How do you even figure out this kind of move?
October 24, 2015 10:45 AM Subscribe
I am currently considering a big move, but I have zero idea how to figure out if this is a good idea, or if I can expect to command the salary that I will need where I want to go. BEAN PLATE WITHIN.
I am a single lady with a cat living in a place with a good cost of living - an urban area where I can rent my 1,000 sqft house in my slightly hoody part of town for $800/month. I make well over the median income for this area, but I'm not tied to my job in any real way and I'm a little itchy to make a change. I have friends in Rochester NY and I've visited several times, and I like the area. I am looking to buy here where I am or else to move and buy.
I don't even know how to figure out what I should look to be making in this market. Here I can command my W2 income + my freelance income. I would keep my freelance money no matter what, and I could live EXTREMELY FRUGALLY on this money,but prefer to not go the ramen-route. Where do I start to figure this out? Recruiter local to the area?
Once I know more about feasibility I can start working through the practicalities; for various reasons I don't want to bring this up to my friends in the area unless I decide this is really a thing I want to do. I think that the consideration period for this is about 6 months.
Explain to me how you make this decision as if I am a five year old with a really good grasp of excel and excellent internet research skills, but no idea where to start.
I am a single lady with a cat living in a place with a good cost of living - an urban area where I can rent my 1,000 sqft house in my slightly hoody part of town for $800/month. I make well over the median income for this area, but I'm not tied to my job in any real way and I'm a little itchy to make a change. I have friends in Rochester NY and I've visited several times, and I like the area. I am looking to buy here where I am or else to move and buy.
I don't even know how to figure out what I should look to be making in this market. Here I can command my W2 income + my freelance income. I would keep my freelance money no matter what, and I could live EXTREMELY FRUGALLY on this money,but prefer to not go the ramen-route. Where do I start to figure this out? Recruiter local to the area?
Once I know more about feasibility I can start working through the practicalities; for various reasons I don't want to bring this up to my friends in the area unless I decide this is really a thing I want to do. I think that the consideration period for this is about 6 months.
Explain to me how you make this decision as if I am a five year old with a really good grasp of excel and excellent internet research skills, but no idea where to start.
Bunderful gave good advice. You may also find it useful to talk to Rochester area recruiters, if there are any who work in your field. They can give you a perspective on salaries you can ask and available jobs.
(Also, I grew up in Rochester. No kidding about cold & snow.)
posted by frumiousb at 3:17 PM on October 24, 2015
(Also, I grew up in Rochester. No kidding about cold & snow.)
posted by frumiousb at 3:17 PM on October 24, 2015
When I first started considering huge moves, I made an annual budget spreadsheets. The first budget is the status quo: all my income and expenses. If you're moving across states, it's probably a good idea to factor in taxes as well. The more detailed the budget the more accurate you'll be. Here's a version of the spreadsheet I use that I share with friends, family, and strangers on the internet.
Make a copy and rename the tab 'HomeTown'. Do your best to get this information; there's an income tax calculator at the bottom for w2 type stuff, but it's only accurate for like Oregon & 2012 (the last time I moved). When you're done you have an annual waterfall budget: money pours in from the top, and falls down into various kinds of expenses. Hopefully you end up with a bit of unearmarked savings every year =)
Once you're confident that data is correct, duplicate the tab and name the new tab 'Rochester.' Now you're going to use that template to guide your data collection. You may need to zero out some rows, and add more. That's fine. If you're moving states, you want to figure out what sort of tax differences there are, and any other major expenses (heating oil in the northeast -- the average high temp in January is 32 degrees!). When all is said and done, you'll have two savings rates to compare: Rochester vs what you currently call home. You now have a judgement call to make: is it the difference in money worth the difference in unquantifiable things like proximity to friends, art shows, unique food cultures, etc? That's the bit unique to you, and MeFi can't really help.
But right now all you have is a framework for comparing cities using data collection. Here's how to collect it:
To estimate rent: go to padmapper.com, set up some filters to remove the items you don't want (room shares, sublets, vacations), to get a feel for the market prices. According to Zillow, the median home price is pretty cheap, like $60k. But they're also really old; lots of homes nearing a century old.
