I've always picked _where_ I want to live first, _then_ found the job around that. Fresh out of college I still wanted to be an (actual) rock star so I moved t

I've always picked _where_ I want to live first, _then_ found the job around that. Fresh out of college I still wanted to be an (actual) rock star so I moved to Los Angeles instead of SF. Instead of bussing tables when I was trying to "make it" though I had had a couple of nice tech gigs where I learned a lot. I wanted to shift my focus to learning Chinese so I moved to Taiwan and found some remote startup tech roles. As a side effect, I've managed to escape the treadmill entirely (since a "good" salary in Taiwan is about $35k-$40k USD/year). My goal wasn't to _save_ money though, it was to learn Chinese. Figure out exactly what you want first than go down that direction. Emphasis on what _you_ want, not what society wants. Maybe you want to spend more time with your family. Maybe you want to work with some cool esoteric programming language with a small team. Maybe you want to career shift entirely and pursue a career as an English speaking stand up comedian in Asia (OK, maybe that's just me ;-)). The point is you're already set financially. Even if you lose ALL of your money tomorrow, you'll _always_ be able to earn in the top 10% of _any_ region by picking up random Wordpress website fixes at the bare minimum.