{"id":257486,"date":"2026-06-06T13:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T13:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/257486\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T13:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T13:47:09","slug":"recent-college-grad-i-moved-from-new-york-to-texas-its-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/257486\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent College Grad: I Moved From New York to Texas, It’s Cheaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

After graduating with a bachelor’s in computer science<\/a> in 2023, a software company offered me an exciting job that paid $60,000 a year.<\/p>\n

The catch? I had to move away from home.<\/p>\n

I had grown up on Long Island<\/a> all my life, but the company didn’t have an office within commuting distance of my parents’ house. Moving felt daunting. Moving across the country? Even more so.<\/p>\n

But I felt like I had no choice because of the difficult job market<\/a> and the rising costs in New York, so I packed up and moved to Texas.<\/p>\n

The East Coast was nearly impossible to afford<\/p>\n

I did the math. The average rent for an apartment in most East Coast states<\/a> is $2,000 to $3,000 a month.<\/p>\n

Over the course of a year, on average, that would be $30,000. This was half of my annual income \u2014 before accounting for any other expenses.<\/p>\n

New York State income taxes<\/a> are also high, plus there’s federal tax on top. Already, with back-of-the-napkin math, I found that I would be left with less than half of my annual salary before accounting for food, insurance premiums, utilities, and rainy-day savings.<\/p>\n

After all that, there would be next to nothing left for student loan repayments<\/a>, and I wouldn’t be able to save any money to eventually buy a house.<\/p>\n

Texas was the much cheaper option<\/p>\n

Researching my options, I learned the company had an office in San Antonio. As I researched this unfamiliar city, what I found astounded me.<\/p>\n

Even in a large city like San Antonio<\/a>, rent averages $1,000 to $1,500 a month. Texas also has no state income tax.<\/p>\n

I would have significantly more of my annual income to spend and save if I lived in Texas with the same job.<\/p>\n

I decided to move across the country to Texas<\/p>\n

Though the numbers were promising, I had never been south of Virginia until my move. I had no clue what San Antonio was like and had no family or friends there for support.<\/p>\n

I found my apartment in this new, unfamiliar city remotely. I scanned Google Maps. I made a list of apartments with ideal locations and read their tenants’ reviews. I focused on ones with two to four stars to avoid being misled.<\/p>\n

As part of my research, I looked at crime statistics<\/a>. I was happy to see it was very low. I then narrowed my commute down to five minutes.<\/p>\n

I’m financially comfortable in Texas<\/p>\n

After the move, I paid about $1,250 a month for a 700-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment with an in-home washer & dryer, community gym, and pool.<\/p>\n

There is a rule in personal finance called the 50\/30\/20 rule<\/a>. Ideally, you should spend 50% on needs, 30% on wants, and save 20% of what you earn. Living in Texas, I easily spent less than 50% on needs and saved more than 40% of what I earned.<\/p>\n

All of that would not have been possible on the East Coast at my entry-level, new-grad salary.<\/p>\n

Lastly, home prices in Texas<\/a> are much lower, so my goal of homeownership finally felt achievable.<\/p>\n

I made my cross-country move work for me<\/p>\n

As a new graduate, I faced a market with low salary expectations, frequent mass layoffs, and high job volatility.<\/p>\n

I made it work by moving away from a state with a high cost of living to one offering a 50% discount on life.<\/p>\n

New graduates and early professionals may find success doing the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After graduating with a bachelor’s in computer science in 2023, a software company offered me an exciting job…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11524,6121,5349,19163,100329,60946,7741,100328,9,11,10,973,100327,36001,9416,63432,1777],"class_list":["post-257486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-apartment","tag-average-rent","tag-house","tag-month","tag-most-east-coast-state","tag-move","tag-need","tag-new-graduate","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-office","tag-postgrad-life","tag-rule","tag-san-antonio","tag-software-company","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}