Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

911 pointsthrowawaygoaway1,088 comments

I'm a software engineer in the bay area and have been thinking about moving somewhere cheaper (in USA or aboard) where I can live cheaply and focus on my own intellectual pursuits. I'd love to be in a place where the living costs are low and where there exists a thriving intellectual community (I've noticed cities near top academic institutions tend to create that sort of atmosphere but not necessarily). I'd prefer a place where English speakers are common enough such that I won't feel isolated by a language barrier. I haven't traveled too often and would love to hear from HN community about any places that match this general description. Thank you in advance!

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I'd highly recommend the triangle area in North Carolina. In Raleigh, there are a large number of tech companies, RHE, Cisco, IBM, Unreal Engine, just to name a few. It has the second highest % of computer science PhDs, and it's home to NC State, Duke University, and UNC. It's also a cultural hotspot for Blues creativity. Many of the best contemporary blues artists are located here in the triangle. The cost of living is relatively low. The rent I paid for 3 months in Redwood City, would have paid my mortgage here for 14 months. The southern part of NC is an agricultural center and thus food is relatively inexpensive. We usually spend ~500 a month.

In addition, Durham, in particular, is a melting pot of Northerners and Southerners. This has lead to some wonderful conversations where regional and cultural expectations were questioned.

Lastly, there are several startups here that are actively recruiting the best people away from the groupthink and costs that are currently dominating the bay area.

If you think you're going to have a good time living in the Carolinas, then I genuinely hope that you don't plan on being black or gay outside of a major city. There is a ton of bigotry and racism still present there, and the politicians in charge are happy to see it continue.

Totally agreed. The Triangle hits a good "sweet spot" in terms of cost of living, business/career opportunity, culture, food, entertainment, etc. And we're conveniently located about 2-3 hours from beaches (depending on which beach you want to hit), or about 3.5-5 hours from mountains (depending, again, on exactly where you want to go).

One thing I really like about this area is that for a moderately sized urban area, there is a lot of nice outdoor "green space" with trails for hiking, running, and biking. Yes, if you're into MTB you're basically limited to just XC here, as we don't have the elevation change for true DH riding... but again, there are mountains about 3.5-5 hours away and you can get your fix of DH stuff there with a day-trip if needed.

It's also nice having nice places for water sports / water based recreation... you've got Jordan Lake, Falls Lake, Lake Crabtree (just don't eat the fish...), Harris Lake, University Lake, Cane Creek Reservoir, and the like.

And as others have pointed out, there are plenty of educated people here to contribute to the intellectual scene. Obviously there are the folks at Duke, UNC, and NCSU, but don't underestimate the impact of the smaller, lesser-known colleges and universities in the area either. Take NC Central, for example. They're a small HBCU located in central Durham, and have a VERY highly regarded law school for such a small school. I routinely meet people from all over the country who come here to attend NCCU Law. And you also have Shaw, Peace, Meredith, Campbell, St. Augustines, as well as Wake Tech and Durham Tech, all contributing to the base of educated people in the area.

Totally agree about the triangle. We lived in NYC, SF, and Boston for a cumulative 15 years before choosing the triangle for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I work in tech and wanted greater intellectual and economic diversity. Durham-area coffee-shop chatter is great - in a single sitting recently I heard folks cover ground including christian theology and practice, the upcoming pride parade, backyard chickens getting over the fence, student study group plans, and tech startup challenges.

The availability of synchronous 1Gbps fiber internet for about $70/mo in the Triangle area from both Google Fiber and AT&T Fiber doesn't hurt either.

NC really is something special, and not just the triangle either. While it doesn't really have any place with a real big city vibe (and I'm saying that as a Charlotte native), there are awesome small towns and older cities all over and roads to connect to it all. The melting pot thing is true too, almost none of my NC friends have parents from there.

I think the trick is to pick any place with a college (and there are tons in NC) and the weather or lifestyle you prefer. I think Asheville and Boone are amazing for people who love mountains and dont mind colder weather for less humidity, while Greensboro and Winston would give you a lot of bang for your buck with their historic vibe and nearness to other regional hubs, and then there's even Carolina beach near Wilmington for beach fans, which is at least cheaper than some other beaches.

I lived in Durham from 10 to when I started college (travelling back during breaks etc), and I loved it. I agree with you on every point, the triangle is fantastic. Just to reiterate: great food, great music, real diversity.

I came here to recommend the same. I moved from the RTP area to SV a couple years ago and my family were very happy in NC. Among other things, we sold our 4300sqft house in a beautiful suburban neighborhood for $510k ... in order to buy a 1700sqft house in San Jose for $1.35m. <banghead>

I lived in this part of NC for 13 years and am happy to answer questions.

I moved from Seattle to Chapel Hill about a year ago (also grew up in Durham, a lot longer ago). I second everything cbarnes89 said, and I'd add that there's a small but growing Microsoft office in Morrisville.

Damn it! I was looking for ideas...

I've lived in the Triangle for 15 years now, I would recommend you come after we have a light rail.

I'd second that recommendation. I live just down the road in Wilmington, NC. I would love to move to the Triangle area. There's so much of everything there. But I like my job here in Wilmington and instead of 4 hours to the ocean I'm, like, 15 minutes.

For family reasons we've been considering a move into the area, but looking at job listings things seem scant. Wondering if any commenters here have input of what's available there.

I grew up in Raleigh (born, elementary school through NC State) there and recently moved north to start my first job...IMO, the jobs with competitive compensations just don't exist in Raleigh at the new grad level. Almost all of the top students that I know of move to Seattle, NYC, SF etc after graduating.

Housing is also surprisingly expensive in the nicer parts of town given the necessity for a car. With that said, it's a great option if you're comfortable with the opportunities here and want to settle.

Depending on your ability to work remotely, I would make the "case" that you should consider Portugal.

Lisbon and Porto are super popular with ["digital nomad"] remote workers who work for international companies so earn in USD but spend [much less] in Euros for a superb lifestyle.

There's a reason @paddycosgrave moved Web Summit to Lisbon. It's one of the cheapest cities in Europe and [unlike Barcelona] everyone speaks English. There is a good "tech scene" and a fantastic work-life-balance; surf, great food & warm/welcoming people.

A few things to consider that many people over-look: + Socio-Economic and Political stability. + General safety/security and crime levels. + Sanitation and healthcare availability/cost. + Availability/cost of healthy [organic/unprocessed] food. + Lifestyle to actually live in the place: is it "cheap" but a nightmare to live there? + Contract-law for short-term apartment/room rentals.

Portugal will exceed your expectations on all of these.

Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens, you won't have any "visa issues" the way you will in many of the [superficially] "cheaper" Asian countries.

If you want your budget to stretch much further, consider Braga. The cost of living is less than a third of SF, internet is fast and you get most of the benefits of Porto & Lisbon (or can reach those cities with a short train journey).

Note: I am [slightly] "biased", my Wife and I have recently "escaped" from London [after working there in tech for 10 years] and we are busy setting up a Co-living/Co-working House in Braga: https://github.com/dwyl/home We will be opening at the end of this month and our target cost per month [1Gbps Internet, all bills, cleaning & gym included] is $300 (USD).

We chose Braga because it has all the "ingredients" for an awesome place for tech/creative people to escape the bigger cities and focus on their work while still having access to all the amenities great healthcare, superb organic/vegan food and good libraries/meetups/etc.

Yeah, as a Portuguese person living in Lisbon and having worked in the tech scene here, I can say avoid Portugal if you're looking for a SV type scene. The level of anything going on around here is far lower.

Sure the weather is the best I've ever experienced on earth, the food is great, and the cost of living is low. But on the other hand you have an ecosystem that is nothing to write home about, culturally it's good but not great like London or NYC, academia is lackluster (no world-class universities in any subject, bar 1 MBA), not very international, not a whole lot going on in general.

Portugal is a great place to come on holiday, go surfing, go sailing, and retire. It's not an intellectually stimulating place, and the general level of competence in everything from local government to enterprise management is extremely frustrating.

I would say to OP that usually if a place is interesting, it won't be cheap as there is more demand for it. Maybe look at Oxford, UK, Bristol, UK, Edinburgh, UK, or Rotterdam, NL as secondary cities with still enough going on. Apparently Bordeaux is nice but I have never been so can't say.

> There's a reason @paddycosgrave moved Web Summit to Lisbon.

Because the tax payers are paying €110m for it? http://www.thejournal.ie/lisbon-web-summit-new-ten-year-deal...

I came to the discussion to see if Portugal was mentioned, and was pleasantly surprised to see it as the top-ranked comment.

I will just add my suggestion of a another city to the mix: Aveiro. Small yet not too small, cheap, a short hop from Porto, 2hrs away from Lisbon, with trains and good highways, a very tech oriented university, excellent food, close by the sea and a huge lagoon good for all kinds of watersports.

I work for an US based company from here, and I used to live in Lisbon for 10+ years. Love Lisbon, but my quality of life here in Aveiro is so much better.

I have had my eye on Portugal for a number of years, but there are a few things that seem less than ideal.

* Cost of living for a good quality of life still being relatively high or rising, especially in Lisbon and other tourist/expat areas. And a second tier city in Portugal is much less of a clear choice since that is comparable to a lot more places.

* The tax system being very complicated. One can always argue about how much tax to pay, but few people want a complicated tax system, especially not as a foreigner. (And is usually an indication that other systems are complicated as well).

* The tech scene not really happening. Despite the usual "next Silicon Valley" it doesn't really stand out from anywhere else as far as I can tell.

There might certainly be things I don't see, but at least initially it doesn't seem like Portugal rise above the competition to the extent that you wouldn't have to consider quite a few other options.

I live in Lisbon and work as a foreigner at one of Lisbon's universities and can confirm that the living quality in Lisbon is absolutely top. It's a fantastic city. And our bridge is similar to yours - looks smaller but is longer!

Caveats:

- If you intend to work within Academia, you may occasionally have to deal with fairly incompetent professors. It depends on the research unit and area, but there tends to be a certain amount of people who got full tenure in the past by connections and self-publications only. Needless to say that there are also some very good people. For example, at our institute about 50% are foreigners with excellent publications in English.

- Rents have skyrocketed during the past years in all beautiful areas of Lisbon. It's still not even comparable to SF, of course, but you need to calculate around 800 for a decent 2 room apartment. Housing prices have also gone up, but if you have the money it would be a safe investment - they'll continue to rise for quite a while. (Is there any major capital where they don't rise?)

- Social hierarchies and "respect" (in the sense of brown-nosing) are generally more important than in the north of Europe. Portuguese are very friendly towards foreigners, but they can be rather unfriendly among themselves. It's a kind of social pressure and artificial politeness/respect that can be very unappealing in the long run. You can never say straightforward to your boss what you think, no matter how right you are. Critique always needs to be very indirect.

I cannot say anything about the startup scene, because I'm not familiar with it. I suppose it's generally harder to obtain VC funding or bank credits than in the US. Starting a company is very easy, though, for a small company it suffices to hire a freelance account. IRS is also outstanding and can be done online within 5 minutes. The only downside is that as a foreigner you don't get a citizen card, which means that you have to go to local authorities in person instead of doing it online, too. Traditionally, Lisboagas (for natural gas delivery) and the Social Security authority suck, every other authority or company I've dealt with in the past 10 years was super-friendly and professional.

Overall, I can totally recommend Lisbon for anyone who wants high quality of living combined with low costs of living. I have no plans of ever moving away again and instead plan to open my own little software company in case my postdoc funding ever dries out - so far it's still going well in Academia though.

I'm not really confident about the quality of the cultural life in Portugal (let alone Braga). Do musicians tour there ? What about the classical music offer (a good marker in my opinion of intense cultural places) ? How many art museums, do they host touring exhibitons ?

Also education is not very convincing (considering op might want a family). Universities in Portugal are not that great nor renowned. Many qualified young people go work abroad by lack of local opportunities. I've also heard that healthcare is messy if you can't pay. It doesn't sound like a healthy country to me.

