Currently, I would take a slight pay cut to live somewhere that is much cheaper than DC.
Would you or have you ever taken a paycut to take a new job?
I have an opportunity to take a new job at a College near me. I currently work for a large company that manufactures paint. I’m guessing you probably know who that is in Ohio but oh well. It’d be about a $10k a year pay cut. It’d be a less stressful job since it’s not tied to manufacturing/production. The retirement is better too (10% match for 5% contribution in 401k vs 6% for 6%) also and extra 2 weeks vacation and 5 extra holidays off. And the big one... free tuition. Now my kids are very young so I don’t get to worry about that for awhile, but it would be a benefit in the future.
So you’d lose $10k annually on salary. You gain a couple thousand a year in the 401k to offset that a bit. And you get more PTO and tuition covered. It’s hard to calculate the tuition benefit because you don’t know what tuition will be in 15 years and you don’t know what scholarships, if any, your kids could have. I’m trying to calculate this all out to weigh the benefits but there’s too many unknowns.