CFA Jobs in Low cost-of-living areas?

My goal is quickly build my wealth and assets by earning as much money as possible while keeping my expenses as low as possible. In doing so, I’d like to live in an area that’s stereotypically low cost-of-living… like Nashville, Indianopolis, Birmingham, AL, Little Rock, etc (US only) as long as there are appropriate jobs for CFA candidates and charterholders. The area I’m most interested in is Portfolio Management although I’m willing to consider other areas since it’s still early in my career.

I see CFA test centers in those low-cost-of-living states so I’m assuming appropriate jobs for CFA candidates there…

Large regional banks…Cleveland and Pittsburgh come to mind.

Ok, first, common sense should have triggered in your mind that salaries for the exact same job vary widely across the US specifically to account for high/low living costs.

Since you are a level 1 candidate, you clearly have a long road ahead of you, and whatever job you take is certainly a junior position, so you are making peanuts anyway.

Living in a dump might save you several grand now, but that’s nothing. If you really want to save big, you need to get up the ladder, higher position, higher salary. Once you make 170k or so, continue to live very modestly, and that’s when you can save a ton.

You didn’t say anything I didn’t already know… I’m just more curious about the prospects of launching a lucrative career in a lower cost of living area. Also, from what I’ve seen, salaries here in California aren’t high enough to compensate for the insanely high cost of living compared to, say, the Deep South.

It depends on which job you get. If you want to be a financial advisor or something like that, then maybe it’s better to go to Alabama instead of New York. If you want to be a hedge fund manager, then you probably can’t live in Alabama.

That’s not totally accurate. While there are obviously many more investment management jobs in large cities like NY and Boston, there are a handful of hedge funds and mutual funds based in mid-sized Southern cities like Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Charlotte, Louisville, etc.

To the OP, I would also look at cities in Texas. In particular, Dallas has a surprisingly large number of hedge funds.

I think you are missing the point. Maybe there are like twp hedge funds in Alabama. The point is that you have a very low chance of getting the hedge fund job if you restrict yourself to “low cost” areas.

I’m not missing the point at all.

A) The OP never said he was interested in only hedge funds, and B) he also never said he was only looking in Alabama.

There is ridiculous groupthink in this industry in believing that you absolutely have to work in NY or Boston. For example, I just now pulled up a list of 35 firms in the state of Georgia with over $1BB AUM. There are at least 30 hedge funds in the Dallas Metro area.

If the OP or anyone else wants to focus on building an investment management career in a low-cost, mid-sized city, that is absolutely possible. That is the point.

It doesn’t have to be hedge funds. It could be any job in finance. Is it *possible* to be successful in specialized finance jobs in some random southern city? Sure, it’s possible. Are your chances as good as they would be in a financial center? Of course not.

Why in the world would that need to be explained, given the vast difference in population between the Northeast Corridor and the South? NYC’s metro area has a population of 20 million. Do you think the OP doesn’t know that?

Re-read the thread. The OP wanted to learn about IM opportunities in low-cost areas like the South, period. Of course he did not want to argue that the South has more aggregate IM job opportunities than NYC, but yet you tried to tilt the thread in that direction for some strange reason.

Now you’re just being a pain in the ass…

This thread is now owned by Tony the Tiger

Classic AF thread. Two dudes who seem to be speaking different languages although you could swear they both speak English.

To summarise for the OP - yes.

LOL,move to NH,pay no income tax ad work for Fidelity

house = cheap

but winter = cold