I guess Portugal is good enough if you just want sun, decent food, cheap QoL and good internet, but I wouldn't consider it a thriving intellectual place by any means. But maybe in OP's words, good intellect = finding a sufficient concentration of other engineers. Then it might be enough.

>"Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens, you won't have any "visa issues" the way you will in many of the [superficially] "cheaper" Asian countries."

Can you elaborate on this? Wouldn't a U.S citizen still be limited to only 90 days in the Shengen zone every 180 days? Or is there some type of freelance visa?

This is awesome. I live in SF, and have a base in Istanbul, which is from what I heard, similar to Lisbon in many aspects — but I would be hesitant to recommend it without at least a willingness to learn Turkish. There are some digital nomads here in HN based in Istanbul, though.

Nevertheless - my point was, you’re living my dream and I’ll definitely give a visit when my life allows for a Portugal trip. Never been yet.

Why did you italicize so many words?

Glad to see this as the first comment I read. Im currently sat in Portugal on 4ha of land I have brought over near Fundão. It is more out of the way, but still has excellent access to cities. Plus it is absolutely beautiful.

I’m a freelance software developer and can happily work out here even on a plot of land which has no power/net connection. The 3G/4G is great, and everything easily runs of a single solar panel.

This isn’t my long term plan, but does me well when I come out here for a few weeks at a time. Long term there’ll be a house etc.

If there was a coworking space in Covilha / Castelo Branco I’d be very keen.

Otherwise I may start a little coders retreat or some such :-)

> and [unlike Barcelona] everyone speaks English

Do you have any stats proving that? Just asked a portuguese friend living in Barcelona and said that is a quite bold statement.

I wanted to buy an apartment in Lisbon (I speak Portuguese). Forget it. You don't get anything decent below 500k (speak Golden Visa Program). Big chunk of change for a comparably poor country.

"visa issues"? Portgual is Schengen. You need a residence visa if you want to live there. Possibly but far from trivial. On the other hand, if you want to buy real estate anyway and can cough up 500k you can go the golden visa route.

You may be too late for Lisbon. Also, Overtourism becomes a problem.

Braga sounds interesting. Had not time to go there. Wanted to check out rafting. Also, summers may be milder.

As a born and raised in Braga I can confirm all of this. Also Braga as a background in IT sector for a few decades now. Mainly because of University of Minho.

+1 for portugal, i was actually in lisbon for a few days this summer, first time, i really liked what i saw, was more on vacation than for work, but definitely had a few escalations that forced me to get on the internet and everything was fast. people are friendly, costs relatively low, i stayed in 2 different parts, but near my hotel there was a large huawei office (not that i'd ever consider working there), but it tells you that some big, multi-national companies are there.

i also heard that if you buy a 600k usd house in portugal, you could register for eu citizenship, please someone confirm.

Yes Portugal is a good choice now, I moved here 1 year ago from UK because of various factors, Brexit, tax, quality of life etc also because I believe it will be a great location to recruit IT talent to. I live in Cascais which is a bit expensive, (still much cheaper than San Francisco of course) but has wonderful quality of life for family, Capital city amenities next to beach. Great infrastructure, motorways, ultra fast cheap fibre to home, good IB school for kids, quality cheap fresh food, esp fish and veg. Retail items are expensive, high VAT, no Amazon (yet rumers will come soon) Services cheap, private medical cover including dental, for family of 4 unbelievably cheap, less than 200 Euro pm, i paid nearly that much for just dental in UK, the free public healthcare and schools are also apparently good. Property prices going up v fast, many Brazilians moving here to avoid crime and Scandinavians to avoid Tax. Dividends are Tax free from the UK for 10 years, 20% on local income. EU passport if you spend 500k on property - 1 or more units, inc home or investment - is booming as a result - they collect lots of VAT so is good strategy for Portugal considering it was like Greece 4 years ago. 1 downside is insane price of large or fast cars, so lots of dangerous small old cars, also they are totally inept drivers for some strange reason, you see accidents nearly every journey, feels 100 times more often than UK, though stats show only 10 times worse, similar to US apparently - apart from that feels like a very safe country, locals are v friendly and welcoming and most speak English. Oh and I forgot to mention nearly 300 days sunshine pa vs 120 in Wales is so nice, hard to feel down in Estoril with Azure sky and ocean, sea is a bit chilly but stops it getting to hot.

Thanks for this - been to Portugal a few times on holiday and love it, seems a perfect place too from which to work remotely given decent internet speeds etc. Not familiar with the towns and cities so good to have Braga now as somewhere to look at!

I understand skipping Porto and specially Lisbon as prices literally skyrocketed in last years. I also understand that Braga is maybe the cheapest relevant city in Portugal, but despite that I would pick Coimbra for the intellectual vibe.

I think there is something missing in your story. My Portuguese friends who fled Portugal to London paint different picture of their lovely country. Maybe there are different rules to foreigners there?

Hi,

I'm living a bit north, Galicia, and I still think that Braga is one of the most undervalued cities in Portugal, it's kinda cute, warn, has a lovely downtown. You made an awesome decision. :-)

What do you think of the bicycling culture in Braga/Lisbon/Portugal in general? Are there a lot of protected lanes, do you feel like bikers are respected on the roads, etc.

>"Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens, you won't have any "visa issues" the way you will in many of the [superficially] "cheaper" Asian countries"

Could you elaborate on this? Are there options that exist that Non-Portuguese tech workers can look into? Something like a freelance visa or a start up visa? Do such things exist? Cheers

>and [unlike Barcelona] everyone speaks English.

I was only in Lisbon for 4 days (loved it!), but did run into some off-hand issues with language barriers. Cab/uber drivers in particular seemed to know little to zero English.

With that being said, once we got a rental car I greatly appreciated the cutthroat driving style of the Portuguese - damn they are good drivers.

You could say all of this and more of a number of Spanish cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, and Seville.

International cities, thriving technology hubs, connected airports, visa issues really are not a big issue. We have a completely international team based in our Spain office.

Presumably (as a non EU citizen) one would need a self-employed visa and residence permit.

It's easy (currently) for those of us in the UK, but from April, or for people from outside the UK, countries just haven't really caught up to the remote working situation.

"@paddycosgrave moved Web Summit to Lisbon"

The wanton incompetence of the RDS and Dublin's general inability to get anything done, not to mention mediocre transit and eye-wateringly expensive accommodation?

Not sure you will get sv salary in dollars working in Portugal :-) having said that I got pitched a 100K (euros) Job in Portugal a couple of months ago so it looks like tech skills are in short supply

I can't agree more. I worked in both Chicago and London; Portugal (perhaps Lisbon) seemed like the kind of place I would go to do remote work from if I were to move in Europe.

> Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens

What about people from other part of the world? Asking since you live there. Any resource you would recommend to have a general idea?

How hard is it get a remote working visa or something similar to Germany's freelancer visa?

How is the income tax situation in Portugal?

WOW.

Went through rabbit hole.

So much love ! ! !

(beautiful home)

How do I sign up?

That's interesting, as the USD is cheaper than a EUR and generally speaking life is more expensive in Europe than in the US. Would be curious if there are stats on how much a remote worker gets in USD in Portugal.

If you feel adventurous you can consider moving to Poland. I would recommend Krakow. Most young people will speak English, there are couple of top Universities there (PK and AGH for technical schools, UJ for humanities, medicine and some tech too and UE for economics). The tech scene seems to be constantly growing, with lots of international companies having their offices there. As a senior dev in Poland you can earn somewhere between 12-20k PLN a month. Renting a flat will be between 1.5-3k PLN(~400-800USD) depending on thr standard. Additional perks you can enjoy is free(as you pay it on your taxes) healthcare, amazing food, great nightlife and proximity of other European countries (the flights are super cheap).

You'd have to be quite apolitical to consider a move to Poland right now.

+1 for Poland. I am not living there but very time we visit my fiancée family we literally see how the economy is thriving. Exciting times for Poland.

How bad is it there for sexual/gender minorities (aka gay/trans people). Is it livable if you are visibly transgender?

Avoid working for local companies in Poland unless you like low pay. Just find yourself a nice remote gig (there's plenty of them if you know how to find them) and live like the top .001% of the country or whatever. There's a good reason why being a "digital nomad" is becoming more and more popular.

Healthcare starts at ~$130/mo if you manage to not pay for the retirement fund scam (rarely possible), goes up to like $350/mo if you run your own company (not 100% sure, I can thankfully avoid it). The income tax is 19%.

+1 for Poland. Haven’t been to Krakow but Varsaw is awesome. I think I would prefer moving there compared to Prague. I’ve heard good things about Budapest as well.

Poland is very cheap, English is common (among 35 and younger), and in university cities the atmosphere is nice.

Deoending on what you value more I recommend:

- Kraków (biggest startup scene, biggest city out of these, most active cultural scene, but also crowded with tourists, worst air quality and slightly more dangerous than the others because of football clubs violence)

- Wrocław (almost as big tech scene, less tourists and smaller city, but still expansive for Poland, safe and good air)

- Lublin (smaller city with smaller tech scene but still OK, very active culturally but mostly targeting students so in summer holidays it's a ghost city, few tourists, very cheap, highest percentage of students per capita, safe and ok air)

I'm biased because I live in Lublin, but I've lived in Kraków for a short time and in Warsaw for a few years too, and I prefer Lublin. Compared to Kraków a flat will be about 1-2k PLN (2k is very good standard or strict center, median is about 1.5k), and you can earn 10-15k PLN as a senior dev.

Food and services are also very cheap because it's basically a surprise university city in otherwise poorest countryside part of Poland.

In all of these cities there's lots of foreigners, in Kraków it's mostly tourists, in Wrocław it's mostly Ukrainians who migrated for work, in Lublin it's mostly Ukrainians and Asians who are studying there and go back afterwards.

Also - all of this is nice, but be warned that Poland has its own Trump-like revolution going on right now, so far it mostly stays political, with few real-life consequences, but it is making business more risky because of government breaking the constitution and the courts wondering which law is actually binding. Also xenophoby is increasingly used as a political tool.

There's one word that immediately negates all the good things you mentioned.

Smog.

*top in Poland, of course, since the academic record of a typical Polish professor resembles that of a decent-but-not-great grad student in the US (Google some profiles and check on Google Scholar if it sounds like an exaggeration)

Krakow can be really nice and interesting, but you should probably be white and Western. Otherwise, you may be setting yourself up for a tough time (not because of any recent events).

Weather and outdoors aren't great in Krakow. Language is also a pretty big problem: true, some educated youngsters will speak English, but the bulk of the population doesn't speak a word. Would not recommend.

Salary-wise, surely anything in W-Europe is better than E-Europe?

Vienna, Austria.

It has been ranked the most liveable city in the world for some years in a row.

Cost of living is low compared to the European average; you can rent a medium-sized apartment for 600-700€/month.

Everyone speaks English. Co-workers from Spain never bothered with German, because they can get anything done in English.

Viennas public transport system is cheap (30€/month) and excellent. You can get anywhere in the city in a reasonable amount of time. Generally, all public infrastructure is in great shape.

The tech-scene is so-so. It's certainly not London or Berlin, but there are some startups if that's your thing. There are plenty of enterprise IT jobs in banking, insurance or government.

Education and healthcare are free and nature is close. It's a 1 1/2 hour drive and you're skiing in the Alps; 2 hours and you're in the Salzkammergut swimming in mountain lakes.

All in all, it's a great city to raise a family.

As a Pole who moved to Vienna from the UK, I disagree very strongly.

1. Most (as in, over 50%) young adults smoke cigarettes in Vienna. You will inhale the smoke basically everywhere, in particular inside most bars or clubs, but also on the streets. On a windless day, the entire city reeks with smoke.

2. The public transport may be cheap, but the quality is poor. Not very punctual and the trams/buses/trains generally lack conditioning which in the summer turns them into 40+ degrees sweaty, stinking meat containers. To remedy this, they were handing out deodorants at the stations (seriously).

3. You won't be getting a long-term apartment without paying ca. 7 months worth of rent upfront (3 mo fees / 3 mo deposit / 1 mo first rent).

