That is true. And if your job does not make substantially more it is not worth it. But in this case, it is a no-brainer because what I make and keep way more.

Florida salary (what I make now + I do night shift) $35 per hour. = roughly 65.5k per year.

If I saved 15% toward my 401k and then paid taxes, I am left with roughly 42k and will have saved 9.5k

In other words, Florida = 9.5k saved, 46k post-tax, 10k taxes. A 1bd apartment is easily 1500. Total monthly expenses of 3000 calculated.

Northern California, I will make about $95 per hour = 178k per year

If I saved 15% toward my 401k (+post tax brokerage, you'll see why) and then paid taxes, I am left with roughly 104k and will have saved 26.7k! (past maxing, so I have to save post-tax as well.)

I would much rather have 104k of post-tax money to spend and use in Northern California, PLUS have saved 26.7k.

Then to have 46k post-tax dollars to use in Florida and have only saved 9.5k.

Give me an extra 3% sales tax, slightly more expensive gas which doesn't really matter since I drive a Prius, and apartments that are about 1.75x more. That literally sounds cheap compared to what I will make. It's not like everything is overly expensive, mostly just houses. Its not a secret. I can look at restaurant menus there and a lot are even cheaper than Florida's restaurants.

This doesnt even touch OT, of which I work a lot. In Florida, a healthy amount of OT will push me just past 100k. In California, they have insane OT rules and you can even push into 2x pay territory. The same amount of OT would have me break 300k+ if not 350k. The math on that gets even more in favor of Cali than it already was.

There are some other good locations all throughout the US, but none even touch the bay for nursing. Math doesnt lie. Both salary-wise, and treatment-wise (ratios yo!)