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Yeah, and all of those guys are skint and you're not. It works to an extent. Perhaps you don't see the problem because you're theorizing about it rather than h

Yeah, and all of those guys are skint and you're not. It works to an extent. Perhaps you don't see the problem because you're theorizing about it rather than having lived experience. As I think most people do. Imagine that essentially everyone you meet in your age group is far poorer than you are. Not most people but everyone. You need some sort of 'app' to find people to speak to who are on your level. Your specific example means you're making yourself some sort of local pariah/celebrity/whatever. It's very nice and kind, but what about your peer group? Do they just exist through a webcam? It's like the FIRE folks. Everyone thinks they want to retire at 30 unless they're in that situation, and then they realise it's deathly boring and everyone else is at work. (Sure, FU money is great). On reflection, I think maybe you're talking about the small arbs where like, you move from somewhere with 500K homes to somewhere with 250K homes or whatever; i.e. from somewhere with jobs, to somewhere with jobs (that pay a bit less). If you're doing the big arb of moving to an economically depressed area then you have to actually live there. The limiting example would be like those people that move to Vietnam or whatever and have servants. Maybe it works for them? But even if you're just moving to a poor area in the same country it's still a massive difference. There is a fundamental difference between having a bit more money and deleting worldly concerns. The FIRE/low CoL idea forgets the idea that if you make yourself 'special' you are now indeed special and weird and not like those around you.

abnry 7y ago
"On your level" just screams pretentiousness. Since when is money the measure of a man anyways?
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- bitforger 7y ago
  It's not really the money, it's the level of education and ambition. I worked remotely from Mount Pleasant, Michigan for a year and had a difficult time finding anyone to talk with about things that were interesting to me. The only group on Meetups.com was "Housewives of Mount Pleasant." Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor). Sometimes people like that are hard to find.
  - tigroferoce 7y ago
    IMO when you work remote you can work from a small town OR you can move to other places if you like. For many moving is not an option because the rest of their family is in a place. There are other options other than Mount Pleasant, Michigan and the Bay area
  - zorak 7y ago
    Sounds like you were looking for more of a college town vibe. Austin, Athens, Madison, etc.
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      Or Ann Arbor or East Lansing
    - ebiester 7y ago
      I'm currently in a similar situation: I'm working from a MCOL area and remote from the home office. I don't love the city, but it's a nice city for other people. (I am here because of my academic spouse - he wasn't offered a job in a technical hub.) We end up saving amazing amounts of money, relatively speaking, but our social life has been difficult to fill in. College vibe helps, but there are vast benefits to large cities and I'm certainly missing those.
  - reallydontask 7y ago
    > Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor) This is an pretty narrow definition of friendship.
    - bitforger 7y ago
      If you have a better definition, I'd like to hear it. I don't have many friends, so my definition encompasses all of them. Maybe if I had a better definition, I'd be able to make more friends.
      - david-gpu 7y ago
- esotericn 7y ago
  I'm not talking about some sort of scorecard but the fact that a lot of these low CoL areas have crushing poverty. If you want to be the one-eyed man amongst the blind, go for it, but not everyone wants that. Socioeconomic groupings exist in the metro areas too. Senior management hanging out with the workers is relatively rare. Because it's just a pain in the arse to guard yourself in every conversation and not seem like a twat lacking empathy when you talk about some benign thing you did last week.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    I don't get it. I have lots of money. I've never had any feeling I had to 'guard' myself in any conversation with people from literally any social demographic. I mean, unless you're some kind of oddball, all you're using money for is buying nicer food, more space, and more time. So nobody's going to get upset because you're eating loads of avocados, even if it did come up in conversation.
    - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
      People hating avocado toast eating wealthy millennials is a real thing.