4. Any kind of self-employment is prohibitively expensive unless you charge of the order of €100/h. As a result, if you want to hire, say, a low-end personal trainer, expect to pay of the order of €100/h.

5. The typical level of customer service is really bad and could be described as "the customer is always wrong". It reminds me of Poland pre-2000s.

I have no idea why it is considered the most liveable city. I see very few advantages over, say, Warsaw/Wroclaw/Krakow/Bratislava/Budapest except perhaps the general level of safety on the streets.

Vienna would be a lot nicer if they didn't still allow smoking in bars and restaurants.

"Just don't go to the smoking places."

A very large percentage of the adult population in Vienna still smokes tobaccco. When I was there in 2017 it felt like there were no non-smoking places.

As a Italian who came to Vienna to study and started to work his 4th year (besides university) I can confirm those points.

The city is also quite clean, as there are a lot (but still reasonable) amount of trash bins.

Also you have a lot of parks, public "beaches" on the Danube and it's side channels (those which aren't used by ships) and the big Danube island in the middle, where you can escape from the city into nature quickly.

There are also a lot of nice woods and hiking trails around Vienna. I'm also owning a mountainbike, because I can cycle to a forest/nature reserve, with a lot of really cool (down hill) trails, at the city's border in half an hour from my workplace.

I'm from a small town from the alps, and will move back there because I'm not a city person and just love my hometown - but Vienna is the one (bigger) city I could imagine living in, if I had to (considering cities >1 million people and offering at least a metro and university).

> Education and healthcare are free

It comes naturally with a price, i.e., you probably have a bit more tax then in US I'd guess, but the benefits are really great, and even if I wouldn't need it now (no health problems, no real social/money) I don't have a problem paying those taxes. Also, at the end of the month I have >2/3 of my salary left over for leisure/saving/investing/... so I really cannot complain.

How international the workforce is there? and How hard would it be for a -non religious- middle eastern family to work/live there? from my experience in Germany it seemed with the exception of Berlin and Cologne people won't view you as an equal in the workplace until you work very hard to prove otherwise.

> It has been ranked the most liveable city in the world for some years in a row.

Melbourne would beg to differ; there were headlines when we lost the first place position a few months ago after quite a few years at the top.

Not proposing Melbourne as an alternative though, while it's a nice place to live it's far from cheap.

€700 is certainly cheap compared to just about any US city but what are the tech salaries like? Even in small US markets a senior developer or architect can get the equivalent of €87-110k. If the highest paid devs are topping out at €65-70k that's an important point.

My sister lives there (though she doesn't work in tech) and massively prefers it to Budapest. Her main issues are that the summers are hotter than she find pleasant and that politics is moving in quite a right-wing/anti-immigrant direction (the latter was also one of the reasons she moved from Budapest).

As someone who travels a lot, I really couldn't see anything I liked in Vienna. Not sure what people see in this city.

How is the visa situation if given a remote US-based job?

I heard that Vienna has a pretty racist population.

This is easy. Pittsburgh.

Consistently ranked as a top city in the US, and world, to live in, in no small part due to the comparatively cheap cost of home prices, rent, and living in general. For example, there are nice neighborhoods in the city where one can buy a three bedroom, 2000sq foot house for < $150,000. I think that would buy a closet in the Bay area.

With Carnegie Mellon University here, the 'intellectual' and more specifically the tech scene is thriving. I work for (and take classes at) CMU and see this first hand. Numerous big tech companies have set up shop near campus (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, etc). There are many, well funded, startups operating out of the city as well (e.g. Duolingo, Petuum), most of which have spun out of CMU.

Pittsburgh is great. I live in a city you've never heard of and pay $1125/mo for a one bedroom apartment. A good friend of mine lives in Pittsburgh and pays $1200/mo for a 5 bedroom house (rental) in an unpopular but safe and growing neighborhood of Pittsburgh proper. The cost of living is insanely low and Pennsylvania is a low tax state (flat 3.2% person income tax), which compared to California can equal a few hundred dollars a paycheck for the higher incomes.

Keep in mind though that a lot of San Francisco and NYC folks move to Pittsburgh for a year or two then leave because it's not San Francisco or NYC. Public transit sucks. Traffic is really bad during rush hour (not SF bad, but it is one of the worst in the state, probably second only the Schuylkill Expressway going into Philadelphia). Nobody lives downtown because there are no supporting services downtown like grocery stores or anything like that. You 110% need a car to live there.

One thing to consider about Pittsburgh, especially compared to the bay area, is the weather. The winters are going to be a bit harsher in / around Pittsburgh than they would be in the SF bay.

I've been to Pittsburgh a lot. I agree with this 100%!

What is the driver of the local economy? Ie most people wind up working at/in _____ .

How hard is it to find good doctors and red Chile.

Source for world ranking?

How is the tech scene around Penn?

I'm a full-time freelancer/remote worker. In late 2016, I made the decision to move to Pittsburgh, partly persuaded Paul Graham's talk about how Pittsburgh could become a startup hub. (PG grew up in Monroeville, 10 miles east of Pittsburgh.)

Transcript: http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI

I feel really good about the decision, CMU feels like a peer of Stanford and MIT but living here is substantially cheaper than living in Cambridge or Palo Alto. (I pay ~$750 for a 1-bedroom apartment that's ~1.5 mile from CMU campus.) The legacy of Randy Pausch's Building Virtual Worlds was also a draw for me personally, as I work in game development and was coming of age when Randy Pausch's delivered his famous Last Lecture (if you had asked me in 2008 who my personal heroes were, Randy Pausch would be the first name out of my mouth). Going to gamedev meetups has kind of allowed me to insert myself into the CMU alumni network post hoc. Very green (lots of beautiful neighborhoods), hip enough for my tastes, and the intellectual climate is everything I had hoped it would be.

If you want to live in a city where companies like Google, Uber, Amazon, and Apple have offices, Pittsburgh may be your cheapest option.

Some discussion of Pittsburgh's (tech) climate on this article from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14832249

There are some smaller German cities like Göttingen which have - in my opinion - a high intellectual atmosphere because they are so called university-cities: lot's of students and academics in a rather small city. And, in comparison with big cities like Berlin or Munich, the rents are much cheaper: from what I know you pay 2/3 to half of the price for the same amount of space. Example: a flat with 55-60 qm is about 600-900€ in Berlin, and about 400-600€ in Göttingen.

Well.. and if you don't mind high rents: Berlin as the German Silicon Valley has tons of job offers for you, highly diverse and open-minded people and there would be no language barrier because so many people here speak English.

This is true. Lots of other mentions of Germany in this thread with good points. The downsides to Germany that Americans and Canadians (and to a lesser extent British) might perceive:

- Constant store closures. Almost all Sundays and numerous holidays, almost all stores, including groceries, are closed. Don't forget to get milk or you have to trek to the central train station.

- Very bad international food. Even in major German cities, the food (outside of German, Middle Eastern, and some European cuisine) is simply not on par with places like the Bay Area or London.

- Less outwardness as a social norm. I am sure there will be debate over this. But I think many will agree it is hard to make friends with non-expats even when there is no or little language barrier, compared to many North American social contexts.

- Lots of bureaucracy and dependency trees of ID and permits, even for simple things like getting a train pass. As a reference, it costs 1500-2000 EUR to get a driver's license in Germany (including mandatory training classes), much higher than in the US or Canada. Also, there is a refugee crisis choking the German immigration system and it may take much longer than normal to get immigration-related matters sorted out.

- More public smoking, including on patios and inside bars and clubs. If you are sensitive to cigarette smoke don't plan to go to any nightclubs.

- Serious environmental policies, which would be admirable if it weren't for the Autobahn and all the coal that Germany burns. Have fun drying your sheets and towels on clotheslines in the middle of winter and don't expect AC during the summer.

Some of this is generic to Europe, much of it less true in Berlin than elsewhere, and there are lots of positives to Germany that have been mentioned in this thread. Good luck!

Berlin is to be taken with a grain of salt regarding intellectual stimulus though. It really depends on OP's area of interest. Effective Altruism is big, as are some research institutions (Charité, Max-Delbrück Centre & similar) and the topics surrounding this research, but if you're coming from outside the academic system, they are not that accessible.

If intellectual stimulus is what you're after, it's like searching for gold nuggets in Berlin. Not comparable to places like London. Can't compare to smaller German university cities.

Source: Living in Berlin for a couple of years.

> [...] no language barrier because so many people here speak English.

I wonder how you came up with that one. From my experience (I am German myself), Germans are not good at English. It is not so bad within the large cities but in the countryside, good luck. Just take any of the Scandinavian countries and you will find that they have a higher percentage of people speaking English.

Living in Germany without learning German is a hard challenge. However, speaking German with an American accent is sometimes considered cool ;-)

Berlin only has high rents compared to Berlin a view years ago and some, uhm, small places ;)[1]. Compared to many European capital cities or at last other large cities in Germany Berlin rents are still quite ordinary or even cheap (through the 600-900€, for a 55-60m² are right in Madrid for example that would be more like 900-1500 and in Munich its 1500+).

[1] not sure how to express this, I mean just because it's a "small" place it's nor any worse just a bit different.

One of the good things about Göttingen in particular is that it maintains the same (or similar) intellectual atmosphere at not only a lower cost than the bigger German cities, but also lower than some of the other similarly-sized university towns such as Heidelberg.

Moving from Göttingen to Heidelberg was an easy €200 per month rent increase for similar accommodation. The latter is certainly more scenic, but you pay for that with tourists, noise, etc.

Having said all that, there are plenty more university towns to choose from - but I've only lived in those two specifically myself. In both, the low cost of living is assisted by being able to walk or cycle everywhere around them, negating the need to own a vehicle. I only spent money on public transport if the weather was particularly bad, or when traveling long distance/with luggage.

Not sure about English, during my 4-day stay I met many people who struggled with English.

Berlin is nothing like Silicon Valley. It’s a great city but job offers there are 60-80% lower salaries compared to the US, which makes Berlin being marginally cheaper (but with higher taxes) not really worth it.

How would Berlin compare to a town like Leipzig? Seems like Berlin is getting comparatively expensive.

As much as I liked studying there, it's not a good place to actually work as a software engineer (locally that is).

True. Another great example: Heidelberg.

So you haven't traveled too often, but are considering relocating yourself to somewhere you've never been?

There's nothing wrong with that. However, I would recommend that before you attempt to settle down or start using the word "relocate" you do a bit of serious traveling.

One could say that there's a place in the world for every person. One could also say that people adapt to wherever they are. Both are partially true, I think. The only way you'll know what works for you is if you live there for a while and are able to compare it with other places where you've lived. To do that you need the perspective afforded by a lot of travel.

It's one of those "opportunity cost" decisions. How many places do you need to visit, how many do you need to reject? What is your criteria for a short-list? Only you can answer that.

+1 True

Though, traveling while on "vacation" and moving to a place are 2 different things. You could get a very positive vibe when you visit a new place several times because "entertainment" is roughly 80% of your goal. But from experience, things usually don't turn out that well when you settle and dig a little more by doing "boring" stuff. Things that travelers don't have to think about. But it goes back to your second point: "people adapt to wherever they are".

Check Bulgaria's Sofia capital - is top notch. Lots of concerts, events, bars, meetups, conferences, sports facilities. Is still growing lot in terms of IT, hundreds of job postings, major companies such as VMWare, HPs, Codix, SAP all have big offices here - check Linkedin. senior positions after taxes pay 1000-2000EU. Rents are 400-600EU for a very decent central place 80m^2 + furniture. 4 mountains around the city, 4+ winter resorts in less than 4 hours distance, 4 hours from both Black Sea and Greece's coastal line. Summer time 27-30 degrees, winter -10. Closest mountain is 30min from city center - trekking, and some ski facilities. The city is safe.

You can find senior positions up to 5000-6000EU. That's the good part. Unfortunately, I wouldn't call it a city with a good intellectual atmosphere. I suspect it's one of the worst places if ranked by this factor - it's full with sketchy people in sketchy "businesses", corruption and low level of education.

