Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

Dear HN,

I have the opportunity to move from Berlin to Princeton, NJ, in relation to my wife's job. I wonder if it makes sense financially and I thought to ask the community.

A bit of context: I turned 50 this year, I have 25+ years of coding/system design/tech lead experience. I have mostly worked as a freelance "on-site", sometimes for short periods of time, some other times I stayed with the same client for years.

These days I work on a lot of cloud migration projects, with a strong focus on AWS.

So, coming to my question, I have no frame of reference regarding salaries on the East Coast, especially for freelance jobs.

I did some research and the salaries for permanent positions in the area are significantly lower than my current income in Europe. I assume that I could potentially earn more by engaging clients on the west coast, but my US network is non existent.

Is the free-lancing that I'm used to do in Europe even a thing in the US? (Working for a client for months - at least 6 - on a daily rate which is higher than a normal salary because I can be released at any time plus I bear all the cost of employment including health). Also, can my age represent a problem for employers?

Sorry for the fuzziness of the question, I hope it does make some sense.

EDIT: my wife's company will provide a work permit for me, but at this stage I don't know which type.

My wife's company will provide a work permit.

Can you make a test move for just a few months and see if you like it?

Employment aside, there are other things that matters when you change countries / continents. As an European, I wouldn't like to move permanently to the US.

If you are making enough money in Europe, I don't see much incentives to move to US.

Hello there, I live in Berlin now and used to live in the United States. My family is there, and I go back to the east coast of the US often. The degenerating and dystopian quality of the United States is difficult to overstate, but almost impossible to capture verbally.

Whatever one cause attributes to the systematic breakdown of the US, it is difficult to deny the realities of the decline -- massive alcohol and narcotic dependency issues, increase polarization of politics, censoriousness on all sides of the discussion, narrowness, a shortening of attention, a loss of standards. I could go on, but it's too depressing.

I came to Berlin first in 2006. Yes, it was very cheap then, but also very monocultural: now there are many more forms of life here, and they benefit from their coexistence. Stay here, make this moderately good place even better.

You need a lawyer just to subscribe to a local gym?