Speaking from a personal standpoint, not from the entrepreneurial I-must-work-hard-to-change-the-world-for-the-better standpoint, I've often felt that the best

Speaking from a personal standpoint, not from the entrepreneurial I-must-work-hard-to-change-the-world-for-the-better standpoint, I've often felt that the best way to take advantage of the current trends is to work in your standard high pay, high cost area (SF, Silicon Valley) when you're young, all the way up until you have children, and your children start school. I would aim to live in ways that allow you to save as much money as possible. Rent or buy in cheaper areas and brave the commute, cook meals most of the time instead of eating out, don't waste money on drinks at bars. When you're in your mid-30s or early 40s when your children start school, ideally you will have saved $1m or close to it, from 15-20 years of high pay work. This requires discipline of not spending extravagantly even while you're making good money, so it might mean not buying that Tesla even though you could afford it. At this point you have the means of relocating to a much lower cost of living city, buying a house there (maybe even with cash), and hopefully landing a job that pays lower but have much lower stress, and have a short commute. Then you get to enjoy family time, have low stress from commute, low stress from work, and maybe even solve that financial aid issue by the time college time for children comes, because you will have been making $30-50k/year for a while now instead of $150-200k. Of course, this "way to hack around it" isn't for everyone; for one thing, it most likely means you shouldn't take your chance at building that startup, and just work in a GoogFaceAmaAppleSoft (or any other established companies) for many years; and then you will have to be OK with living in a low cost city when you have a family, meaning giving up the city life of SF (and the like), which perhaps not everybody wants. Finally, not everyone is ok with "going down the career ladder", both in status and monetary values. For some, their ego might simply not allow it.