Disclosure: I'm Bulgarian who used to live in UK and France, and now considering emigrating again due to the reasons stated above.

Not much English speakers there, very mediocre roads in the city. However, the food is great, life is cheaper then in England, but not as cheap, as it may be at Chiangmai. Or in Scotland.

If you would like to remain in United States and do not mind having proper seasons, I would strongly consider Chicago, the last affordable big city in the United States.

University of Chicago pulls a robust intellectual community (81 Nobel Laureates), but there is also a deep intellectual history around the arts and music that transcends the work of the university - something that I'm not sure I can say for a place like Cambridge.

The Art Institute has many of the paintings you might have seen in middle school history books, which is telling in of itself - and while everyone remembers Chicago's jazz, few know that it also invented house music (and a variety of other genres). It's home to many a political movement. It has unparalleled and extremely diverse architecture. The tech scene is doing great - and if any place will upset racial diversity in tech, it will certainly be this city.

People feel like they have a general sense of good will towards their neighbors, without losing the quick pace only a big city will offer you.

Most importantly and to your point - there is a respect for intellectual exchange no matter the discipline - Tech? Economics? Art? Policy? Medicine? Michelin-starred cuisine? I can't think of a field that you can't pursue with confidence in Chicago.

A completely trivial aside - one of the biggest complaints I hear from expats of the Bay Area is a lack of great Mexican food in Boston/Europe/etc. Thanks to a neighborhood called "Little Mexico" (which really does feel like being transported to the Mission), Chicago may be the furthest east you can go while still being able to find authentic Mexican food.

"Chicago, the last affordable big city in the United States"

I love Chicago, and would consider living there were it not for the harsh winters. But, Dallas and Houston would like a word about being the last affordable big city in the US. I'd wager they're more affordable than Chicago, actually. Then again, if your definition of "big city" includes mass transit worth speaking of and corridors where you can live affordably near that mass transit, I guess you'd be right. Texas is stupidly backward on transit. Big roads, big trucks, big houses in big suburbs are the rule in Texas (this is changing in the major cities, though slowly).

But, they've both got all the big city stuff most people think of: Museums, food, music, culture, etc. Houston, in particular, will surprise you, as it has excellent art museums (including the Menil collection, which is probably my personal favorite museum of any I've visited, and I've traveled a lot), and one of the best opera companies in the world, among other things. Also amazingly good food due to large immigrant populations and a lot of produce that doesn't have to be shipped very far since it's grown in nearby areas. And, a very low cost of living, relatively speaking.

Chicago pro's:

* Cheap housing with lots of options, even if you stay in the city limits (Chicago is huge).

* Cheap office space.

* Vibrant, 1st tier business community; Chicago's not the best place to try to get a tech job, but it is one of the better places to start a tech company, especially if you're bootstrapping.

* Really fantastic food and drink scene.

* Top tier venues for touring music scene; we get better shows than SFBA does.

* Functioning, wide-reaching public transit system.

Chicago con's:

* State finances are truly fucked.

* The crime situation is not a joke, though it's more a moral catastrophe than a middle+ class safety issue.

* I like cold weather but you probably don't and Chicago cold is not fucking around cold.

* The startup scene is has a serious cargo cult vibe and can be cliquish.

* Apart from the lake, outdoors stuff is adequate and unspectacular at best.

* It won't be nearly as easy to raise money here as in any tech hub.

I think if you buy into the premise (big city, cold weather 1/4 of the year), Chicago is easily the best value in the US. But lots of people reasonably don't buy into that, and if you don't, you probably won't love the city the way its boosters do.

Chicago is a really wonderful city and I can vouch for everything tropdrop says here. I will also add, it's good for cycling (though do take care when not on dedicated lanes) and though the winter will leave you breathless and the summers will leave you panting, the vibrancy of city and everything it has to offer, and the affordability it still has, make up for it. It's one of my favourite cities in the world.

I've lived there for a while and there were a lot of deal breakers for me:

* security: you feel unsafe in most of the city, past a certain hour and you can't walk nor take the public transit (actually even during the day, the public transit is filled with crazy people). I could never take walks around my place when I was living there. A lot of poverty.

* no real life: there is the loop, but it's mostly offices and it dies down at night. Then there are a few single streets (wicker park, logan square, etc.) but they are rather small places where you can't really walk for a long time.

* the winter: it's freaking cold

I would take CT/IL/NJ off of any list just due to the situation of the state finances. Taxes are going to rise a lot in the next 10 years, and government services are going to be reduced to make their debt payments.

What would be authentic Mexican food?

If you want to remain in a major US city with a lower cost of living, great quality of life, and thriving intellectual community, I'd strongly recommend checking out Chicago.

While it's not as cheap as many cities you'll find abroad, it is extremely affordable compared to US cities. The food is fantastic and affordable. There is a wonderful intellectual community. The nightlife is amazing, if you're into that. It's also possible to find lots of space, as the city is geographically massive with many different neighborhoods with diverse vibes.

The big downside is the winter. However, if you know how to dress for the weather and don't live somewhere incredibly remote, you can mitigate a lot of that inconvenience.

Again, you'll be paying more than you would in Thailand, but for the US it's really fantastic.

Barcelona - one of the best all-around cities in the world (climate/culture/architecture/world proximity/quality of living/beach/mountains) and a growing tech scene.

Very easy to pick up development work here for a local company, you won't be required to know Spanish/Catalan for a job. The only downsides are that the pay is relatively low (€43k average for SE) and it can be quite difficult to find a place to live without local contacts.

Edit - on the intellectual front, I am the least qualified person in my friend group with a lowly Bachelors in Computer Science. Most people have a minimum of Masters with PHDs being pretty prevalent.

Edinburgh could be a good option. If you look hard enough, it is still relatively affordable (especially compared to the Bay Area) and I’ve found very intellectual people to work with. There seems to be a big focus in the U.K. on collaboration between academic and industry and if you’re into data, Edinburgh is home to a The Data Lab, an innovation centre around data.

I moved here from North America and have previous work experience in Silicon Valley. The startup vibe is slowly getting stronger and we’ve been very fortunate to get linked into the ecosystem.

Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Per month: Rent is 500-600 EUR max (worst case unless you're actively looking to splurge), with the average going around 250-300 or so.

You can cover food and taxes at a basic level on another 300. Of course, YMMV if you only order restaurant food and such, but if you stop by a supermarket every now and then you're set to go as low as 600 EUR/mth to live comfortably. I got by on 400 when I really had to in the past.

It's full of tech companies (most involved in outsourcing for Germany, the UK and the US) that pay decently for the appropriate experience - at least when you compare how much you'll have left at the end of the month vs UK and Germany for example.

There are several major universities around, foreigners are a common enough sight and virtually everybody (that you're likely to run into) born in the 90s or later speaks English on at least a basic level.

There are plenty of events on a general level, though if you're looking to find communities focused on very specific niches, you will likely have a harder time than in SF, mostly due to the smaller population size.

You can likely afford to not have a commute at all if you go in the 500+ range for rent.

I've been living in it ever since I started college in it many years ago, and weighing the pros and cons, I find it can really go toe to toe with a lot more famous cities in terms of the kind of lifestyle you can afford and the problems you put up with in exchange.

Not sure if US citizens require a visa or not.

LE: Based on points made in other posts - it's rated as one of the safest cities in Eastern Europe and has very affordable private health care. Getting a tooth fixed, for example, is around 40 EUR. A doctor's appointment is usually in the 25-40 EUR range for most specializations. Public healthcare, unfortunately, is worth avoiding if it can be helped.

Water has decent quality - you can drink the tap water - but a filter is not a bad investment. Air quality is rated quite high relative to most other cities in the EU as well.

Great net speed.

Kiev , Lviv , Kharkiv in Ukraine are extremely cheap, it’s still in Europe, and it has tons of talents. It’s a known talent pool actually. Eating out starts from $2 usd, for $3-4 you could even have a service in the restaurant. Renting a flat starts from $200/mo for some sub urbs areas. You can rent some office space for $150/mo I bet in most places you called cheap you spent more on coffee and smoothies.

Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Kind of like the silicon valley of Holland still with major tech companies around (Philips, NXP Semiconductor, ASML, Tomtom, Here) and a growing startup culture. Eindhoven University of Technology is a major force in e.g. Solar and rent for a centrally located appartment will be around 1000 Euro. Train connections to Amsterdam and Germany (Düsseldorf) and a local airport with cheap connections throughout Europe.

I’d recommend Ann Arbor if you don’t mind the midwestern winters. [0] UMich is there, and you’ll find people in academia working on very interesting problems. Very friendly locals too.

[0] https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/most-educated-cities-i...

I've recently moved to Chicago and am thoroughly loving it. There are tons of programming meetups here, seems pretty progressive, super good public transportation (at least for the US) and costs seem to be mostly reasonable.

My studio apartment is about $1k a month in a nice part of town right next to a train stop. I really like that since Chicago is the third largest city in the country, you can probably find just about anything here'd you want, without having to pay as much to live here as you would on the coasts.

It depends what you mean by cheap but you can live in Somerville next to Cambridge MA for a fraction of SF rent and be in perhaps the best intellectual environment in the world.

https://boston.craigslist.org/search/aap?bedrooms=1&maxAsk=1...

Looks like it’s pretty easy to find a sub-$1000/mo bedroom

Bangalore,India:

Rent price : 200$/month for a 1000sqft apartment. Bangalore is often called the silicon valley of India, filled with software professionals.

Majority of the city's inhabitants are migrants from other parts of the country and almost everyone communicates in English.

The living expenses for a couple is not more than 600-700$/month including rent for a decent lifestyle.

The city has a good pub culture and mostly urban population. The weather almost throughout the year is pleasant 25-30 degree C and light rains for around 4-5 months.

Ample available Shared co-working spaces filled with emerging software startups.

Although I would also like to point out some cons:

As an American, you might find the chaos of an Indian city overwhelming for some time. There are people literally everywhere and all common use services(taxi service, public transportation, laundry services, cafes, restaurants) are usually exhausted to the brim.

Traffic: Imagine NewYork in peak hours.

I just moved to Hobart, Australia from SF. It's quite affordable. I pay A$400 /mo rent in a share house, and walk 20 mins to a downtown co-working space every day (also A$400 /mo). Lifestyle is pretty incredible. It's small, but still a state capital city, so there's plenty going on. Hobart is also the home port for the Australian and French Antarctic programs, so a lot of smart folks come through. Plus it was a trial zone for the National Broadband Network, so everyone has cheap fiber to the home.

edit: also the exchange rate is favorable, so if you have savings in USD they will go a long way.

I am doing this in Taipei right now.

The living costs are low and there is a thriving intellectual community, but there is definitely a language barrier. Most Taiwanese can speak enough English to be friendly and helpful (which they are), but not enough to have intellectual conversations. If you are willing to tolerate the language barrier and put in the time to find the people who can converse intellectually in English then it's a good option. I can't say how much of an intellectual English-speaking community there is since I haven't explored that.

Otherwise, I can't say enough good things about Taipei as a city. You can find a nice apartment downtown for $600/mo or less, the public transportation is amazingly good, and I've never traveled anywhere with better food for the money, provided you're willing to eat Taiwanese, Chinese, or Japanese food most days.

It's not sexy, but college towns in the midwest can usually be pretty affordable as long as you're not trying to live exactly next to campus: Madison, Ann Arbor, East Lansing, South Bend, Ames, etc. If you hear people talk about how cool Austin used to be 20 years ago, they're basically talking about what these towns are still like.

In order to give any kind of really meaningful feedback I'd have to ask a couple of other questions:

1) Define "cheap". You're in the Bay Area, which is by every definition the opposite of "cheap", but substituting that with something like Seattle or Austin or Brooklyn doesn't sound like it's accomplishing what you're looking for to me, even though it's absolutely cheaper. You said you want to focus on your own intellectual pursuits, so are you planning to quit your job and just try to pick up freelance gigs here and there to pay bills or live off your savings or what?

