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I got sick of living in a HCOL area and moved somewhere super cheap. Put 20% down on a nice house and have a $500/month mortgage payment. My total annual housi
by pxeboot 9y ago
I got sick of living in a HCOL area and moved somewhere super cheap. Put 20% down on a nice house and have a $500/month mortgage payment. My total annual housing expenses are less than the taxes on a similar house in Seattle or San Francisco.
Pay is less on paper, but actually quality of life and savings are much higher.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoAnd you'll actually get to retire!
- lostmsu 9y agoWhere did you move to? I'm looking for a good area like this with the biggest requirement of having fiber or otherwise just a very good 250Mbps+ service.
- emodendroket 9y agoI don't know where he went but I've occasionally thought about Raleigh or Chicago as like, way cheaper than Boston, where I am.
- loeg 9y agoRaleigh or Chicago aren't $500/mo mortgage for a nice house cheap.
- emodendroket 9y agoNo, but they have a livelier job market than, like, Rochester or Buffalo, and comparatively they still look quite cheap.
- carlivar 9y agoChicago and Illinois in general are in rough financial shape. Taxes are very high with no end to raises in sight.
- emodendroket 9y agoI looked it up and Illinois just raised its income tax rate to just below that of Massachusetts.
- pascalxus 9y agoMe too. That's one less state we can escape to.
- emodendroket 9y agoI don't know about you but income tax isn't my main concern
- pascalxus 9y agosure, its not the first concern. but, if you're going to pick everything up and leave all your friends and family behind, don't you want to find someplace ideal (consider all your choices and all factors involved) ?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- carlivar 9y agoProperty and sales taxes are also high. I think one major problem is the number of government bodies with taxing authority: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/too-much-government-illinois-thousands-of-local-governments/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/too-much-government-i... Essentially, Illinois has a long history of corruption and political patronage that I find detestable.
- noahl 9y agoI moved from Seattle to Raleigh, and love it so far. I'd be happy to answer questions about it if that would be helpful to you.
- rayiner 9y agoIf you can telecommute a lot, I recommend Maryland b/w D.C. and Annapolis. You can get a 4BR house for what a 1BR apartment costs in D.C., you can be at a farm in 20 minutes in one direction and a downtown bar in 10 minutes in the other, and I've got two different fiber providers available (I'm getting 2-gig installed soon). Unfortunately, the tech scene in the DMV area seems to be mostly in northern Virginia, which is probably the most overrated part of the entire country.
- Retric 9y agoNorthern Virginia has very low unemployment and high paying jobs. The area also has all 4 seasons fairly balanced, zero significant natural disasters, plenty of rainfall to stay green in the summer etc. Granted, you may not like that tradeoff, but it has a lot going for it. Sure I moved to MD due to my current job, but I am seriously considering moving back.
- djtriptych 9y agoAnd some of the best public school systems in the country.
- mtberatwork 9y agoEven with high paying jobs (if you are fortunate to have one), NoVA also has incredibly high housing costs unless you decide to live in the less desirable locations (which come with their own problems) or move far out and give yourself a massive commute.
- Retric 9y agoDepends on what your comparing it to. Northern VA has a mix of jobs and houses so it's possible to have a very short commute. It's easy to find an nice apartment around 1500$ / month just about anywhere which is not cheap, but not so crazy as NYC or SV. A dual income professional family can generally afford a 4 bedroom home, but that's hard on a single income without a massive down payment or over sized salary. In terms of living further out, it's frequent for people to telecommute 1-3 days a week which makes a huge difference.
- pxeboot 9y agoI moved from Seattle to a midsized city in Texas. Gigabit is available, but expensive. While my house is by far the nicest I have lived in, most of my neighbors have far larger/more expensive homes. It would have been easy to spend twice as much for more land and square footage, but I am very happy having something we can very comfortably afford.
- noahl 9y agoI moved from Seattle to the Raleigh/Durham area. I absolutely love it so far. Everything is cheaper here, and quality of life is (in my subjective opinion) far superior. Feel free to ask me more about it.
- loeg 9y agoYou got 80% of a nice house for something like 120-140k (guessing at interest rate and term here)? In the states, or a cheap foreign country?
- Retric 9y agoI have seen a nice 4 story house sold for under 60k in the US. It's really all about location, location, location.
- ddnb 9y agoWow, 60k USD for a home, incredible. That's an older home then probably? Here in Belgium the absolute minimum would be double that, those would be the smallest, oldest buildings with nothing of insulation or modern comforts. Here a building-stop has been announced for 2040 as all available land in flanders will be used up for homes!
- pxeboot 9y agoI did. It is easy to find nice places for less than 200k in Texas. Prices are going up, but still very affordable.
- johnvanommen 9y agoI quit my job in Bellevue WA and moved to Oregon City Oregon. Here's some things it has going for it: 5) It has a train station that connects it to every city from Los Angeles to Portland to Seattle via Amtrak 4) Portland's train system doesn't connect to it yet, but it will soon. At the moment, it takes about 15 minutes to get to the city train station. 3) Portland is overrun with homeless people, but Oregon City isn't. 2) The traffic isn't as bad as Portland 1) You can get a nice house for well under $1800 a month. If you can live with a condo, you can get that down to about $1200.
- manyxcxi 9y agoI’m in Wilsonville, moved from Seattle (but I grew up in Portland). One thing that WA has over OR is no income tax. I’d gladly have sales tax again to not pay the income tax.
- matt_wulfeck 9y agoWe’ll see how long Washington can maintain its income-tax free environment [1]. 1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-council-to-vote-today-on-income-tax-on-the-wealthy/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...
- victor9000 9y agoExcept this law violates various state laws, as well as the state constitution, so it will be struck down upon judicial review.