Are the Ends Supposed to Meet?

Just about once a month Josh and I have the same conversation. Should we continue living in the Bay Area and struggling to get by? Or should we move somewhere more affordable, even though we love it here and all of our friends and my family are here? It seems that many people in the Bay Area are struggling with the same questions. And for as many people who say move, just as many say stay.My parents moved to Palm Springs four years ago for exactly the same reason. They left their friends and family and moved to a place where they could get a better bang for their buck. And they have a beautiful house down there and much more space. But now my mom wants to move back to the Bay Area because she is lonely there. She wants to be closer to her family. We have just one go around and it's so hard to choose a path to take. Would our lives be better if we moved to somewhere more remote and cheaper, but knew absolutely nobody? And then there's the fact that Josh says he will only consider moving to the Northeast. That limits our choices exponentially. It's so hard to know what to do. Why don't the Chinese takeout places offer fortune cookies with these kinds of predictions? It would certainly be more useful than 'you have many friends'—well, duh.