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A very good recent article on BusinessWeek.com highlights the importance of comparing your salary with the cost of living in your area. Not that this is a new concept or anything, but there are definitely some new cities that are popping up on the radar as being easier on the wallet, while still filling it with good pay. For example, a person making $50,000 in Houston will be able to stretch that much farther than someone in San Francisco. So the person in San Francisco is kind of getting a bad deal…and should probably check out my other postings to look for a better job! 🙂

And back on the topic of Houston, they also made the list for the top 25 US major metro areas that had competitive salaries along with a lower cost of living. You do need both ideally, because although the cost of living may be ultra low out in the boonies somewhere, where are you going to work at all, much less for a competitive salary. Unless you are fortunate enough to be able to work from home full-time, then that situation will usually have a lower salary hand-in-hand with cheaper prices on most everything.

With the economy the way it is right now, will people will start moving to make their paychecks last longer? After all, who wants to throw it all out the window because of sky-high prices even in a good economy? Some cities may have a lot to offer, but they may just not be worth going broke over. Maybe all this will inspire some folks to pack up and start up somewhere brand new!

To see where your city stacks up, and to read the full article, the link is here.