That is a pretty wise move Magnum, I am a native to Florida but it is getting expensive, even N. Florida. We lived for a number of years in Georgia and tried to move back a few years ago. We landed jobs in FL but have a lengthy commute (only affordable housing was "way out"). It has us thinking we can do better. A couple tidbits of advice:
1) make an excel spreadsheet and compare the following between your current location and a potential new location: mortgage payment, state income taxes, property taxes and utilites. Compare "apples to apples" (i.e. a 2,000 square foot home, all brick, x size lot, etc). I tend to neglect things like cost of groceries, cable tv, etc as the difference is usually not significant.
2) Look at cities and the # of civil engineers in that city at bls.gov at this link:
Pick a city you want to look at and look under "architectural and engineering services", you should see "civil engineers". This will give you the total civils in the town and their mean compensation. Divide the total employment for the town by the # of civil engineers. That will give you a good comparison when comparing different cities. Using Birmingham as an example there are 680 C.E.s in town and total employment is 456,000, about one CE for every 670 workers. Here is why you want to make that comparison: my experience has been that you will land a new gig in a new town and everything will be hunky-dory for a while. As you gain experience and licenses, etc, your company may or may not pay you competitively. A town with a fairly high number of civils per total work force should tell you there are plenty of firms there in case you need to find employment elsewhere and someone new to pay what you are worth.
3) A few words of caution about some GA and AL towns. Some had industries in the past that have already or are in the process of "dying" (textiles, etc). This leads to higher unemployment rates, low growth rates for the town and in some instances less development, i.e. need for those new road designs by civils. The town I left had some dying industries (with stagnant population growth) and had about a tenth the number of civils compared to the growing town I moved to.
