Daily FI discussion thread - March 29, 2016

How do you quantify current assured quality of life vs potential quality of life?

I know people have to make similar decisions all the time here, but I'm struggling to make a decision on a job offer. Here are the major details:

Current Job:

  • $74k salary, ~$82k including paid OT, also 4-8% raise in April (~60% SR)
  • Live walking distance to downtown Charlotte
  • Work commute is ~20 minutes
  • Good roommate who takes care of my dog when I'm away
  • Have a small but good social network here already established
  • Work under good management, and have a good mix of flexibility and interesting work here
  • My main hobby has an excellent presence in this city
  • I'm getting to lead small project teams and still do engaging technical engineering work (this is my career goal for my current level of Engineer-II with 3-5 years experience)

Job Offer:

  • 105k salary, no paid overtime (COL should decrease slightly, maybe ~70-75% SR?)
  • Would relocate to small-ish Atlanta suburb
  • Would need to find a roommate
  • Less than an hour to ATL or my old college town, but I don't know many people there anymore
  • Good management is not guaranteed, but I have met them and they seem pretty good
  • Main hobby has no presence in the area
  • I'd be the sole engineer on smaller projects, but I'd be doing ALL the work: project management, documentation, design, programming, and deployment whereas now I just program and deploy)

So it's obvious from my bullet points that I prefer my current quality of life in Charlotte vs suburb of Atlanta, but I can't directly compare because the new job offer is still in the unknown. I'm just trying to gauge opinions on the two, especially when the new offer is a huge increase. At what point is "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" become invalid and worth it to take the risk of losing a current sure-thing?

/r/financialindependence Thread