Gather Little By Little has a guest post called “How California Changed Our Budget.”

It’s written by Shawna, who blogs with her husband at Two Working Parents. They were living in the metro Detroit area until April 2008 when they moved to California and, on their first blog post, they say “honestly, it was the best decision of our life!”

Moving away from Michigan doesn’t mean, however, that financial worries are gone. The cost of living in California is pretty high. And now California is dealing with recession worries too.

Here’s a snippet from the guest post at GLBL:

While my salary is higher than it was in Michigan, it barely covers the cost of living increase.  There are obviously some changes that we had to make to our budget, and some were more unpleasant than others.  The biggest, longest lasting, and least painful thing we did, though, was dropping our cable service.

So if you’re wondering whether an out-of-state move is worth it, yes it can be. Maybe you will have better job security. Maybe the children will have better access to things they like to do. Maybe you’ll be closer to family. Maybe you’re just tired of the snow and cold in Michigan or Ohio (don’t we all hit that point sometime during winter?).

But you may still find you have to be just as frugal in your lifestyle to make ends meet in your new locale.