The mentioned "other thread": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6700531
Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
11–20 of 122 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#12Madison, Wisconsin is a good city for that. Cheap rent, lots of smart people with the University of Wisconsin right in town. I bootstrapped my company here (http://drifty.com/) and never felt financially strained and always found great people to hire.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#13Athens, GA. It's a college town with a rather remarkable density of culture (music, arts, food) and a very low cost of living. I've been gone a little over a year, but you can live in very nice areas with roommates for under $400 a month. Hell, a lot of folks rent entire houses for under four figures a month. It's also in the middle of a large swath of country (despite having a walkable urban center) and has high quality organic/local produce and meats for very little compared to similar quality food on the West Coast. It also has one of the liveliest downtowns in the country and has an incredible density and variety of bars and nightlife.
Dating pool? There's about 25k undergrads and almost another 10k grad students. It's a very lovely place. Southern gentlemen and Southern belles live up to their reputation.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#14Corvallis, OR
Mild weather, easy access to coast and mountains, there's a regional airport 40 minutes away and Portland is less than 2 hours away.
It is a college town. And has a pretty strong tech culture because it's OSU; Oregon's engineering school.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#15I may be biased because I live here but I really think Orlando, FL fits your bill. You can rent an apartment about 20min from downtown for about $1k or rent a house with a few people for much less. The tech scene is growing and there are some hacker spaces in the area if that's your thing. There are different tech/startup meetups once a week so you'd be able to get in to the community fairly quickly.
You'd also be about 30min from the attractions (Disney, Universal, etc). UCF is here so you'll get the benefits of having a large college close by. If you're in to sports you have the Magic and Orlando City here with all the Tampa teams a 2hr drive away. You also get the benefit of great weather throughout the year. If you're planning to work in the downtown/tourist area then expect your normal I hate my life traffic.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#16Austin, TX. No income tax, cheap housing even near the UT campus, and 6th Street/Lake Travis to keep you occupied.
Not to mention that it's a great city for devs, especially considering its modest size. It's not Silicon Valley, but there's multiple developer events in town pretty much every night of the week every month. For instance: want to go to a python-specific event? Well, there's the Austin Python meetup, the Austin Web Python meetup, Austin PyLadies, Austin Learn Python, Python Pub Crawlers... all active groups. I'm probably leaving some out, too. At least 3 Wordpress groups in town, etc. Sit in coffeeshops, and you'll probably overhear details on someone's startup.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#17Missoula, MT. Recently started up a non-standard publishing company there, and the culture is stellar, it's a college town (full of culture and young people doing fun stuff), very low cost of living (rented a massive house with a bar/cafe in the basement for about $1400/month), and zero sales tax. Quality of life is best I've found anywhere in the US (and I've been to all contiguous 48 states several times, looking f…
Never thought I'd see some from Missoula on here. I get up there once a year to visit my grandpa. It's an awesome, beautiful place. I would definitely live up there if there were more programming opportunities and more people I knew. Best of luck to you!
It's such a remote place (literally and perception-wise) that I get that a lot :)
It is the kind of city that turns everyone into a walking advertisement — even the folks who eventually leave tend to come back to retire.
You might look into companies like Submittable (who are based out of the area) if you're looking for programming gigs. They're working hard (with what seems to be a very collaborative and willing government) to flesh out the area's tech infrastructure, so keep your eyes open for more opportunities thereabouts over the next year or two.
And happy to introduce you to some wonderful folks in the city if you're ever stopping through and want to make some friends!
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#18Austin, TX. No income tax, cheap housing even near the UT campus, and 6th Street/Lake Travis to keep you occupied.
I would say that Houston falls in the same category. Very cheap living, no income tax, very awesome place.
And just like Austin, a great place for devs to work. I remember having a whole discussion bout how Austin was a RoR town, while Houston was a PHP/.Net city.
There's definitely a ton of jobs on both sides. You can make anywhere between 60-90K as a developer, and spend $600-$900 for a nice 1-2br apt. Midtown living is a little more expensive but well worth it :)
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#19Austin, TX. No income tax, cheap housing even near the UT campus, and 6th Street/Lake Travis to keep you occupied.
Not to mention that it's a great city for devs, especially considering its modest size. It's not Silicon Valley, but there's multiple developer events in town pretty much every night of the week every month. For instance: want to go to a python-specific event? Well, there's the Austin Python meetup, the Austin Web Python meetup, Austin PyLadies, Austin Learn Python, Python Pub Crawlers... all active groups. I'm proba…
I third this. Austin, is IMO, the best place right now to develop software if you want to do it for cheap. Great balance between cost of living, opportunity, and access to resources.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply?
#20San Diego. Not sure about the dating pool (I am an immigrant and can't see myself with someone not from my country, so never tried) bit, but you are definitely very well off in terms of quality of life. Amazing infrastructure, access to lovely beaches, great weather all year round etc. Cost of living is slightly better than the Bay Area but still high on an absolute scale.
I live in San Diego and nothing about it fits his 'cheaply' requirement. 10% sales tax, high rents, food is expensive, on and on. I'll agree QoL is incredibly high!