You see it come up here once in a while - people sometimes hint at it - but do you ever think about moving out of state?
If you are thinking about moving, where are you looking to move? How close are you to actually doing it? And most importantly, why? Kids? Tired of taxes? You just gotta smoke sick amounts of weed?
Fogerson has been gone a while, anyone still keep in touch with him? He still liking it on the left coast?
@Pearl how’s the move been so far?
@rick81721 - you don’t count yet. You’re still here in my book sorta.
This can be an annoying topic because people will defend where they're from, just like they'll defend belonging to whatever religion their parents belong to. And everyone is different.
These are the reasons why I'm interested in leaving:
Why:
1) NJ is expensive. Not just HCOL while here but in retirement it will suck you dry. Why pay 12k in taxes here when you can pay 3k in a place with similar or better living experience? I can't imagine Rick has his residency in NJ... NJ does not really fit into my finances long term unless I want to work much longer and harder than I'd like. I'm already struggling with work/life balance.
2) Northern NJ is an absolute grind. Traffic, high population tends to have people assholeish. We can pretend we're just hard and really awesome people but I realize that people I get to know from other less populated areas are much genuinely friendlier.
3) Food, very often I feel in NNJ I'm in a weird wasteland of food. This may sound odd but if I want authentic Vietnamese I have to travel awhile, same with middle-eastern unless it's $$. Most restaurants are generic and not very creative. I wonder if part of this is high property values keep down experimental businesses. We have no "trendy" food scene, at least not where I am now.
If you want garbage Italian food and pizza we have tons of that. I don't eat pizza, I don't eat bagels, I won't die not having Taylor Ham. If I never see another Pizza/Italian food place for the rest of my life I'd be OK.
4) Car centric. We have no real cities where you can live primarily without a car, at least any I'd want to live in. The towns with downtown areas exist mostly because they're old train towns and they are very expensive and the restaurants are "date night" restaurants I'm not interested in.
5) Weather. I dislike the cold and always have.
Would it work:
1) People in other parts of the country do in fact have jobs. Some of them pay quite well. I'm not tied to my job, in fact ready to leave.
2) I don't have much of a super connection to my family so I don't mind leaving. The GF actually likes her family but we're looking at being somewhere within reasonable visitation distance for holidays etc.
3) We're DINK, so financially we don't have a huge amount of risk moving into a different job. We're looking for really, really nice houses in the 300k range. Not having some huge mortgage and property taxes help the financial aspect of moving.
4) Outside of friends, not sure what I'd miss in NJ. We don't take advantage of NYC anymore. Outside of good/great mountain biking I can't think of too many positives over other states?
Where:
Right now we've settled on Richmond, VA, reasons are:
1) Walkable city that's a nice size. Very diverse neighborhoods with people that don't seem like foreigners.
2) OK after work mountain biking in-town, horrible mountain biking within a short distance, awesome stuff with some travelling. Great road/gravel riding within distance.
3) Temperate climate. Not too bad in the winter, not too bad in the summer. I'll take a heat wave in the summer if I don't have to deal with the snow. I really, really hate the cold.
4) 95 passes through it so very easy to travel to north (NJ) or more south, close to other highways. Easy to get in/out, little traffic.
5) Great food scene.
6) Good job market.
7) Inexpensive. Not dirt cheap like moving to Greenville, SC or something but still inexpensive. Property taxes are low.
8) Not too far from air travel, not too far from other major cities to visit.
We travel south multiple times per year scoping out places to live. We've looked at:
TN including Nashville, Chattanooga & Noxville
SC - Mostly Greenville
NC - Asheville, Greensboro/Winston-Salem/Raleigh/Durham.
AZ - Phoenix/Tucson.
Passed through a million other cities & towns of course through various states but the above is what we looked at more and more but ruled them out.
When:
@MissJR stated 2020. Everything we own is currently for sale. Anyone want a cat?