Definitely agree that other places are more affordable, especially if you bring a nest egg from working a few years in an expensive Metro area like NYC, SF etc.

Definitely agree that other places are more affordable, especially if you bring a nest egg from working a few years in an expensive Metro area like NYC, SF etc. But the 80s and 90s -- through the first Dotcom crash -- were also a different era. The Economist considered the US the #1 country to be born in 1988, and only #16 in 2013. This is reflected in the fall in the number of good middle-class jobs, housing affordability, health care costs, traffic and infrastructure, and overall declining quality of factors.