The other issue with "living somewhere cheap" early in life is it limits your options incredibly if you ever want to go anywhere else. Maybe fine as a retirement move however.
Exactly, I've had this exact discussion with a friend who bought a house in a cheaper town.
Fake numbers but for the sake of arguments: he bought a $100k house, I bought a $300k house in a more expensive city. Real estate did a 2x, his house is worth $200k and now he can't afford to move to a $600k place like mine - while I can move to an area with a similar cost of living as where I live now.
The gap is even bigger because prices go up faster in big cities.
We had to move back from nowhere Montana to society so our kids could more easily get jobs / careers. So far so good, oldest is killing it in IT at a bank.