2) Related to #1... if you plan on quitting your job and just freelancing it or living off your savings, you're going to run into visa issues if you move abroad. If you're planning on finding a job somewhere else that heavily impacts the situation - it needs to be a tech center that offers other options that will sponsor you. What's the intention here?

3) What non-work features/perks/requirements/options are you concerned about? Middle of nowhere Kansas is one of the cheapest places you could possibly find in the US, but it's absolutely not for everyone and won't work out if you like having new restaurants opening every week, going to museums, and the other little things a big city provides to add variety to life.

4) Living in the Bay Area means you're used to cool and rainy but still mild weather year-round. Do you think you could deal with snow and wind with temperatures well into the negative? If not winters in Northern Europe (and, realistically, a lot of the rest of Europe) are going to be a problem. Not a fan of humid and stagnant with no air conditioning? That's going to mean the Caribbean, Central/South America, and parts of the Pacific aren't going to be an option - it's not standard there because of the power requirements. If you end up somewhere with a drastically different climate that can completely destroy your motivation and mood, which could be a deal breaker.

The answer here is places that are COLD. For any type of city, the one in a colder place is cheaper. Minneapolis might be a good choice, or Chicago if you want a bigger atmosphere. You’ll have to put in elbow grease to create an intellectual milieu but it is there.

Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. Both of these cities have loads of expats and intellectually stimulating environments.

Big and spacious apartments for $1000/mo or less. Fibre @ 40mbps for $100/mo or thereabouts. A country that has both tropical and Mediterranean climates (think of the fruit and veggies!) with beautiful nature (esp. CT where it's integrated with the city).

Eat out every night in style at prices cheaper than a European corner cafe. In my experience EU food is overrated and expensive. Have been to America many years ago an all I can remember is that people and portions are big!

Yes, there's crime. Happy to answer any questions.

If you really consider moving abroad, then Berlin might be a good option. It has a decent American expat community, it's relatively “cheap” and culturally rich.

If you can weather the weather, Madison or St. Louis. Rent is cheap in both places (< $1000/mo is easy to find).

Madison benefits from having University of Wisconsin campus. It is also the capital of Wisconsin. While being around the same size as a flagship state school "college-town," it retains its own identity and culture (you never feel like the city revolves around the university). I've heard many people compare Madison to Austin, TX. UW-Madison has one of the oldest computer science departments in the US--high ranking department. Extremely bike friendly town. Winters are LONG; I suspect the cold keeps the city population a manageable size.

St. Louis is a mid-sized city. It has all the cultural amenities you'd expect from a big city (airport, food, arts, parks, etc), without the traffic or sprawl, and at a fraction of the cost. Wash U is the top academic center in the area. It's not a great city to visit as a tourist, but it's a fantastic city to live in, especially for the frugal-minded. Summers are hot and humid.

I don't really know what you mean by thriving intellectual community. I think this will depend a lot on your exact interests and what you want out of a local intellectual community on the ground.

Manhattan, KS has a big university in a small town. When I lived there, it had intellectual things like used bookstores and an incredible local zoo, stuff you don't typically see in small towns. But it is also an Ag college. Probably not really what a techie from the Bay Area is seeking, though I loved it to pieces when I was there (other than the ragweed, so you couldn't make me go back at gunpoint).

When I applied for an internship with a National Lab in Washington State hoping to get back to the Tri-cities, I interviewed for a position in a satellite office in Sequim. They do marine biology type stuff there because of the unique marine ecology right there.

Port Aransas, TX also has marine research stuff due to unique marine ecology. It's a town of under 4000 population year-round, but snow birds and tourism swell the population to up to 60k at times, so it actually has a grocery store, something you don't normally see in such a small town.

I considered moving to Idaho Falls, ID in part because it has a National Lab, so it likely has a serious intellectual environment even though it's just 60k people and very affordable.

So, you might want to flesh out some details concerning what exactly you are hoping to find. Because I'm guessing you don't really want to move someplace like Port Aransas, though I'm cool with tiny little places with an enclave of uber-geeks.

I lived a year in Vilnius and after the usual struggle to get connected found the startup community there quite thriving. Still, most of my friends where expats.

You can live comfortably on 1300 EUR/month. (Average salary is 1000 EUR, but probably a bit higher in Vilnius). To evaluate visit first in winter because it’s the worst time.

So the good news is that after SV/SF, everything is cheap! Well, mostly....

I would personally suggest Cape Town, South Africa, if you're a bit adventurous. Lovely weather, good people, cheap, excellent food. It's a bit out of the way (10h flying to Europe, more to US), but same timezone as Europe. English is the main language. Moved here 8 years ago and no regrets

If you're looking to get totally away from the big urban experience, look at any midwest USA town where a state university is the primary anchor. Politics will be liberal, if that's what you're lookging for. Cost of living generally low. Many more cultural and intellectual activities than other towns of similar size. Public schools will be good.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is an option to consider. Strategically located in growing Southeast Asia and well connected.

Most folks in the city speaks English in the city, so you wont have issues getting around.

There is a growing tech community here as well with a some notable startups/companies.

Cost of living wise, magnitude lower than neighboring Singapore, as such a good consideration

Akademgorodok is a part of the Sovetsky District of the city of Novosibirsk, Russia, located 30 km south of the city center. It is the educational and scientific centre of Siberia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademgorodok

Expensive by UK standards, but cheap vs Bay Area: Cambridge UK.

I've not been anywhere else that has the density of interesting people doing interesting stuff. London is not far if you need to break the bubble (and Stansted Airport even closer).

Downsides: salaries are generally lower than SV (esp for technical work), Brexit uncertainty, weather is fairly average, limited outdoor sport options (other than running, road cycling, rowing)

Have you considered Pune in India? The area has an excellent tech scene with both established companies and startups. It has excellent universities and the area has a lot of students and institutions. Everyone knows English in here. The area itself is has lots of beautiful places around for trekking and exploring if you are into that sort of thing, especially in the monsoon season.

And it's cheap. Really cheap. For 200$ you can get an excellent apartment in prime locations in the city itself. You daily food expenses won't be anymore than 10$ at the most.

Hi, I made a site to do just this called https://nomadlist.com. Click OPEN FILTERS and click cheap living cost (<$2,000). I also have filters to find cities with universities and English speaking people.

I have collected 1,000+ of the biggest cities and am adding another 1,500 now. Let me know what you think!

- Pieter

Osijek, Croatia. University city. Thriving tech hub. Close to 4 major international airports (Budapest, Zagreb, Belgrade, Timisoara). Low rents. Low cost of living. Decent food. Very walkable. English is widely spoken.

There are many other cities all over Central and Eastern Europe like this. Other options are Novi Sad in Serbia, Szeged in Hungary, Brno in Czech Republic (the major tech hub), Timisoara in Romania (same), Lviv in Ukraine, Krakow in Poland, Tartu in Estonia.

Gothenburg, Sweden.

Has a growing tech scene, English is spoken everywhere, a couple of good universities, surpringly affordable cost of living, winters are fairly mild (but long). Definitely has a healthy intellectual atmosphere, with lots of independent study groups/classes. A few hours from Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo. Probably the most "livable" city I can imagine.

Finding rental housing is a real pain, but not because of cost.

Also worth looking at: Ghent, Utrecht, Thessaloniki.

Not sure about the thriving intellectual community, but Chiang Mai certainly has a sizable digital nomad population, and is absolutely dirt cheap.

I rented a beautiful studio with a view of the Doi Suthep (mountain bordering the city) for $100 USD/month last winter. Since Buddhism reigns there are loads of monks, which means vegetarian fare is easy to come by, and is similarly cheap (anywhere from $1 to $5 for a meal). Everyone eats out, it's really hard not to meet people.

Internet is very fast (up to 500mb/sec) and power is stable (no power cuts in 3 months).

Of course the timezone difference is substantial if your employer is USA based, but if you can make that work Chiang Mai is hard to beat.

Pittsburgh seems to have inexplicably affordable housing -- a lot of it classy old steel-era buildings. And also CMU is there, so the intellectual resources stack up well against any other city.

If you're looking for more of an adventure I would highly recommend Tbilisi, Georgia (ie, the country not the US State). Relatively affordable, great food, culture encourages intellectual pursuits, beautiful country.

I can wholeheartedly recommend Amsterdam (or surrounding places).

Everyone speaks English, pay is good, and work-life balance makes a lot of difference.

Commutes are generally short, you get ~26 paid holidays per year (sick leave is separate from that)...

Definitely East Europe or if you want to go mainstream: Berlin.

You can also live cheaply in South Europe but the intellectual atmosphere is not the same. This area is good for summer hollydays.

The only problem, in both areas, might be the language. English is enough to survive but maybe not enough to thrive.

I hope I'm not the only person who browsed the comments looking to be sure a bunch of people in tech don't intend to move to where I intend to retire.

Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. There's a ton of research happening in Research Triangle Park, 3 major universities within 20 minutes of each other, and one of the highest concentrations of PhDs per capita of anywhere in the world. The cost of living is low and you can get some space/land if you want it.

Consider a small or even a larger city containing a large, selective state university. Madison, WI; Ann Arbor, MI; Iowa City, IA; Bloomington, IN; Tucson, AZ; Athens, GA; Salt Lake City, UT. There are many others.

Nice, France

There's a technical hub in the area and multiple universities, along with a lot of English-speaking expats. The weather is amazing and the food is fantastic.

I'm from the SF Bay Area and I live here now. Best decision ever.

Charlottesville, VA. UVA, natural beauty, history, reasonable cost of living, Amtrak into DC.

Columbus, OH. Cheap, Ohio State is right there. Get a huge house on a lake for $350K. Pursue your intellect all you want.

I have a software engineer friend who moved to Budapest, and she swears by it. It's a beautiful city with several universities, and it's incredibly affordable.

Try Budapest

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Lots of stuff here to do and see, there are many expats all over the city. English speaking is low among Hungarians (¬20%), but in the inner city you won't have a problem with it.

I'd try a couple of cities for a few weeks then decide, Prague is also very beautiful, but as others suggested Berlin rocks too.

From what I've seen, Chile is a relatively safe and intellectually free place to live. They aren't as progressive on LGBTQIA tolerance as say the west coast of the US, but they are slowly getting there.

It isn't dirt cheap though. A house in a nice part of Santiago will cost you around 300-500k (USD).

Cape Town is a cheaper, toned down SF if you're up for it. Bit of an uncertain economic and political future for the country though.

If you're single, just cut your expenses and stay in the Bay Area. Get rid of your car, get roommates, stop eating out. It's much easier to cut your spending than move, and you will definitely be giving up opportunity and intellectual community no matter where in the world you move compared to SF.

Also, Berlin fits your criteria.

If you just want somewhere cheap try Thailand. Many coworking spaces, but harder to find a startup community. The language barrier won't be a problem because of tourism and the polite culture.

Californians tend to overlook the Midwest(probably because of the winters), but we have some decent cities. Madison, Minneapolis, and if you want big, Chicago. All of them have universities and tech companies, and are cheaper than the bay area by far.

India (Bangalore) is a great and cheap place to live. You will have to learn some Hindi to get everyday things done but many people there know English (almost all people who work at offices). You can start a company there.

Pittsburgh:

- low cost of living

- 20+ universities

- city successfully transformed from industrial to knowledge center

- young talented workforce - constant influx of young people

- CMU: top notch research university

- UPitt: UPMC - top medical school & center

- Tech companies always looking for a foothold there: Intel, Microsoft, Uber

- Passionate sports fans: Steelers, Penguins... maybe Pirates

- Cheap housing: you can buy entire homes for <$50k (maybe needs some capital improvements)

- Eclectic mix of restaurants (foreign cuisine), bars and decent nightlife

Montréal — winters prevent you from softening up and remind you about the great force of nature

I am living in Urbana/Champaign Illinois for a few years for a job. The university here is one of the best engineering schools in the world and the whole area has a lot to do: meetups, entrepreneurship centers, culture, and is an easy drive to Chicago and St Louis. I will miss this place when my wife and I return to Sedona Arizona next year.

That sounds a bit like where I live, in State College, Pennsylvania. It's a small city in the mountains, home to Penn State University.

