Heck I even lived in the Bay Area on less than that and did OK as a single person. But I have been a lot more successful financially in a region with a much low

Heck I even lived in the Bay Area on less than that and did OK as a single person. But I have been a lot more successful financially in a region with a much lower cost of living. Your mileage may vary, but I bet on an alternative strategy that has been working for me. I believe that many people are discovering that the strategy of working in a high COLA region expecting an extreme payoff is not as reliable a strategy as it was for our parents' generation -- in part because our parents' generation was able to afford to buy property at reasonable prices and then benefit from the appreciation.