Regardless, the amount of compensation required to eek out a minimal living for myself in the high cost-of-living areas where the jobs are plus send money home

Regardless, the amount of compensation required to eek out a minimal living for myself in the high cost-of-living areas where the jobs are plus send money home to cover the extra labor we'll have to pay for to handle the family situation when I am physically not there add up to something in the range of what I earned before, so it is an amount that is needed, not merely hoped for. Further, I had two other jobs before the really destructive one, and was paid at the same level in those jobs. In hindsight, choosing to leave those jobs over mild issues was a mistake, but everyone encouraged me to do it at the time. I asked every question under the sun when going through the hiring process with the third place, and absolutely nothing stood out to me as a red flag that would have indicated just how bad it was.