* There are about 40k permanent residents, plus 40k students. It grows to as much as 200k on football weekends, and has the infrastructure to handle that (highways, etc).

* My current rent is $625 per month, utilities included, for a 2 bedroom in the country (10 minutes from Wegmans).

* The university library is open 24/7 when school is in session (with reduced hours otherwise). Any resident of Pennsylvania can request a borrower's card, and anyone can use the common spaces.

* The university hosts global cultural events, like the Cuban National Orchestra and Danish String Quartet.

Pennsylvanians believe strongly in independence, which can be both good and bad. The mountain folk can be a bit uncivilized, but if you want room to think for yourself without the cost and congestion of a major city, it doesn't get much better.

As you say, places near academic institutions should be pretty good for you. Oxford or Cambridge in England may not be too expensive. Edinburgh or Glasgow would be cheaper even.

In any case you may consider enrolling in some kind of academic research program. Pursuing your own intellectual thing by yourself will be incredibly tough and lonely.

If you haven't already seen it, this site shows living cost and other parameters for different cities:

https://nomadlist.com

Cape Town is exceptional value. Lived there for 12 years. I would recommend you try and work remotely from there earning a foreign currency like USD, GBP or EUR. You will then find it very cheap.

Pros: Excellent quality of life (for your demographic). Beautiful outdoors, quick to get around. Cheap compared to SF, NYC, LDN, AMS, BLN. Great food scene. Not oversubscribed like SF, LDN etc. You can usually just walk into a restaurant. Good, fun people.

Cons: Rand (ZAR) is a weak and volatile currency. Geographically out of the way. Tech scene/talent is a bit small IMO (contrary to the local opinion) but AWS EC2 also has a development office out there so that might be of interest.

Overall, Cape Town is a great place to live. Beautiful, cheap and you will find you have plenty of time to pursue intellectual interests. I really miss the lifestyle.

I got by okay without french in Lyon. I thought about (and think about) moving there. The Netherlands is probably the best bet in mainland europe, you could try Leiden/The Hague if Amsterdam is a bit on the pricy side.

Chiang Mai, Thailand. It's super cheap and has a ton of 'digital nomads' there. I didn't spend too much time doing that there but there were a few co-working spaces, at least a couple years ago.

> focus on my own intellectual pursuits

If you plan on commercializing those pursuits, talk to a lawyer before signing a contract. Most states/companies will give full ownership of all your work even on your own time to the company. States like California are more protecting of employee off time work but they still lean towards employers if your work "relates" towards your employer which for the top paying companies like Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft is practically everything so you can still be screwed.

Dundee, Scotland. Very cheap yet charming property (if you avoid the housing schemes). Proximity to several good "Russel Group" universities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Dundee). Thriving games industry- a lot of AAA games you might assume are American are actually made there. Commuting distance to Edinburgh where there is a bit more internet-focused tech, including regional offices for some of the larger tech companies. Lots of culture and scenery.

The locals don’t really speak english though...

Aarhus is Denmark's second largest city. It has a great university, beautiful surroundings and a thriving startup community. Also Danes are good English speakers.

If you want to go really small, Pullman WA is exactly what you're asking for. WSU and Schweitzer Engineering are the only shows in town (seriously) and the population is about 10k not including the students. We rented a 2-story, 4 bedroom house with a beautiful view of the entire town and almost 2 acres of lot for $1400/mo.

Wonderful schools, INCREDIBLY safe by any measure in the entire world, and lots of professors and engineer-types who have migrated there and found a home over all these years.

Now, the inevitable downside is that other than Moscow ID (~20k pop, another college town but with a little bit more "community") just over the border, there is nothing nearby. No, really, nothing. The few towns that are smattered about are 1000 people or less. The closest city is Spokane (~150k-ish pop?) and Spokane frankly sucks. Seattle is 5 hours away. If this doesn't bother you, and some snow and ice in the winter is fine, it's a good fit. Of course there is the lowest possible likelihood of finding a local job in software, but it is possible and I'm guessing from your post that this isn't a concern.

But yeah, I would 100% describe it as a low-cost place with a strong intellectual atmosphere.

Coming late to suggest something that may be a bit more from left field, Canberra - Australia.

Canberra is a small city in Australia. Designed as the nations capital it has a number of unusual characteristics such as strong town planning from its inception, high average income, low unemployment and good traffic. It is socially progressive compared to Australia and environmentally conscious.

60% of Canberra's population above 35 have at least one degree. The city has multiple significant universities, including the Australian National University - commonly ranked the best in Australia and 20th in the world by the QS rankings. The city has to actively work to recruit sufficient tradespeople.

The city is intermixed with the environment. It follows a multiple city center design which means you can be traveling down the highway in the middle of the city and not be able to see any buildings. There is considerable natural parkland throughout the city. Further afield it is two hours to the snow fields and two hours to the beach towns.

Living costs are reasonable, significantly less than the bay area, but not as low as a rural town. Canberra has ranked well in world livability reports in recent years. Being a small city there is also more choice in the costs incurred, living in the outer suburbs or outside the city significantly reduces rent but is still a very reasonable commute.

The tech industry is small but highly skilled and well paid. Most work is focused around government and military, through direct employment and service providers. Security and cloud migration work is in particular demand at the moment. The open source community is also strongly represented with groups such as IBM's OzLabs.

Bangalore, India.

Not a very good place to "live" - the traffic is _insane_, and you have to deal with us Indians.

But on the plus side, a dollar goes a long long way in India. Bangalore is on the expensive side for Indians. To put things into perspective, a decent dev job in India gets you 1300$ per month after taxes and comfortably puts you in the upper middle class. Monthly rent for a 3BHK apartment at a good location will be around 500-600$. So if you're planning to live off your savings, Bangalore is going to be cheap for you.

The weather is great.

The city is dubbed as the silicon valley of India, so lots of nerds, startups, and hackathons. But if you're into the more academic sort of intellectual pursuits, India is generally not the place for that.

Most of the people you want to interact with would speak English. Urban Bangalore is anglicized. But any "locals" you hire for help (yes, you will be able to afford a house help) will definitely not speak English.

On the other side, living in India would let you travel a lot. Just like Europe, the language and culture change every 300-400 km.

I can't stress enough how cheap India is going to be for you. However, keep in mind that everything else in the country is abysmal.

Greater Boulder Area, CO.

_If you can survive the winter_

- It's college town with good departments (talks and other activities).

- Decent startup scene

- Some research orgs exist (NCAR/NREL)

- Local incubator

- Options to pursue an active life

Croatia. I'm biased because I'm an expat croat but it's actually a good option.

It's central in Europe, you could replace Croatia with Slovenia if you wanted.

It's still relatively cheap compared to the rest of the EU.

There's a budding IT field and if you stick to the major cities you'll even find a sub-culture of makers and hackers.

There might be better options out there but I had to mention it since I'm from there.

While prices have long been rising here in Utah, they are still a pitance relative to SV/SF you could set up near the University of Utah (or BYU if you’re okay with the oft times awkward happy valley vibe) for what should be very reasonable for a Software Engineer salary.

There’s a solid tech nexus forming whose geographic center is becoming a town between Salt Lake City and Provo called Lehi. Tons of co-working spaces. It’s one of only 4 states in the nation where computer software developer is the most common job https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-... it, at the very least, has a sizeable workforce that depend on their ability to sling code to make a living.

I’ve heard a lot of heresay, from people who’d know, about how much Northern Utah is resembling the appearance of SV from some decades back during its ascent.

I would suggest looking for place that have hackerspaces/makerspaces. If you can get enough people interested in purchasing space just on the aspect of tinkering with things then it probably has a solid intellectual community. My hackerspace had everyone from college professors to startup founders to just the random joe that knew way to much about safe making.

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. There is a reason why many big Valley companies are setting up expansions here and why a huge chunk of engineers in the Valley are from the University of Waterloo. A big thriving startup community with a good culture and lots of smart folks around, very easy to get integrated and to get support.

It's not as cheap as moving to a 3rd world country or some random places in the States or Canada, but it's fairly reasonable, tons of smart people and activity and you are within a 1.5hr driving radius of Toronto, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, London, Guelph and most of the big SW Ontario places. Cheap flights to go anywhere in the world often popup from Toronto or Hamilton, so that's a bonus if you like to travel.

Again, this isn't comparable to moving to Portugal or the like, which is an awesome place by the way, but if you want Canada, it's a good choice for getting a lot without the prices of Toronto, which is one of the top 6 most expensive cities in the world.

Portland, Maine

Yes, there's another Portland out there and it hits way above it's weight. If you are an outdoorsy person who likes to nerd, live well and actually have a pay check left over - I strongly recommend a visit out here. In my early 30's and spent my 20's living in Boston, London and NYC.

I'd need a salary of +$500K to ever consider leaving Portland.

I spent my 20s traveling around the world, working and living from many places. My favorites are (skiping cities already in this thread):

- Brighton, UK: awesome music scene, lot of activities, chill atmosfere. Good connection to London (< 1 hour by train) if you need to do networking. Great for freelancers, not so many tech jobs. It is also quite expensive compared to other places on list.

- Brno, Czech Republic: my hometown and place where I decided to settle down after years of traveling. University city, great place for gastronomy, bar scene and coffee. Very cheap: you can live very confortably for 1200 USD/month. Good place when you want to hangout and when you earn money remote. Close to Vienna or Prague.

- Cluj, Romania: a bit more off the beaten path feel. A bit run down, but having good youngful atmosfere. It is very cheap, good food, easy to meet new people and find friends. English is widely spoken among young people.

There are lots of college towns throughout the US where property is cheap, people are friendly and well-educated, and there is a lot of access to culture. Chapel Hill, NC comes to mind. I've heard Ann Arbor, Wellesley, Corvallis, and Fort Collins are all great. Obviously, there are many more college towns that worth noting.

Bucharest, Romania

[SALARIES] developers earn from 1500 EUR to 5000 EUR (after taxes)

[RENT] for 1 bedroom appt: ~300-400 EUR (near the city center)

[LANGUAGE] 80% of people you'll ever meet speak good english.

[ENTARTAINMENT] Hundreds of bars, cafes and theatres. Events, meetups, festivals and concerts happening non stop.

[COMMUTING] If you live on one of the main subway lines (highly likey), it will probably take you less than 15-20 minutes to reach the center.

[LOCATION] Mountains at 2 hours (train or car), seaside at 2.5 hours.

+ there are cheap flights to any part of Europe (2-3 hours) for ~100 EUR or less.

BAD SIDE: noisy, crowded and sometimes kind of stressful - but all of these can be managed by travelling around the country, which is beautiful (lots of mountains, rivers, lakes, interesting cities to visit..)

PS: I'm born and raised here, lived in Paris and worked from other big cities. Bucharest is still the best place for me when I factor in (income, prices, lifestyle).

Many good suggestions in this thread, but I would suggest looking into cities in the 100 000 - 150 000 range with a good university nearby if you want to try something different from living with millions of people.

I moved from my million person metropolitan area to Sundsvall, Sweden and it is very cheap (I pay about €600 for a two bedroom apartment in the absolute center of the city, I have no need for a car when it comes to day-to-day transportation) and the intellectual community is very vibrant here with meet-ups for software engineering and machine learning, as well as a maker space run by people with degrees in electrical engineering.

Only problem? You climb in salary by switching jobs and small places are often dominated by a few players when it comes to tech. But, for people who are fine not climbing as fast as in a big city I can definitely recommend it.

Bristol, UK.

Vibrant city, lots of tech and a good aviation engineering scene (Airbus), lovely countryside around. Reasonably affordable (compared to London). Good communication links to the rest of the UK and Europe (International Airport - London under 2 hrs by trains every 30 mins). Downside - traffic is hideous.

Lisbon, Portugal. English level among locals is better than France, Italy or Spain. Good Universities that provide you with well educated people to discuss your intellectual pursuits. Still affordable compared to most places in Europe or US. And the weather is good for most of the year.

