Last year, my Seattle lease was up. I saw the same thing with houses - I instead found a place in Tacoma for substantially less and it was substantially nicer.

Last year, my Seattle lease was up. I saw the same thing with houses - I instead found a place in Tacoma for substantially less and it was substantially nicer. And it's super easy to go to Seattle and enjoy anything in the city whenever I wish. I'm also formerly a Seattle Amazon office worker. After a few years and promotions, I started working remotely for Bay Area companies (the short flight makes me appealing) for good pay for years now. But I still love living in WA. Sounds like you should consider leveraging your prestigious Seattle tech pedigree into a remote position. If you really work 60h now, your effective hourly wage will skyrocket even if you get paid less by nature of going down to sub-40h due to remote work. And it'll still be plenty of money for Western WA.