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Oh.my.goodness.
This is my first forum I've ever been involved with, I Apoligize that my questions weren't more clear and straight to the point, but I actually joined this forum and posted because I really wanted to hear the bad stuff, all off it. I've done hours of research and all everywhere says is "Move to Hawaii!" Or I saw Hawaii on countless top 10;20;30 places to move and have a "great life" all you have to endure is the "paradise tax", but I joined this forum to get the ugly truth about paradise. I don't wear rose covered glasses, I respect reality and embrace it, but hearing good things isnt bad either, but if I've irritated y'all, I understand and I Thank you for your advice.
Do people really believe these kind of posts anymore? Nobody finds it odd they pretty much all say $10,000 exactly? That is such a weird number to come up with over and over again.
I would suspect that 10,000 is just a round number people feel they can come up with, and put it out there for a general conversation. Not intended to be specific like 'I have $7,894.54 and will be adding $121.32 for the next 6 bimonthly paychecks' (which btw is not my personal info). People are also more familiar with things like FB and don't know what these forums are like when they first hop on. What I wonder about is what/where is all this other research that is being done. google? to be honest that is where I found this forum.
I would suspect that a general "move to Hawaii" Google search would bring up loads of hotel/real estate/tourist type pages of information?
SmalleyH, your first post did really resemble the ones we frequently get where someone drops a rock in our pond and then disappears. Which is why the agitation, I suppose. But, back to your possible move to Hawaii.
I'm not sure what exactly the usual move to a new place from one place on the mainland to another usually entails. Perhaps renting a Uhaul, filling it with stuff, driving for several hours and then taking everything out into a space that was similar to the original one? Moving from one town to another very similar sort of town? With all the same stores available? Well, basically due to logistics and the distance involved, moving to Hawaii is hugely different. And this is just the stuff involved with moving things from point A to point B. There are usually ocean freighters involved if you are shipping very much stuff which incurs costs and bother. Airfare for folks (no ocean shipping of people) adds to the relocation costs. Temporary (really expensive) housing while looking for a long term rental adds to the cost. There are just a whole bunch of bites out of your relocation budget that aren't present in a mainland location to mainland location type of relocation.
Now, some of the differences you may find when moving to Hawaii that you probably wouldn't run across on a mainland move is that the location where you are going isn't going to be very much like where you left. This is a good thing or a bad thing, most of that is sheer attitude. The weather will be different. Salt air and humidity makes for a major difference in living conditions. The stores you are used to may not be present in Hawaii. Stuff you can easily get on the mainland may not even exist in Hawaii. Fortunately, we now have the internet so we can mail order a lot of things, although not all mail order folks will mail stuff to Hawaii. (I don't know why not, we pay for the shipping after all. What is this, a foreign country? Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico and the other territories and not connected to the continental United States have the same problems)
Typically, houses in Hawaii are much smaller than their mainland counterparts. Especially Honolulu/Oahu houses. The Big Island houses are probably only about 25% smaller instead of the 75% smaller they would be on Oahu. (I'm just picking these numbers out of the air, so don't quote me on them). So, if you pack up the contents of a mainland house and ship it to Hawaii, you're gonna end up with way too much stuff to fit into the Hawaii house. And that's just the sheer volume of stuff. There is also a huge climate change. Many places in Hawaii have high humidity and press board furniture falls apart and turns into oatmeal. Things rust here, fairly ferociously. Barbeque grills are frequently replaced because they rust out quickly. Indoor appliances will rust, even stainless steel ones unless it is really high quality stainless steel, 306 or better. Basic white enamel ones seem to survive pretty well, but if you get a new appliance and you want to keep it, taking it apart and spray painting the inside of the sheet metal panels does a lot to keep it longer. Waxing the exterior helps, too. You learn to not ever put anything away wet or rust and mildew will get it. Leather breeds mildew, so leather jackets and shoes eventually end up covered in mildew unless you are vigilant about keeping things ventilated and dry. Wall to wall carpet gets nasty, so there isn't a lot of that around here. Hawaii's climate might be nice for going to the beach, but it's death to a lot of household furnishings.
When shipping clothing, most of your synthetic clothes are going to be miserable to wear. Natural fabrics such as cotton, silk, linen, tropical weight wool and such are going to be way more comfortable than anything synthetic. Make up on your face is hot and nasty and don't even think about nylons! Ugh! Sticky and hot. Folks wear loose flowing clothing for a reason around here and it's more about ventilation than style. The Aloha shirt is comfortable because it is usually made of 100% cotton and because it is loose and ventilated. Muumuus are the same. After you've been here awhile, though, you'll get cold and wear jackets in the winter like everyone who lives here.
Food is different here, mostly since we have so many different cultures. The Asian section of the grocery store will take up several aisles. There is about half an aisle of different types of rice and none of it may say anything about "Uncle Ben". The price of processed and shipped in grocery store items are likely to be much higher than you are used to. Fortunately, we do have a lot of farmer's markets and neighbors with fruit trees as well as our own vegetable garden and fruit trees. When you get fruit on your tree, you usually share it with your neighbors and then they share back when their tree gives fruit.