I've worked remotely out of Chiang Mai, Thailand for a short period and it was pretty awesome. There's a lot happening there, specially with the Blockchain events and meetups that I went to. Met some really smart people there. Co-working spaces are plenty and pretty good.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Teleport (https://teleport.org/). This entire service was created to find a better place to live, allowing you to compare various attributes of each city.

Tulsa, OK. For my Midwestern town's relatively small size, low cost-of-living, & southern hospitality, there's an incredible diversity of ideas. Just recently, I've discussed internet security with Mozilla staff, augmented reality with a credit card processing programmer, media in West Africa with an international, Native-American university, theology with an well-known U.K. author, oil discovery with a geologist, language learning with a Spanish author, poverty education research with a doctorate-earning Nigerian, and permaculture with a data-scientist. There are endless niche tech clubs; international, artisan restaurants; and high-end art, music, & athletics ~ surprises most people who visit.

You should consider Maryland, it’s not the cheapest place but definitely cheaper than the Bay Area and it has a bay. There are lots of smart people in many different fields that makes for fun conversation. If your looking to raise a family it has excellent schools too

Berlin or Amsterdam would be my picks in Europe.

Bangkok or KL for Asia.

Austin for the US.

There's much discussion here about Portugal and other countries but what about the US? Could one go closer to a place like Colorado Springs (near Denver) or Cincinnati? There are also places like Albany NY? What are some of the lowest cost but good US areas?

You asked about intellectual atmosphere, but most people here respond about architecture / cost and comfort of living. I would like to see more answers based on the culture that one is going to be living in, not just the cleaniness of apartments.

Chennai, Southern (most) India.

Good intellectual crowd. Home to quite a few top engineering institutions. Inflated with software developing people and companies, with strong focus on making world-class products. I work for one such company, Zoho. Cheap living costs, compared to other software hubs (say, Bangalore) of India and definitely most of abroad. Decent English speaking crowd.

Almost checks out all the items in your list.

Cons: Living standards is a bit behind the curve, if you are from say London, Bay Area, Berlin, Singapore or such. Road traffic and such very-indian-problems will either excite you or bite you, subject to the person.

Even if you don't plan on living here, do visit Chennai sometime. You might even decide to stay back ;)

Buenos Aires

Pros

- U$D goes a long way, specially now after the latest devaluation, and if your income is in dollars, you are mostly not affected by inflation.

- Big English speaking crowd in Buenos Aires in particular.

- Intellectual community: there is a good ecosystem of startups at this moment plus one of the biggest universities in South America: Universidad de Buenos Aires

- It's easy to establish yourself legally: is quite easy to get your temporary resident status, just do the paperwork and you are set.

- a bunch of pluses: quite cosmopolitan city with a lot of cultural activities, lots of diversity.

- the food :P

Cons

- economic crisis: actually, this could be a pro if you have U$D, we locals are used to this kinda of stuff but for some people this can be a bit scary.

- Buenos Aires is a big city and can be a bit chaotic.

Supprised no one mentioned Singapore yet. Lived there a couple of years. Huge tech and business scene in Asia, everyone speaks English, they welcome foreign talent, cheaper local food than most of western Europe, average residential Internet connection is about 7 times faster than the US according to speedtest.net, one page easy tax filing (no huge personal tax filing industry like H&R block), and you can rent a room in a shared appartment for around $400 per month. You also dont need a car and the typical doctor visit is much cheaper than the US. Singapore is like a well-oiled machine, clean and organized, a great feeling to be there. Worth checking out.

Roanoke VA is really pretty and inexpensive, has a new Medical School and Research Institute (Brain stuff) and is paired with Virginia Tech in Blacksburg 45 minutes away. Located in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.

Easy to choose between country, town or city.

This one could be an easy one: Guadalajara, Mexico.

I know what you may be thinking, but bare with me.

Guadalajara has one of the best "tech scenes" in Latin America, with lots of government subsidies and affordable talent that attract foreign tech giants.

Just to give you some examples: Intel, HP, Oracle, and IBM all have major R&D and programming facilities in Guadalajara. Amazon also recently set up its own R&D facility in town. Continental Tires produces around 20 patents a year from its local research facility (most of them related to software and electronics used in the car industry).

But that's not it, there are lots of small-to-medium sized local startups in Guadalajara. The scene has demonstrated that creativity and innovation are something you can always find around the corner.

I come from Academia and I can tell you that in Guadalajara you can find some of the best Science Research centers in the country: CINVESTAV Guadalajara, CIATEJ, and the Universidad de Guadalajara all have top-notch researchers in tech related fields ranging from Biotech to pure Computer Science.

Talking about the city itself, Guadalajara, unlike Mexico City, has just the right size. One of the biggest cities in the country but small enough to move around without much hassle. Geographically privileged, Guadalajara lays in the middle of the country, a few hours away from beautiful and warm beaches from the Pacific Ocean and near from just about everywhere in Mexico. You'll find lots of stuff to do.

Have I mentioned the cost of living and the work-life-balance? Living in Guadalajara is cheap; you can easily find great places to rent, the food scene is amazing (and surprisingly cheap), great craft beer, great food from all around the world, and a really vibrant cultural and art scene. You'll have a good time.

A lot of people in Guadalajara talk English, and there's a big expat community in the city and in the towns surrounding the city.

I really believe that, if you are looking for living on the cheap and have a place to have good discussions about tech, academia, science and more, Guadalajara should be on your list.

Canggu, Bali, Indonesia. Tons of intelligent expats from all walks of life running around. Great temporary base as cost of living is cheap, the expat community is strong and you're never more than 10 minutes away from the beach.

Bangalore, India.

+ Reasonable cost of living (compared to the median salary of a SE) if you don't eat out much.

+ Rents haven't sky rocketed yet.

+ Thriving tech eco system/community.

+ You can get by on English. Though learning Hindi (for rest of India), and Kannada (for Bangalore) is highly recommended :-)

+ Good food and pub scene. In fact Bangalore is known as the pub capital of India! Decent night life too.

+ Lots of weekend getaway places. Himalayas is basically ~3hrs away by flight that costs ~70USD.

- Pollution, bad physical infrastructure (road, clean drinking water etc.,) that's getting worse. Owning a 4-wheeler doesn't make sense anymore. It's not needed anyway.

- Bad air connectivity to USA. Bangalore isn't a hub.

Mexico City is cool. There are many emerging start-ups, affordable, and close to US.

I went to school at Michigan Tech. This is located in Houghton, which is Upper Peninsula of Michigan. If you like lots and lots of snow this place is pretty good. Primarily rent/house will cost little. It's a college town and has international students (mainly Chinese and Indians), the place is very quiet, there's one Walmart and chain of restaurants. MTU has library where you can find lot of people. I haven't been to cafes around the place, so I can't say for certainty if it will meet the 'intellectual atmosphere' criteria.

Davis, California is quite a bit cheaper and close enough to the Bay Area

I'd say fix your personal problems and stay in your home country. If you can currently afford to live and work in SV, you can move 500-1000km in any direction and live cheaply, while staying in your own country.

"Intellectual atmosphere" is a meaningless buzzword. If you're looking for high-earning academics to hang out with you've gotta live in an expensive city near a university. If you mean you like a hipster-y atmosphere, you'll find such people nearly everywhere if you go looking for them.

Prague, if you live outside the tourist area. Very healthy arts/music scene. And you're a short train ride from Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest, which have great scenes of their own.

Come to Belfast, Northern Ireland!

The tech scene is great, loads of work at the moment (great day rates), lots of meetups and startups, 2 Universities, property is cheap and I'll buy you a pint!

Investigate Minneapolis. Winters are hard, but it is a great biking place, and has many cultural institutions that punch way above their weight. Its tech focus may be more in the direction of medical devices and commodity ag, but that's not bad. Cray Research grew up a stone's throw away, and the area still supports significant resources for the company.

Good food, too, and, despite being land-locked, lots of water activities, even within the cities (swimming beaches, boating, etc.)

Surely you make your own intellectual life and take it with you wherever you go? You will think more interesting thoughts in a terrible place. Most ideas that matter are born from adversity or quiet reflection. And depth requires a bit of focus. For accessible culture and sophistication the candidates are fairly obvious.

Nigeria is going to be interesting and is full of independent thinkers. And I've heard good things about Panama City. But both possibly pricey. Belfast is way cheap.

I am currently in Cuenca Ecuador. It's certainly not true that everyone speaks english, but there is a strong ex-pat community.

It's a beautiful, very cheap city. There is fiber internet and there are universities here. A good intellectual atomosphere? Hard to say; there are intelligent people around and you can become friends.

I am here specifically to focus on intellectual pursuits while living cheaply. Latin America in general is wonderful for that.

You did not write if you plan to do employed work or just live off your savings / external income. Even for Americans a work permit is not easy to attain in most places of the world. Also if you work employed locally, you have to consider how much you have to work to have a good live in that location.

While many consider Switzerland expensive, once you compute how long you have to work for the coffee it may no longer sound that expensive.

I moved to Saigon, Vietnam two years ago. English is definitely a challenge, but it isn't impossible and a lot of people in the growing tech scene speak english. Cost of living is minuscule and it is very easy to live here in general. Easy to get a year long multiple entry visa, place to live and the food is excellent. Relatively safe too, it is mostly just petty theft, so watch your surroundings and you'll be fine.

Check out www.nomadlist.com

However some quick personal recommendations for you.. I've been where you are :)

ASIA

- Bali, Indonesia (beach, hippie style) - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (IMO, South East Asia's NYC) - Chiang Mai, Thailand (nomad hotspot, jungles) - Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam (city, cheap everything)

EUROPE

- Lisbon or Porto, Portugal (beautiful places, beaches not far away) - Barcelona, Spain (not so cheap anymore, city + beach) - Tallinn, Estonia

SOUTH AMERICA

- Medellin, Colombia - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Santiago, Chile

Hope that helps!

Somewhat relevant: http://makeindiegamesincapetown.com/

If you are willing to learn good German eventually, there are many place in Germany that could meet your requirements. It is relative easy to get a freelancer's Visa, and this gives you much time to learn German to pass the B1 exam required for a permanent stay. The healthcare alone will make it worth it, but the intellectual climate is strong everywhere, even among stay-at-home-partners.

Strangely, Iowa City. Huge University, art and science lectures and events all the time, street music downtown most nights with dozens of clubs and events. Festivals, protests, book readings. Clean and mostly safe (drunks at 2AM can get rowdy). English of course, but a dozen other languages heard in any coffee shop or restaurant (because of the International student population)

Here is a lovely data driven answer, if you are looking in the US and are willing to use political data as a proxy for 'thriving intellectual community':

https://beta.observablehq.com/@jake-low/how-well-does-popula...

One person's intellectual is another person's babbling idiot. It might help to specify exactly what you're looking for.

Bath, UK is a pretty great place to live (and cheap by Bay Area standards). Stunning architecture, right next to the countryside, and the city regularly makes it into the list of top safest/best places to live in the world.

There's a decent tech scene in both Bath/Bristol, and London is only 90 minutes away by train. Fire me a message if you have any questions.

Upstate NY/Vermont/NH/Western MA. Taxes aren't low, but housing is cheap and people are relatively sophisticated.

Could I put in a good word for Detroit? It's, umm, not as third-world as jokesters like to make it out to be.

You've got Ann Arbor and UMich a few minutes away, Wayne State in midtown, a thriving tech and art scene, all the music you can imagine, and cheap, cheap cost of living.

We do call soda "pop" though, so the language issues might be a little weird. ;)

Berlin! Berlin is by far the cheapest capital in Western Europe. You can get a nice sit down meal in a restaurant for 5-6 euros in the center of the city and rent a nice apartment for 500 euros a month. There is a large tech scene and everyone speaks english here. It's sometimes hard to practice German because English is so common!

Amsterdam is very interesting for what you want. The city is practically a big village. Everything is reachable by bike so no need to use the public transport. Everyone speaks English perfectly though it is a big plus if you speak Dutch. The tech scene is really good with a great market for software engineers and well paid job.

