Good points about their changing financial status becoming a source of stress later on. (I wonder if even things like sleeping in Jack's fancy dome tent bothered Ennis, at some level?)
This makes me wonder how successful they would have been financially, etc. if they had set up a cow and calf operation (presumably on Jack's parents' ranch). Would living with Jack have helped pull Ennis out of poverty a little bit? Without the Newsome money, how successful would Jack be as a self-sufficient ranch cowboy (well, self-sufficient with Ennis)?
I think it would depend on whether Jack's father was really willing to let Jack and Ennis set up a cabin on his property and eventually inherit the place... though even then, it might have been hard to keep the ranch going. Otherwise, Jack and Ennis would have needed to buy some property (and take out a mortgage), buy livestock, buy feed... Somehow I don't think that LD Newsome really would have paid Jack to leave Lureen. Jack's a sweetheart, but I don't think he was being realistic there. (And what were interest rates like in the late 60's/early 70's? By the late 70's they were incredibly high. That would have been a rough time to be trying to start a new business like a ranch.)
They would have had a lot going against them, even if Wyoming had somehow magically transformed itself into a gay-rights paradise. High school dropouts didn't have many prospects in the 70's, and it's only gotten worse since then. And ranches and farms have been folding and being sold for development, or consolidating into industrial farming businesses. (I currently live in an area where ranches are disappearing, and I grew up in a different rural area. Imagine a community that welcomes Wal-Mart because they consider it a source of good jobs. Yes, they are that desperate. And, ugh, I would hate to imagine Jack and Ennis as 60-something Wal-Mart greeters, though if they got to go home to each other at night maybe it would be worth it.)