- It is easier to save when you don't live where the where the cost of living is higher than the national average. When I lived in Northern California a few years ago, I remember a local news channel referring to the area as "the best place on earth". It was beautiful, but if I had stayed, then surely the cost of living would have lenghten my trip to early retirement.

I'm not so sure that this is true. I live in the Bay Area and save a sizable fraction of my gross (almost 35%) and when I leave here and retire in hopefully 10 years I will not need as much for expenses as I do now. Yes, the Bay Area is expensive but you can often increase your income by a larger percentage than your expenses by living here if you work in the right field. Coming here to work as a book store clerk would make no sense from a FIRE perspective but coming here to work as a software engineer would. You do have to avoid the whole spend big culture that is predominant here though.

Hyperborea