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        No, it's a fake thing created by corporate crony politicians to misdirect public attention away from their crimes.
    - brnt 7y ago
      He was not talking about you specifically. If you have never experienced or observed stratification, then you may simply not get around much (in terms of social circles). It's not that strange, I cannot afford it either, I just made some chance acquintances, mostly through my socially far more capabele partner. Class had become the most useful criterion to distinguish groups to me. It's not about guarding oneself explicitly, or avoiding interaction, but more in happening to frequent different kinds of sports/events, having different types of interest and being able to afford those types of hobbies. You won't see a working class person drive up to the club in his jaguar old timer for a game of golf and going for a Michelin star afterwards with friends, talking over a new investment opportunity. You see what I mean?
thrwaway69 7y ago
Doesn't a normal job restricts you more since you are tied down to your employer's area? In a remote job, you could be travelling and be more social, engaging with different people every month. A digital nomad.
- esotericn 7y ago
  > engaging with different people every month That's exactly what I'm railing against. Most people who have done this eventually recognise that it does not make them happy. It certainly did for me. Permanent connections with imperfect people are better than some sort of forever quest.
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    Yeah sure and that's where you decide to have one settlement spot where you can spend few months every year. I am only pointing out that you are restricting yourself by not choosing remote work. Some people can't self restrict or enact behaviours required for it to work. I can still choose to settle on one place forever.
topkai22 7y ago
As someone who has actually managed to work remotely in a small city while employed by a major tech firm at normal pay rates, I can definitely say your scenario does not match my lived experience. 1) unless you move to a very small town, there are still plenty of people in your economic demographic. In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k. If you are currently making more then $500k you might be a little more out there, but then you really have no reason to move, do you? (Your techie peers at other companies don’t make that sort of money). 2) “Friends from work” don’t go away when working remotely. We still have “water cooler” conversations and members of my team have occasionally visited each other’s cities outside of work. We also do a ton of socializing when we are physically together for work. That being said, it does reduce that aspect of social life. What fills it? Other activities- family/children, hobbies, causes, clubs, etc. I’ve lived in major tech hubs before- it did take longer to establish a social network while working remotely in my smaller city, but once established it has been much more fulfilling. 3) I apologize for criticizing, but your concern about not being able to socialize with the middle class sounds bizarre. Some of our dearest friends in this city are solidly middle class- 911 dispatchers, teachers, carpenters, nurses, and sales people. We met through sports, children’s school, and volunteering. We specifically chose to live well below our means (FIREing before the term existed I guess) so our neighbors are a varied lot, and we like them. We can’t invite them to join us vacationing in Europe, but other than that it’s there is little awkwardness.
- asaph 7y ago
  > In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k. This assumes uniform distribution of household incomes across cities of different sizes, which I suspect is a shaky assumption. More likely, the high earning households are concentrated in a short list of major population centers.
  - topkai22 7y ago
    Not as much as you think. I couldn't quickly find the dataset where I looked at this before, but https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Income has percentages of population earning more than $200k by state and MSA. The Birmingham Alabama metro area has 4.03% of its households earning more than $200k, and Alabama a whole has 2.92% of household earning more than $200k (the 5th lowest in the Union, btw). That means Alabama outside its biggest, richest city is still 2.5% over $200k. Sure, those are also probably concentrated in the other 2nd cities in the state like Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, but you are getting really far down the list of US Metro areas by population when you get to Tuscaloosa Alabama. There are well off people throughout the United State, not only in the top 20 metros.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
> all those guys are skint and you aren't British slang for poor, has no money, I just learned.

