Picture this: You've hit like thirty and you've reached that point in your boring, staid bourgeois existence when it's time to settle down, poop out the 2.5, and buy the home of your dreams in which to make it all happen. Unfortunately, you live in San Francisco, where, even though you're raking in more dough than like 95% of the planet's population, you're still too much of a poor to buy a house on even the lowliest of pee-smelling corners down in the Tenderloin.

What to do? Suburbia won't do you much good in the Bay Area if you're on a quest to buy an affordable home. You might have to flee to someplace perfectly horrible populated by snaggle-toothed Okies (e.g., Fairfield, Tracy, etc.) just to find a stucco box cheap enough to call your own. Ick. As someone who is still young and free in America, maybe you don't want to surrender to the horrors of strip malls and traffic jams. Maybe you want to throw on your skinny jeans and drag your kid with the consonant-heavy, prep-school moniker you've slapped it with down to your favorite wine bar for small plates and erudite conversation with similarly inclined individuals. Plus, spending 45 percent of your waking hours behind the wheel of a car hollering "move, asshole!" doesn't exactly lend itself to a sustainable lifestyle, now does it? How to solve this dilemma? Well, duh. Move to Portland or Seattle. Easy as pie.