What is life like in Boulder, Colorado? (Denver, Colorado Springs: low income, fit in)

[Lunabega27]

Hi Guys! I apologize if this is a long post or confusing. This is my first time posting on a forum so please bear with me!

My husband and I are currently living in Houston, Texas. All of our family is here and we both (for the most part) grew up here. I am currently a student and I am about to graduate with a Bachelor in English. It is a great area for cheap school and it is easy to find "college student" jobs but we are absolutely miserable here.

We have been considering moving away from Texas since we were in High School. When we took our honeymoon in Colorado this year, we fell instantly in love. We stayed North of Colorado Springs and enjoyed the area. I have been doing a lot of research and from what we are looking for, Boulder has seemed like the best place for us. So here is my question for you Colorado folks; what is life like in Boulder? What are some of your favorite parts about it? What are some negative things? When I say Boulder, we wont necessarily want to be in the city. I just like that general area.

Here are a few things my Husband are looking for in a place to live:

Animal friendly. We have two dogs that do everything with us. We also spend a lot of our time volunteering and doing animal foster work. We would like to live somewhere that is very dog friendly.

We want to be able to grow our own food. I have heard that the climate, elevation, and soil is not great for gardening. We are really wanting to (eventually) buy a piece of land and live as sustainable as we can. We are vegan to growing a lot of vegetables is very essential. Anyone successfully grow a lot of fruits and veggies?

Farmers markets or access to locally grown, organic foods. We try to eat really healthy (even our dogs eat all natural, home cooked meals when we can afford it!) and would like to have easy access to good food. Are there a lot of farmers markets and such? Is the cost of food pretty high because it is harder to grow food there?

Somewhat good weather is preferable. The heat and humidity here is horrible. I like the heat as long as it is dry. I just can't handle TOO cold. I lived in Minnesota for five years and it was miserable in the winter. Are the winters there pretty harsh or is it pretty reasonable?

My husband and I are pretty flexible when it comes to work. Ideally I would like to find a job that I can use my degree with but I also have a lot of animal care experience. Has anyone had a lot of difficulty finding a job? My husband only has a high school education but has worked as a grocery store manager and had a lot of really good positions in regular jobs.

Overall, we are living in a pretty expensive place right now. It is kind of a financial bubble little suburb area. The low income housing we are in now is more expensive than the regular apartment areas right outside of where we live. Is the cost of living in Boulder or the surrounding area high compared to other places anyone may have lived?

Thank you in advance for reading this! I know it is long but I really appreciate any input that anyone has! I think my husband would throw the dogs in the back seat and drive up there right now if he could but I would like to know a bit more before we make any quick decisions!

[davebarnes]

If you are rich, lean left and like to shop at Whole Foods.

You don't say where you live now. "Houston" is a tad vague.
You don't say how much you expect to pay in rent.
You don't say what breeds your dogs are.
You don't say how money you have saved up.

[Meowen]

lots of people have and love dogs here, but you will have trouble being a renter with dogs.

[WhereTheSidewalkEnds]

If you do a search you will find a wealth of info already on here.

And davebarnes is right. You need to be more specific. Your definition of expensive might be very different than here. I moved from Dallas 15 years ago and the cost of living in here is much more expensive. Land here is a premium, unlike in Texas.

I don't want to discourage you at all as we made the move many years ago (it was company paid). But there is also the living reality as opposed to vacation reality.

[brown_dog_us]

Boulder is a great place to live, and you would probably fit in very well. Here are a couple things to think about:

1. Boulder rent or house prices are very high. You mentioned living outside of Boulder, but those prices are pretty high too. Check out padmapper.com for rents.

2. There are a lot of well paying jobs in Boulder, but it's tough to get one. You need to do some planning and target potential jobs before you get here. You don't want to be looking for any job here.

3. Boulder has tons of organic foods for sale at the grovery store, but it's tough to grow higher volumes of veggies without water rights. The climate is better suited to a small garden.

Good luck!

[Idlewile]

Yes, agree with the others, you need to provide much more detailed info.

Having lived in CO a long time and now living TX, where you are living now has a substantially lower cost of living housing-wise, even with the high property taxes. Also, Houston salaries are the same to higher than the Denver area, on the whole.

You mention the cold. While CO is no mid-west or northeast, it gets cold and stays cold (considering your likely definition of cold) for half of the year. There are many posts on this. It can be made more pronounced by things like spring which can come very late which is a big contrast to spring in TX + late February. Like snow in May. Three times in three weeks.

Lastly, I've met only ONE native Texan (born, raised and lived in as an adult) who moved away and liked their new state better. Crazy and absurd but true.

Also, on the whole, Houston's job market is still substantially better than Denver's. We still look at jobs in Denver, Austin, Houston and Dallas and the difference is striking. Denver is dead last across most categories as far as available open positions.

[LiveUrban]

People in Boulder love to bike for transportation needs as well as recreation. Bring your bicycles or buy some when you get there

[qfrost]

In a word? AWESOME. For me and my family, our experience there was just incredible. I loved it, I loved the access to the outdoors, and I loved that you weren't in a massive city, but had access to everything you might want.

Having trouble finding work? Yes. We're not there right now because I can't find work there. But my case might be out of the norm, since I'm transitioning from specialized to a more general field. The only thing I can think of that might be of an adjustment is, Houston, from what I know of it, is pretty conservative. Same for areas in Colorado Springs. Definitely not the case in Boulder. Think Austin (which also rocks). But unless you're overtly political, I doubt it would be an issue.

[Vanr]

Boulder is a geographically isolated suburb of Denver, if you do not need the isolation the cost of housing is much lower, on the other hand the isolation is part of what makes Boulder just a desirable place to live, I think Boulder seems like a cool place to live, I live 18 miles away in Arvada, its still expensive but probably ≈25% - 35% less than boulder. The Traffic in the entire Denver metro area has gotten out of control in the past 18 months and Boulder is currently doing what I consider a "standard" Boulder reaction, they are converting automobile lanes into bicycle lanes, sometimes it takes me 40 minutes to drive 5 miles just to get out of Boulder.
Boulder is a great Hi-Tech mecca, if you are in High tech and pretty good at what you do you can likely get a job in Boulder but the Hi-Tech mecca extends to the east where the cost of housing is only "very high" instead if "extremely high" as it is in Boulder.
The current real estate market in the Denver metro area is demanding 3% to 10% MORE than the asking price as most house sales end only by offering the best bid, some bidders are bidding without looking at the house...
I'm not sure what you are getting away from, and I will be the 1st to welcome you but as I said, be prepared.

[Hipchik]

Boulder is not a suburb of Denver!