abnry 7y ago

"On your level" just screams pretentiousness. Since when is money the measure of a man anyways?

deleted 7y ago
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bitforger 7y ago
It's not really the money, it's the level of education and ambition. I worked remotely from Mount Pleasant, Michigan for a year and had a difficult time finding anyone to talk with about things that were interesting to me. The only group on Meetups.com was "Housewives of Mount Pleasant." Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor). Sometimes people like that are hard to find.
- tigroferoce 7y ago
  IMO when you work remote you can work from a small town OR you can move to other places if you like. For many moving is not an option because the rest of their family is in a place. There are other options other than Mount Pleasant, Michigan and the Bay area
- zorak 7y ago
  Sounds like you were looking for more of a college town vibe. Austin, Athens, Madison, etc.
  - stallmanite 7y ago
    Or Ann Arbor or East Lansing
  - ebiester 7y ago
    I'm currently in a similar situation: I'm working from a MCOL area and remote from the home office. I don't love the city, but it's a nice city for other people. (I am here because of my academic spouse - he wasn't offered a job in a technical hub.) We end up saving amazing amounts of money, relatively speaking, but our social life has been difficult to fill in. College vibe helps, but there are vast benefits to large cities and I'm certainly missing those.
- reallydontask 7y ago
  > Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor) This is an pretty narrow definition of friendship.
  - bitforger 7y ago
    If you have a better definition, I'd like to hear it. I don't have many friends, so my definition encompasses all of them. Maybe if I had a better definition, I'd be able to make more friends.
    - david-gpu 7y ago
esotericn 7y ago
I'm not talking about some sort of scorecard but the fact that a lot of these low CoL areas have crushing poverty. If you want to be the one-eyed man amongst the blind, go for it, but not everyone wants that. Socioeconomic groupings exist in the metro areas too. Senior management hanging out with the workers is relatively rare. Because it's just a pain in the arse to guard yourself in every conversation and not seem like a twat lacking empathy when you talk about some benign thing you did last week.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I don't get it. I have lots of money. I've never had any feeling I had to 'guard' myself in any conversation with people from literally any social demographic. I mean, unless you're some kind of oddball, all you're using money for is buying nicer food, more space, and more time. So nobody's going to get upset because you're eating loads of avocados, even if it did come up in conversation.
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    People hating avocado toast eating wealthy millennials is a real thing.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      No, it's a fake thing created by corporate crony politicians to misdirect public attention away from their crimes.
  - brnt 7y ago
    He was not talking about you specifically. If you have never experienced or observed stratification, then you may simply not get around much (in terms of social circles). It's not that strange, I cannot afford it either, I just made some chance acquintances, mostly through my socially far more capabele partner. Class had become the most useful criterion to distinguish groups to me. It's not about guarding oneself explicitly, or avoiding interaction, but more in happening to frequent different kinds of sports/events, having different types of interest and being able to afford those types of hobbies. You won't see a working class person drive up to the club in his jaguar old timer for a game of golf and going for a Michelin star afterwards with friends, talking over a new investment opportunity. You see what I mean?

thrwaway69 7y ago

Doesn't a normal job restricts you more since you are tied down to your employer's area? In a remote job, you could be travelling and be more social, engaging with different people every month. A digital nomad.

esotericn 7y ago
> engaging with different people every month That's exactly what I'm railing against. Most people who have done this eventually recognise that it does not make them happy. It certainly did for me. Permanent connections with imperfect people are better than some sort of forever quest.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  Yeah sure and that's where you decide to have one settlement spot where you can spend few months every year. I am only pointing out that you are restricting yourself by not choosing remote work. Some people can't self restrict or enact behaviours required for it to work. I can still choose to settle on one place forever.

topkai22 7y ago

As someone who has actually managed to work remotely in a small city while employed by a major tech firm at normal pay rates, I can definitely say your scenario does not match my lived experience. 1) unless you move to a very small town, there are still plenty of people in your economic demographic. In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k. If you are currently making more then $500k you might be a little more out there, but then you really have no reason to move, do you? (Your techie peers at other companies don’t make that sort of money). 2) “Friends from work” don’t go away when working remotely. We still have “water cooler” conversations and members of my team have occasionally visited each other’s cities outside of work. We also do a ton of socializing when we are physically together for work. That being said, it does reduce that aspect of social life. What fills it? Other activities- family/children, hobbies, causes, clubs, etc. I’ve lived in major tech hubs before- it did take longer to establish a social network while working remotely in my smaller city, but once established it has been much more fulfilling. 3) I apologize for criticizing, but your concern about not being able to socialize with the middle class sounds bizarre. Some of our dearest friends in this city are solidly middle class- 911 dispatchers, teachers, carpenters, nurses, and sales people. We met through sports, children’s school, and volunteering. We specifically chose to live well below our means (FIREing before the term existed I guess) so our neighbors are a varied lot, and we like them. We can’t invite them to join us vacationing in Europe, but other than that it’s there is little awkwardness.

asaph 7y ago
> In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k. This assumes uniform distribution of household incomes across cities of different sizes, which I suspect is a shaky assumption. More likely, the high earning households are concentrated in a short list of major population centers.
- topkai22 7y ago
  Not as much as you think. I couldn't quickly find the dataset where I looked at this before, but https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Income has percentages of population earning more than $200k by state and MSA. The Birmingham Alabama metro area has 4.03% of its households earning more than $200k, and Alabama a whole has 2.92% of household earning more than $200k (the 5th lowest in the Union, btw). That means Alabama outside its biggest, richest city is still 2.5% over $200k. Sure, those are also probably concentrated in the other 2nd cities in the state like Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, but you are getting really far down the list of US Metro areas by population when you get to Tuscaloosa Alabama. There are well off people throughout the United State, not only in the top 20 metros.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago

> all those guys are skint and you aren't British slang for poor, has no money, I just learned.