Houses are decently cheap, rent is cheap in most places (not Silicon Valley). The US is overall not a terribly expensive place to live, if you don't want to be

Houses are decently cheap, rent is cheap in most places (not Silicon Valley). The US is overall not a terribly expensive place to live, if you don't want to be in Manhattan, Hollywood or Silicon Valley. Being a decent software engineer, your raises can outpace inflation pretty handily though I'm pretty sure I'm not managing 10% annually over my career. My salary is 2.3 times what it was when I started, about 12 years ago. My calculator widget thinks that's about 7% annual increase and I'm now living much better than I did in 1998, despite living in a more expensive area.