Cons of living in Alaska (Fairbanks, Metlakatla: 2015, insurance, transfer)

[Re3iRtH]

Originally Posted by Music_Man

If you want all that foreign food maybe you should move to one of those countries, that way you can get the 'REAL' thing.

I was relaying my experience to the poster who was asking about moving from NYC to Alaska, having lived in both and traveled to quite a lot more. This has nothing to do with me. I never said I wanted "all that foreign food", if you had read the entire thread

[Haolejohn]

Originally Posted by Frostnip

What gets my goat is when places advertise free shipping, no caveats, and then you get to check out and they're like HAHA SURPRISE, NOT TO ALASKA and this pops up:
Your cart: $7.99
Shipping: $10,000,000.00
Total: $10,000,007.99

Target, I am looking at you.

We e never paid for shipping through Target. Get the red card.

[Haolejohn]

Originally Posted by riceme

Whaaat?? I was with you until you started talking about cooking burgers. We must not eat at the same places.

In my personal life, I rarely ever actually *need* anything delivered next day, but I admit that when I do, it's a little irritating that the only way to get it here is via Goldstreak. The thing that really ticks me off is paying for 2nd day service and getting lesser service. What irritates the everlovin' sh*t out of me at work is having to explain to people over and over again that, no, you cannot get next day service to... (drumroll) anywhere but Anchorage from here. Seriously? How long have you lived here? Do I look like I have a magic wand rammed up my ass?

But, I would not count either of those things as major cons to living in Alaska. I can't even really think of big detractors besides missing my dad and the smell of sagebrush, and those things are I'm sure only a big deal to me. I don't know... cabin fever at the end of winter kind of sucks. The outhouse at -40*F is not awesome. Anything that breaks at -40*F guarantees a bad day, but probably also good stories afterward.

My dad just left after spending 16 days up here. It rained 14 of those and the no seeums were brutal on 8 of them. That's a con. He's getting old.

I live in arguably the most expensive hub in the state and that is a con, however the pros outweigh the cons.

[kodiakbearcountry]

We are moving next summer to Alaska but it's a 'back home' move for us. We were narrowing our list to where we were moving after our last child graduated as we are currently in a state that we got stuck in due to being military and retiring here with young kids.

Alaska was always at the top because all my family is there and I'm from there. My husband's family lives in a state that we both did not want to move back to and we had been stationed there for a few years in the middle of our military years (Texas). Luckily we also got to do a tour in Iceland which wasn't so far off from Alaska so my husband got to experience some of the more common issues with new people to Alaska (darkness/daylight changes) and cooler year-round temperatures.

The cons are really going to vary depending on what is okay for you. The biggest cons for us are the crappy internet options, shipping (some places won't even ship to Alaska, what the hell is up with that) and traveling anywhere from Alaska is a bit more costly and travel time is longer. I really wish Alaska would get their internet service upgraded. We are currently on fiber and get 1 Gb down/up. I'm going to miss that! What we pay for that is just slightly more than our college son in Anchorage is paying for 10 Mb down.

[Arktikos]

Originally Posted by kodiakbearcountry

..
The cons are really going to vary depending on what is okay for you. The biggest cons for us are the crappy internet options, shipping (some places won't even ship to Alaska, what the hell is up with that) and traveling anywhere from Alaska is a bit more costly and travel time is longer. I really wish Alaska would get their internet service upgraded. ..

The time and expense related to travel, even within state, is worth considering, especially given the OP's user name.
Interesting that they've posted just one other time at CD, and it's a similar question regarding moving to LA.

About the shipping, we're such a small market in the big picture that some businesses figure they don't need to bother at all with us. On the other hand, we now enjoy free shipping from some places, such as Zappos and Amazon, that deliver to your door within a week or so. I think shipping is timely enough these days. Used to be, old timers would order from Sears and wait weeks or months to get something.

The lack of speed and amount of data available from the internet is not something that impacts me, or anyone I'm familiar with. It's expensive though.

[45XD]

Originally Posted by bmw335xi

The biggest con to living in Alaska is no same-day, 1 day or 2 day shipping through Amazon... everything takes at least a week even with prime =( and the restaurants are way overpriced and generally suck. For some reason, you can't even order a burger cooked medium without getting a speech about how you could get sick therefore we refuse to cook it anything but well done... meanwhile in the rest of the world, you can order a medium rare burger no problem.

Don't know about the med-rare burger thing- and yes restaurants are pricier than what we were used to- but I completely agree with the Amazon part. We have always used Prime for many things (Christmas shopping!) and it has always been fine. However, up here, you need to give yourself plenty of lead time. Things just take longer to get here...

[Metlakatla]

One of the major cons of living in Alaska is that health care is both substandard and expensive. For what we pay, we should get much better services, but no.

[riceme]

^Truth

[Metlakatla]

Pretty sure most of these traveling quacks are fresh out of Caribbean med "schools."

[akpls]

Originally Posted by riceme

^Truth

Especially in Fairbanks!