nursing salaries and cost of living

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My question is this: How much money do you make and do you consider yourself to be living comfortably in your area?
I am a clinical nurse specialist in NC and my wife is also a nurse. As a CNS, I make just over $52,000 / year. My wife makes about $46,000 / year. The cost of living in our area is relatively low compared to major cities and our combined salaries put us well above the mean income for our area. In 2003, we bought a new house for about $174,000 with a monthly mortgage of about $1400.
I have looked at nursing salaries in other states and cities and I am at a loss as to how nurses can afford to live in places like southern California, NYC, Boston, Washington DC area, Miami, etc.
Eventually we would like to settle permanantly in the coastal southeast US, but the cost of real estate is so high, even if we made $120,000 / year combined, buying a decent home would be a financial drain.
If there are any nurses out there who live in an area with a statistically high cost of living, please let me know how you do it. Thanks

Sounds like your salaries are pretty average. $1400 is a good amt. to pay for a mortgage. Most places if you cannot buy you certainly should be able to rent for that amt. or less. If nurses cannot buy in an area they rent. I live near Palm Springs California. $200,000 will buy a lower end home. Salaries for RN's are about $25 per hour. Think about this most people esp. women dont even make $25 per hour. Many couples I know make minimum wage and $15 per hour. Wonder how they make it as well? Hopefully your home will earn equity and you can take that amount to put towards the purchase of a new home when you decide to move. I was able to offset the high cost of home buying by purchasing homes that went up in value and taking the profit to offset the cost of a more expensive home. Your question is a good one that many nurses wonder about.

Nursing pays much better that most entry-level jobs, an RN nationwide will make $40,000-60,000 their first full-time year.

My wife and I are both South Jersey RNs, she works full time in the ICU, I do agency. We average around $30/hr, that's more than enough to support a house and home with even if only one of us was working.

We don't lease brand new cars every three years or go on a lot of expensive vacations, we do live quite comfortably with what we have. Saving for retirement is important to us, we sock money away monthly for that purpose.

Andrew Lopez, RN
http://www.nursinghumor.com