Picking a place to live when you work remotely is a fun and interesting problem to have. Everyone has specific restrictions that limit their options, so no advice applies to everybody. Here I will share my opinion on this topic.
When you work from home, you want to live in a place that:
- Meets your basic needs
- Has options for fun and leisure activities
- Has good schools if you have kids or are planning to have kids
- Has good weather
- Offers convenient travel options to other interesting places
- Has affordable, good quality housing options in good neighborhoods
- Has low cost of living
Many big cities satisfy most of these criteria, except for affordable housing and low cost of living. A compromise I find worthwhile in that case is to pick a small city (200K to 1M population) that is close to a medium sized or big city. You can get most of your needs met in the city you live in, and a big city is an easy drive away if you need something that doesn’t exist in your small city.
Some examples:
- Colorado Springs, CO about an hour away from Denver, CO
- Allentown, PA area about an hour from Philadelphia and an hour and forty minutes from NYC
- Athens, GA or Columbus, GA which are under an hour and a half from Atlanta, GA
I personally live in a small city like this and I work from home. Weather is nice, cost of living is low, houses and land are relatively inexpensive, heavy traffic is not a thing, life is slow and simple, and a big city is an easy drive away when I need it.
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