I'm currently living in Manhattan. 45 minutes gets me from my front door in the East Village to the airport. I'm living with roommates though, so that makes it very affordable. Not owning a car or dealing with all the expenses of a house makes city living actually pretty cheap comparatively.

FIFY.

Don't forget cost of living within 200 miles. You'll need that advancement just to pay the taxes and tolls to live there.

Live in New Jersey. The weekly unemployment benefit is very high. It will come in handy some day. ��

You'll have paid for it many times over by then too.

How quick to get ORD in a 737 vs. 320?

A little over a year for 737 ORD. That'll change I'm sure. I believe the 320 is more junior.

Eastern PA is quite nice, affordable, low taxes, and only an hour away from EWR. In SFO, you can live 20 miles away and still have an hour drive during rush hour traffic .. There have been times when it took over 30 minutes just to get across the San Mateo Bridge.

I'm in eastern PA. Over all I like it. I'm 1 hour 20 drive to the employee lot. Taxes are still high where I'm at, but not NJ levels. There is rarely much traffic on 78 knock on wood. The most my drive has taken with traffic was 1h 45m, but it's not common.

Eastern Bucks county PA is only about 55min to the employee lot. But don't kid yourself, PA is only slightly cheaper than NJ. The state tax on the surface is cheaper, but each county and community within each county all levy their own additional income taxes. I've done the math on it living there and it worked out after all was said and done I took home between 30-37% of my pay after all taxes/cost of living for a given year.

If you're going to get F'd like that, at least go somewhere nice like LAX or SFO. The cost of living is just the ultimate kick in the junk on top of the misery of living in NJ. Which is a shame too because the EWR base/people/flying are fantastic.

You're correct that, in Pennsylvania, each county has varying rates of taxation (income, property tax, etc). You have to factor county taxation in to the price of the home. That said, housing costs are about 1/2 here in PA as compared to California, and state income tax is about 1/3. I left California last year for PA and saw my net taxation go down by $1000 a month and purchased a house for about half what a similar house in California would have cost. The cost of gasoline is cheaper by about $1.00 per gallon as well. The real shocker is the cost of electricity .. it's about 1/3 the rate here in PA as compared to California. All total, I've had a net increase of about $2500/month in spendable income since making the move from the Left Coast. I spent 40 of my 50 years living in California and I will NEVER move back there.

To each his own I guess .. California needs wage earners to keep the CalPers pension fund solvent ;).