Got a job in northern VA, 50K a year, thought I was going to be living well enough. The area chewed us up for a few years as a string of bad luck including both cars going out. Got in some CC debt trying to survive, so really we were less than poor as we were in the negative.

Took a year or two to pull out of it, and never want to go back to that again. Still in the area, but as our salary increased we were able to live comfortably, and are doing pretty well now.