If you don't mind some growing pains, Nashville TN. The tech scene is growing very rapidly so there's no shortage of work, and the population is well educated. Vanderbilt is here as well as other excellent universities nearby. Winters are very mild, living is cheaper than most places, and the nightlife is great.

Go here and sort by cheapest country and look for the other things you value in that countries: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.js... (crowdsourced cost of living)

Ensenada in Baja California, México, there's a big expat community, there's beach, you are like 1-2 hours from San Diego, it does have a Mexico National University Unit, it hosts the baja score off road races, also there is a lot of breweries & fancy restaurants, plus, is has the same bay area timezone.

I have made such a list myself.

Asia: Bangkok, ChiangMai, Taiwan, Shanghai, Beijing, Hanoi.

Europe: Lisbon, Madrid, Milan, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Berlin, Varsaw

Not sorted

Check out Belgrade, Serbia.

Lots of expats from all over the world, vibrant ever growing tech scene.

Cheap 1-2hr flights to other European destinations.

You can also consider NCR , India. It's the national captial region which includes Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida.

Pros. Internet - 1 Gbps internet at ~20$ a month

Lots of great colleges - IIT D, JNU, AIIMS, DCE Housing - You can get a 2500ft 3BHK high rise condo in gurgaon for ~800$/month. With that you'll get a jacuzzi, modular kitchen, round the clock security, pool , gym etc.

Labour is cheap - Maids which do cleaning, laundry and cooking cost ~150$/month. Drivers cost around 300 . You really don't have to do chores

Great food - Everything is app based anyway, so you can get good quality pasta/salad home delivered to your place at 3AM for less than 10 dollars.

Good Roads - Unlike some cities in India, the NCR region is connected by highways since it's made up of multiple states. Though if you have got friends in another part of town, it can mean a commute of upto 70 kms. It has a population of 24 million.

Great quality weed - weed is virtually legal and will set you back by ~10$/quarter, for ~70$ you can get 10gms of 30-60%THC concentrate ( hashish). Lots of microbreweries in gurgaon too.

Cons

Pollution - It can get a bit bad in winter, but you can install airpurifiers in your car and home to offset most of the effects.

If you want cheap and quiet, Raleigh area (Research Triangle) in North Carolina is great. There isn't a thriving tech scene like some big cities but it has good schools like Duke, UNC and, NCSU, which attracts intellectuals. The lack of other industries sort of keeps the other type of people out.

St. Louis, Missouri. You have a two top schools, WashU and SLU, along with several other strong colleges. The city has become the Chess capital of the US. And you can buy a house for $450K in a walkable neighborhood that would cost well over $1M anywhere else in the US. A very underrated city.

Gainesville, Florida has low cost of living and the University of Florida.

You're within what the eastern seaboard considers "A commute" of three major metropolitan areas: Jacksonville, Tampa, and Orlando.

It's about as far away from the ocean as you can get in Florida, which decreases the hurricane risk.

https://originalshrewsbury.co.uk -- it's the birthplace of Darwin, home to a newly formed independent university, it's day-trippable to all major UK cities and it's insanely cheap and nice.

Here are a couple of resources you could use to find active places:

https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/

https://nomadlist.com/forum/

Not super cheap nor super intellectual, but consider somewhere in the Netherlands. The social safety net is excellent so there's not a ton of stress in the population as a whole. I recommend Delft, but the country is small enough that you could practically live anywhere.

Its so interesting to see people offer their opinion of the "Well" they live in.

http://mcjoshi21.blogspot.com/2014/05/todays-subhashita.html

Hawaii wouldn't be ideal based on your criteria. Living costs aren't low and there isn't a thriving intellectual community. Fair Hawaiian weather and vibrant outdoor living, however, have attracted intellectuals ranging from Garrett Lisi to Joseph Campbell.

All of these HN articles about Estonia in the past, and not one mention here. I'm interested because of how tech thinking the government seems to be

Maybe the people who are there don't want to tell others so no one else moves there because it's so great

If you don't mind the humidity, Houston has an extremely low cost of living and, well, as one of the largest cities in the US it has a little bit of everything. It is also known for it's diversity and high per capital restaurant count.

Anyone with experience of tech work in SE Asia? I am currently studying in Beijing, and I am really surprised how nice the life-style is here. But from what I've read, software engineering is not the best profession here opportunity-wise.

Talking about living in other places:

What is a good way to find an apartment for a few weeks?

Just use AirBnB and see if the apartments offer a discount for a longer stay?

Or are there better ways?

I play with the idea to live in Lisbon and/or somewhere in Asia a few weeks during the coming months.

I heard good things about Berlin. Not first-hand account though. They say it's not just high-tech, but also arts. I think that might be a valuable combination.

Let us know how it works out when you settle down somewhere, wherever that is.

Have you ever wondered what you would bring to the community you plan to move to?

Cambridge, Massachusetts.

People will say it’s expensive but it’s cheap relative to the Bay Area.

Groningen, The Netherlands. Population 300k, strong university and other educational fascilities. Has the Dutch infrastructure but still relatively cheap compared to the other majors cities (eg Amsterdam)

I'd consider Lisbon for the life style and most people speak English.

Prague. The center of Europe. Multicultural heritage, great atmosphere.

Depends what you mean by a 'good intellectual atmosphere', I suppose. I would recommend Edinburgh, Berlin, Glasgow, Manchester, and Cambridge (from personal experience).

Hesitant to encourage more people to move here but...South West Montana. Bozeman, Livingston, Helena..

I say "here" but I'm typing this in SF...so I guess I mean "there".

We love Sacramento. It's still close enough to the Bay Area, but the cost if living and population density are far more manageable, and the food is great!

Just off top of my head...Vancouver, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Toronto, and Waterloo. Cheaper than the Bay Area and still with an intellectually high community.

Check out http://numbeo.com for a great way to compare the cost between different cities.

Given the huge number of responses to this question. The answer seems to be everywhere is cheaper than the Bay Area which isn't exactly a surprise. :)

A couple of suggestions:

- If you enjoy going out, like laidback attitude - Berlin. Not super cheap, but way cheaper than SF.

- If you like the sun, sea, surfing - Portugal.

- If you like outdoors, security, ecology, arts - Ljubljana (Slovenia).

I'm biased since I'm a Slovene, but work-life balance is insane in Slovenia, the environment is super clean, everything is super safe (as in no murders). If you're remoting you'll be earning top dollar, but even mediocre senior tech job will net you enough to support a family living in Ljubljana and live very comfortably (long vacations, travel, eating out, nice apartment)...

Love it here in East Lansing, Michigan! Great size of town, people are intellectual and friendly, some decent tech meet ups, and the state is beautiful.

I strongly recommend Chiang Mai, especially Niman area.

Stockholm? Cultural, very solid tech scene, great quality of life in general, and great seasonal activities. [Edit: oh and English everywhere.]

Vienna, Austria. Great quality of life, very intellectual environment. You'll probably find it easy to move here and get a job, too ..

I would recommend moving to Berlin. It is a small state in itself, so even if you are located somewhere outside the city, you will be close to the actual city. Also, due to many colleges and recent flush of student population, you will find many English speaking immigrants as well as Germans. Intellectually it is rich. Berlin is one of the hottest destinations in Europe for start-up scene, so you will find many free-lancing gigs for yourself there..last but not the least, night-clubs in Berlin are just amazing..

Berlin. But learn German. English is fine here, but as you mention "intellectual", you can probably learn that as well, right?

Interesting that most of these places involve freezing your tits off for half the year. Are warmer places typically less-intellectual?

Montreal! Multiple universities, huge tech & ai sectors, thriving culture scene if you're into that, very inexpensive housing

I think many towns/cities with good size liberal arts colleges are interesting and affordable - outside the big metro areas.

NZ is good an option. I heard couple of startup moving to nz from bay area.

Good atmosphere, easy visa, government supportive for migrated ppl

AusTin Texas.

Blue dot in Red Sea. Many many opportunities. Our pay if far better than Bay Area. Sr software here makes 130+ lead at 160+.

Entry level is 85

Minneapolis fits the bill. Maybe Pittsburgh.

Related question: where would you live with a remote job away from the big cities if you valued peace and the outdoors?

Johor http://iskandarmalaysia.com.my

What about Singapore? Very nice place with few good co-working spaces. You can visit Bali/Thailand on weekdays.

Melbourne Australia. Tech meetups, but expensive. Top city to live in the world, almost every year.

Philippines - It's the best place to be. Just imagine coding in front of a breath taking view. Everything is cheap. No BS. Plus the beautiful nature and everybody speaks english.

Here's a quick testament about the Philippines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-tKE812-ZY

Pullman, WA or Moscow, ID if you're okay living in the middle of nowhere, but like the West.

Oak Ridge Tennessee has an extremely high average intelligence and is quite affordable.

As far as Europe is concerned, you'd be mad to choose anything West or North.

As for the guy saying Porto is one of the cheapest cities in Europe…

WHAT?! It's €15 for a 'Francesinha', and this food is garbage anyway. There are much nicer places to go in Portugal where the prices and quality aren't ruined by tourism.

Atlanta!

Check out university towns with offices of a few decent companies.

I live in SF as well, I find Portland a very good alternative.

Amsterdam is a blast :)

Careful about the culture shock if you move abroad though...

Ann Arbor, Michigan. Small town feel. Top universities.

Bloomington Indiana. Super cheap cute college town.

Scotland. Most definitively, outskirts of Edinburgh.

A North England uni town. Warwick perhaps?

Athens, Greece is a pretty decent bet.

Cluj, Romania

How about Calafou in Catalonia?

[1] https://calafou.org/en

[2] http://www.sustainable-communities.eu/postcapitalistcalafou/

[3] https://cooperativa.cat/en/

Lisbon, Porto, Berlin, Leipzig

Vienna

Zagreb, Berlin, Vienna?

Go to Bangalore, India.

Taiwan. come and see

Honestly, I think Cambridge MA may give you that environment.

Roanoke, VA

Edinburgh

The Internet!

In North America I would vote Montreal. It's 1/2 price of most American cities and 2x funner and cooler than almost any of them. LA and NYC have tons of cool, but they are expensive and doing fun stuff is generally expensive. Not so Montreal. Mtl has way more going on than even SF ever had back in the day, and it's much bigger than Austin, Boulder/Colorado Springs etc. etc.. During the summer, Montreal has an unbelievable amount of stuff to do. Carnivals, festivals, just jammed back to back, overlapping one another all summer.

More students per capita than anywhere (depending on how you define 'city' because of course Boston is a big one, but Mtl has 5 Unis right down town within a few Km of each other).

And 1/2 of the city is French, and it's like being in another country.

It has an intellectual/creative tradition from French culture, also, it's actually a global leader in AI, and not just one of those cities making pompous statements: UMtl has the largest AI research facility in North America, and $100M in spending announced, and ElementAI has raised hundreds of millions so this is no joke.

But the winters are very cold. And salaries lag. And taxes are high. Healthcare is universal and you will get service ... but it's not as good as in the US when you are covered.

Ithaca, NY

Zürich

Brooklyn

It depends on where one is at in life. I would move to such a place to retire, but not just starting out.

Prague is relatively cheap.

Also, some of the college towns in the US if they're not nestled within major metros.

Tokyo, SF, NYC, London, Moscow, etc. are where the action is at: for people whom can compete and afford a lifestyle unsustainable for anyone else.

As an extension to the common advice here (move where the academics are), check what research you enjoy and find out which universities produce that research. Then, secondly see if there is a meetup scene where the people doing this research at the graduate level hang out. That should get you into some network or another once you filter the alternative by living cost threshold.

https://www.sehzadi.com/

Huntsville, AL

Nice

   81 Nobel Laureates

This is misleading, because it falsely counts winners of the "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences Prize in Economic Sciences" as a Nobel price. Alfred Nobel did not donate a price for economics. The Sveriges Riksbank (= bank of the swedish empire) created this price (against the explicit wishes of the Nobel foundation [1]) in order to 'cash' in on the reputation of Nobel price. This is well-known and it is most likely that an institution that false counts winners of the Sveriges Riksbank as Nobel price winners is doing this to mislead the audience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...

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