For earnings, you can and should troll LinkedIn for leads, but the Federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics also provides Metro Statisical Area data on specific occupations. It will help get you data on what you can expect to earn from leads you find on LinkedIn, but if you look at location quotient, you'll also discover what sorts of occupations are more frequent than expected. For example, there's a lot of Historians, Engineering Teachers Postsecondary, Religious/Educational Directors, and Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians. This explainable by the cluster of Universities in the area, including RIT. The Rochester Wikipedia article even says the place is known as the central hub of optical sciences; perhaps there's a classification confusion with Opthalmic Lab Tech vs researching optical lenses and fiber and such.
If there's major employers in the Rochester area you would prefer, find their careers page and look for two things: a sample of job openings, and a way to subscribe to new postings in Rochester. Then you can hit up Glassdoor and see what sort of salaries people report they're paying.
Finally moving costs. My last move cost me about 4000 dollars. Fortunately it was mostly employer reimbursed. But I don't have a lot of stuff, and fit into the minimum move requirements. If you're broke, U-Haul is a common way, though I see a lot of folks use PODs these days and I haven't price shopped that.
Other data points of interest: local subreddits, wikitravel, metafilter tag for rochester NY, local newspapers, Meetups, etc. It helps a lot that you have contacts in the area already.
posted by pwnguin at 2:40 PM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Make a copy and rename the tab 'HomeTown'. Do your best to get this information; there's an income tax calculator at the bottom for w2 type stuff, but it's only accurate for like Oregon & 2012 (the last time I moved). When you're done you have an annual waterfall budget: money pours in from the top, and falls down into various kinds of expenses. Hopefully you end up with a bit of unearmarked savings every year =)
Once you're confident that data is correct, duplicate the tab and name the new tab 'Rochester.' Now you're going to use that template to guide your data collection. You may need to zero out some rows, and add more. That's fine. If you're moving states, you want to figure out what sort of tax differences there are, and any other major expenses (heating oil in the northeast -- the average high temp in January is 32 degrees!). When all is said and done, you'll have two savings rates to compare: Rochester vs what you currently call home. You now have a judgement call to make: is it the difference in money worth the difference in unquantifiable things like proximity to friends, art shows, unique food cultures, etc? That's the bit unique to you, and MeFi can't really help.
But right now all you have is a framework for comparing cities using data collection. Here's how to collect it:
To estimate rent: go to padmapper.com, set up some filters to remove the items you don't want (room shares, sublets, vacations), to get a feel for the market prices. According to Zillow, the median home price is pretty cheap, like $60k. But they're also really old; lots of homes nearing a century old.
For earnings, you can and should troll LinkedIn for leads, but the Federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics also provides Metro Statisical Area data on specific occupations. It will help get you data on what you can expect to earn from leads you find on LinkedIn, but if you look at location quotient, you'll also discover what sorts of occupations are more frequent than expected. For example, there's a lot of Historians, Engineering Teachers Postsecondary, Religious/Educational Directors, and Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians. This explainable by the cluster of Universities in the area, including RIT. The Rochester Wikipedia article even says the place is known as the central hub of optical sciences; perhaps there's a classification confusion with Opthalmic Lab Tech vs researching optical lenses and fiber and such.
If there's major employers in the Rochester area you would prefer, find their careers page and look for two things: a sample of job openings, and a way to subscribe to new postings in Rochester. Then you can hit up Glassdoor and see what sort of salaries people report they're paying.
Finally moving costs. My last move cost me about 4000 dollars. Fortunately it was mostly employer reimbursed. But I don't have a lot of stuff, and fit into the minimum move requirements. If you're broke, U-Haul is a common way, though I see a lot of folks use PODs these days and I haven't price shopped that.
Other data points of interest: local subreddits, wikitravel, metafilter tag for rochester NY, local newspapers, Meetups, etc. It helps a lot that you have contacts in the area already.
posted by pwnguin at 2:40 PM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
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Rochester gets pretty cold in the winter, if you don't have experience living in that climate do some reading on it and ask people about it.
It sounds like your biggest concern is maintaining your standard of living, so one way to do this is figure out how much you need to make to do that there, and then apply for jobs. If / when you get an offer for a job you find acceptable, with a salary that meets your requirements, accept and move.
The short answer: you can do it. And most of the time these decisions aren't black and white. Whether you stay where you are or move, good and bad things will happen in your life.
posted by bunderful at 11:11 AM on October 24, 2015 [4 favorites]