Finding employment is going to be different as well. There is a history of folks moving here from the mainland, living here six months to a year and then moving back to the mainland for a variety of reasons. So, employers don't want to hire folks who have newly moved here unless there is a compelling reason for those folks to stay. Having family here is really good, if you moved here to be with family, then employers are much more likely to hire you since you are much more likely to still be here in several months. Also, it is presumed that your family knows how things work and will help you fit in. Fitting in is very important around here. We are an island, we have to get along.
Also on the employment topic, there are a lot of jobs that just don't exist here. If you are a machinist, there's not a lot of work here. No real "industry" here since the cost of shipping raw goods in and manufactured goods out is too expensive and we don't have the population base to support much production. No factories making brake shoes, house hinges, processing wheat into cereal, etc. etc. You have to filter everything through the lens of "it's 2,500 miles away from just about everything" and that includes the customer base. The island could support dozens of small furniture shops but not one large factory, it all needs to be scaled to town sized industry and not city sized industry. Which means you'll be looking at town sized jobs and town sized incomes. Some of it is even village sized, so frequently folks will have more than one job or occupation.
Well thank you! So much for the advice! Very informative and helpful and my Husband was so happy to tell me "I told you so" lol our lease is up in December, if we do decide to go then We will sell all of our things and just come with what we check on the plane, minus our car we will def. be shipping that, and more then likely staying with his family until we find an apartment and I have my LVN, I just need to see about my Lisc. Being changed to Hawaii and My husband has been a manager at a Cigar shop for four years so we will have to pray and hope for the best! Thank you so much for being so informative to everyone who gave us advice, I definitely feel a bit more or less prepared(if that makes sense)!!!
Husbands do like to say "I told you so", don't they? Usually with a big grin at the same time.
If you definitely decide to move, have his family start looking around for a place for you as well as employment. Getting houses and jobs around here is a lot more about who you know that what you know.
Since you have family over here already, you can ship small but heavy stuff in those flat rate post office boxes fairly inexpensively and they can be sent to their address. (Best to ask permission first, of course.) Media & Book rate is very inexpensive. Slow, but inexpensive. Also, don't put anything but media or books in the box or the rate will be changed to a much higher rate. I've heard they occasionally open media rate boxes to verify it is all media. Shipping via the post office is a lot less expensive than UPS, but you can compare the rates online.
They don't let you pack anything in your car when shipping, not that you were planning on it, but just so you know. They also go through the cars and steal anything good. I had a car shipped over that started out with a brand new tire on the spare, when it got here it was the same rim (custom paint) but a totally worn tire. Since it was just listed as a "spare tire" and not the condition of the tire on the spare, they didn't replace it or refund any money, either. So, folks have some pretty invasive access to your vehicle while it is being shipped. If you have a high end stereo or something in the car, remove it and ship it separately would be my advice. Or write down the make, model and serial number of it on your shipping papers.
Also check baggage rates with the airlines, depending on what it is, it might be cheaper to pay for additional baggage than shipping or maybe mailing it would be less expensive. There are a lot of yard and garage sales here all year round since folks are always moving to and from the islands. Folks generally don't want to pay to ship stuff to the mainland, so basic household goods can be found at yard sales for reasonable prices. There are also second hand and thrift shops to get basic household stuff.
You could also have your family start finding furniture and stuff for you, although check to make sure they have storage space for it. What with digital pictures and stuff, they can send pictures before they buy it for you. It's pretty easy to furnish a house with stuff, there is a fairly large transient population around here so there's always stuff becoming available.
You have money saved up, family already here, you're bringing transportation but not any useless belongings. You are the perfect transplant. You'll get over the job hurdle. Aloha and e komo mai.
I Apoligize that my questions weren't more clear and straight to the point, but I actually joined this forum and posted because I really wanted to hear the bad stuff, all off it.
OK, understood now, but the old saying is "walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck." Your first post exactly fits the profile of the pranksters and trolls who have been buzzing around here like horseflies for the last several months posting phony messages. And since you clearly had not read the Terms of Service (you'll have to actually read the Terms of Service to understand how I knew so easily that you had not read the Terms of Service) you didn't seem a good candidate to invest much time or effort in.
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I've done hours of research and all everywhere says is "Move to Hawaii!"
But you didn't do that research here. Now it is time to set all that to one side and start over here with down to earth advice from actual residents and natives. And yes, you will get all kinds of advice here, from many different perspectives. Some will say you should not come, some will say absolutely do come, and others will respond from various places in between, and from that 360 degree view you may be able to discern what is true for you.
Hotzcatz and Terracore and a few others have already been very generous in their responses to you. This might be a good place to learn to use a little bit of the Hawaiian language: maholo means thank you, and mahalo nui loa means thank you very much.
Location: not sure, but there's a hell of a lot of water around here!
2,682 posts, read 7,572,705 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OpenD
Hotzcatz and Terracore and a few others have already been very generous in their responses to you. This might be a good place to learn to use a little bit of the Hawaiian language: maholo means thank you, and mahalo nui loa means thank you very much.
There's a lot of great advice above, but I'll add one little nugget you might not have thought of already. Go ahead and change at least one of your cell phones to an 808 number before actually moving, or else grab an 808 number from something like Google Voice and forward it to your primary cell. You'll find, as setting various things up and asking various questions and filling out various forms that every once in a while the "local" number will aid things a bit. It's also not a bad idea to have a local mailing address handy, sounds like your in-laws could provide that?
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very informative post. It all makes sense when you think about it but reading it brings clarity.
