Did the MBA thing, didn't manage to land an MBA job so I'm back in tech, six figures poorer. It's not a slam dunk by any means, and yes the opportunity cost stings as much as the sticker price.

Which MBA program did you do?

A lot of companies support their employees getting an MBA while they still work. It takes a little longer, and it pretty much devours your life while you do it, and you usually have to keep at least a B+ for the company to support you, but it's doable.

I know a guy who did this at UC Berkeley. Took him a while to get an "MBA-ish" job afterwards but it seems to have worked, and anyway he got as far as the MBA itself without quitting his job.

Leaving a high paying job isn't very hard if you don't have many commitments.

I left a decent paying job to attend grad school and so far its been rewarding.

Sure, but I have a graduate CS degree, a wife, and a kid on the way :)

Me too. My kid is now 2 1/2. I'll stick to work until April. Then I'll quit and do something else. I also want to get more involved into business, so I'll enter business school. Saved me a good amount of money! One thing that is important to me is that we have quite low costs of living. And I mean really low costs. No expensive car to maintain, no fancy hobbies. So this works... Don't know about your situation though but I learned that you can cut back tremendously if you must.

Only so much. Things like rent and medical insurance are impossible to avoid, and rent is highly dependent on your location, which is tied to your job. You could get cheaper rent by moving to rural Wyoming, but you're not going to find a tech job there. If you can work remotely, however, or you have your own work-at-home business, this does give you the freedom to seek out lower CoL locations. But medical insurance is still a big factor, esp. when you have a family.

I'd say that these days, housing is easily the #1 cost for most Americans, and in terms of the fraction of a person's income, it's really ballooned from 20 years ago.