It seems like a no brainer to move. But you're ignoring the fact that someone of equivalent experience could get a paycheck of 500k here.
That pay differential swamps trying to optimize by tightening the budget.
I also can drive 7 minutes to work or run 30 minutes on the Beltline and shower when I get in.
There are more trees here than SF, and we have full seasons. It's also way more diverse. Not everyone is in tech. The dating scene is great.
SF isn't all it's made out to be.
I walk my dog 2 hours a day; are there places where the sidewalk density is high enough and the busy road density low enough that I could do that and have some route optionality so I'm not just doing the same walk all the time?
The Beltline plus Piedmont Park is a perfect fit. The Beltline is linear, but long (it circles the city), and all of the connected neighborhoods are extremely walkable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeltLine
Piedmont Park and Ansley are beautiful.
The Beltline will eventually connect to the Silver Comet trail, which is a completely paved bike path that extends all the way to Alabama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Comet_Trail
If you're willing to get in the car, the Palisades, Kennesaw Mountain, and more are not far. They're extremely dog friendly, and I visit them often.
https://www.atlantatrails.com/hiking-trails/hiking-east-pali...
Also, Fetch Dog Park is freaking amazing. It's a dog park with alcohol. It blew up, and now they're opening four more locations in two other states.
https://atlantapetlife.com/fetch-dog-park/
You shouldn't have any problem.
> The dating scene is great.
Yeah, assuming you're a dude, the gender balance in Atlanta is probably much better, plus you're making excellent money in an area with much fewer people making bank; in SF, making 250k isn't even really that unusual, that's a mid-level dev position at Google, not even senior.
Re:diversity, I find there's this thing in the states where people count the percentage of black and Hispanic people as highly relevant to diversity, but Chinese and Indian people don't count, hence all the articles about how big tech companies are "mostly just white guys". Because the bay area really isn't very white, compared to the US as a whole.