<prompt> Human: I have three job offers. The locations are San Diego, Seattle, and New Mexico. The pay is 54k, 45k, and 100k respectively. I understand the cost of living in the first two can be high and the pay in NM is pretty good. I also do not want to live in the middle of a desert. Im not sure the Seattle salary is viable at least not living in the city, outside of it. This is the environmental field. Any insight if anyone has had a similar situation?Assistant: NM all the way. If this was a 10k difference id say follow the location but NM has some sweet spots and, with the low cost of living, you could be in awesome shape after three years. Then, when youre looking for jobs again, people will use 100k as your base and offer up from there which would then make it viable to live in a more expensive city. Human: The NM gig is a federal job. Requires extensive travel international and domestic, on-call rotations, top-secret equivalent clearance etc. Not sure if thats worth it to me, even with the pay.  <response>: If youre not interested in the job, then no point but it sounds like a sweet gig if youre traveling a lot, your per diem adds up plus you rack up miles and points redeemable for thousands of dollars worth of vacations. The fact that theyre getting you top secret clearance is a plus in my book since, depending on your line of work, many employers highly value it. Keep in mind any future job prospects will offer you based on your previous salary -say a 15-20 increase which is pretty usual; that means your next job puts you at 120k in one option and the other at 55k tops. I know you can SOMETIMES luck out double your salary by making lateral moves but USUALLY the increases are not that big. This is not fully related to finance but for a moment dont think about these offers you have on the table -think about the job you want next. Which of these offers better enables you for that next job? Be it because of its location, title, salary, industry, those things sometimes matter more than money. 