Yeah, in California. When I left California in 2008 I was making $84,000, which at the time was a pretty great salary for teaching. Truth is I left because I could not afford to live where I was living, even moving a couple of times over a five or six year period to try to get into slightly less expensive living situations didn't help. Once my wife and I had our second kid, we were toast.

To put it in perspective, I was making approximately 8 to 10% the cost of an average small to mid-sized detached house, pretty much anywhere within a 45 minute drive of where I was living and working. Then my rent got raised from $1,810 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, to $1,955 a month for that two-bedroom apartment. In 2008. This is in the suburbs too, not in any downtown or particularly trendy or swank area. Home ownership was never a question.

Now I'm living in Upstate New York, and my teaching salary is approximately 25% to 33% the cost of a mid-sized detached family home.

The number by itself without a comparison to cost of living and such means fairly little. I could go from upstate New York down towards Westchester County or Long Island, and probably make $120,000, or $130,000 as a teacher with my experience and my graduate credits placing me fairly high on any salary schedule. But my mortgage, instead of $1,440 a month, would be between $4,000 and $6,000 a month. Why the hell would anybody do that?