Andrew J. Evans, a vice president at the investment firm Charles Schwab, says he's always been interested in money.

Then he backtracks.

"I don't want that to sound terrible. ... I actually did a lot of theater. I'm a musical theater guy." He said he keeps his ties to theater as a board member for the Center for Theater Arts in Castle Shannon.

He then retreats, stops and explains himself:

"I make people feel like things are really going to work out," he said, explaining his the reason behind his career choice. He went into financial advising though he majored in communications and theater in college. "You can succeed in life financially. It doesn't mean you have to be uber-wealthy. ... My definition of wealthy is that at any point in time I'll be able to walk away from my office and take a trip with my family and it's not going to put any sort of strain on our finances. ... Does that mean I have $10 million? No."

At 27, this North Huntington native has obtained his definition of wealthy, and it's helped put in perspective the reason he moved back to the Steel City.

After graduating from Ohio Northern University, Mr. Evans held two jobs in Florida as a financial adviser and a district manager before looking to move back to Pittsburgh.

He loves to travel with his wife, Lindsay, and their 1-year-old son, Stephen, and he's been to London, Scotland, New Orleans and "pretty much every major city" in Florida. He plans to travel to Orlando to go to the Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios (which he says blows Kennywood's Phantom Fright Nights out of the water) and then take his son to Disney World.

He said it was the time in Florida, though, that really made him appreciate everything Pittsburgh has to offer.

"If you haven't moved away from Pittsburgh, you're probably not appreciating it the way that you should be because you really don't know what it's like outside," Mr. Evans said. He chose his words carefully, explaining that he didn't want to offend me, a lifelong Pittsburgher.

He described the cost of living here as "an added bonus," but not the reason he chose to move back. "I know that as my son's growing up, there will be other kids like him who want to do the best that they can ... who have really sound morals and want to do the best for their families.

"There's really no place like Pittsburgh, none at all."

He said he felt like Florida had a culture in which everyone was trying to one-up everyone else; he always felt like it was "keeping up with the Joneses."

"If you can't, at the drop of a hat, go out and blow $1,000 on drinks and dinner, you weren't part of the 'in' crowd."

Although the weather in Pittsburgh is less than ideal, we certainly enjoy a limited number of natural disasters, but Mr. Evans said it wasn't the hurricanes that bothered him.

"We tried so hard to make friends in Florida," he said. However, in Pittsburgh, he said, 50 people he's met in the last two years recently attended his son's first birthday party.

As a dedicated family man, though, Mr. Evans says he'd leave Pittsburgh for another opportunity that would benefit his family. He said his mother, a single parent who taught at McKeesport schools for 38 years to support him and his two siblings, taught him the value of the dollar. "No matter what happened in my life, I was always going to be able to provide for my family more than my mother could. ... I know that she always wanted to provide more than what she could."

And if that means leaving Pittsburgh, he'll miss it, but that's how it'd have to be.

Plus, he said, "I could retire here."