that he's committed the majority of his wealth to the city of Tulsa alone.

This has led to the existence of the program that brought me here, Tulsa Remote ($10,000 for remote workers to move here, social/networking events every week, 3 years of free access to a coworking space/incubator) but also the largest privately funded park/outdoor space in America (The Gathering Place), lots of subsidies for universities and startups in the city, regular free arts/cultural events, etc. I moved here from Cambridge, MA and basically feel like I have a similar quality of life at less than half the price, aside from worse public transit, hotter summers, and less nature.

That being said, I really do think it only makes sense for frugal-ish people. If spending less wasn't important to me, I think I'd be in Colorado or California right now. So I only recommend it for people wanting to maximize something like quality of life per dollar spent while living in a US city.

https://danwahl.net/blog/schelling-out

Schelling Out

Where should we all go next winter?

I added Cincinnati for you. Surprised it wasn't on there already - if you compare COL measures to local median income it's got the best ratio in the US (per 2021 data, anyway).