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Old 07-14-2008, 03:33 PM
 
11,715 posts, read 40,361,816 times
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Was the purpose of your move to leave SoCal or was it to live in Colorado? If getting out of SoCal was the primary motivation, what were the top reasons you left? What would have to change to get you to move back?

I'm looking into moving to the Denver metro or possibly Colorado Springs area. The biggest factor for me is the cost of living, mostly housing. Other considerations -- too crowded, too much traffic, state politics, etc -- are factors, but a couple orders of magnitude lower in my mind. My wife puts those secondary factors higher on her reasons to leave but still lower than the cost of housing.

Now the wrinkle: Housing costs are coming down, rapidly in some cities, in SoCal. Prices in desirable parts of Denver seem to be holding up much better. What if the SoCal "sunshine tax" gets wiped out in 3 years? Would you still move?
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Old 07-14-2008, 04:10 PM
 
Location: Arvada, CO
13,825 posts, read 29,831,611 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia View Post
Was the purpose of your move to leave SoCal or was it to live in Colorado? If getting out of SoCal was the primary motivation, what were the top reasons you left? What would have to change to get you to move back?

I'm looking into moving to the Denver metro or possibly Colorado Springs area. The biggest factor for me is the cost of living, mostly housing. Other considerations -- too crowded, too much traffic, state politics, etc -- are factors, but a couple orders of magnitude lower in my mind. My wife puts those secondary factors higher on her reasons to leave but still lower than the cost of housing.

Now the wrinkle: Housing costs are coming down, rapidly in some cities, in SoCal. Prices in desirable parts of Denver seem to be holding up much better. What if the SoCal "sunshine tax" gets wiped out in 3 years? Would you still move?
I'm originally from Riverside. As a child/teenager, we traveled a lot so I knew what a lot of different places were like. I never liked Southern California. I thought the traffic sucked, the people were transparent, I didn't like the weather (I wanted to live somewhere with all four seasons), and above all I found out that I didn't want to pay through the nose for a place I didn't like, nor did I want to pay a premium for a place I didn't envision myself living in forever.

Before moving to Colorado, I moved out of Southern California, to a small California desert town 2.5 hours north of Riverside, where I ended up staying for three years. This town was very conservative, and after living there it shifted my politics in the opposite direction (away from being conservative).

It's nice to see prices are finally coming down in Southern California. I hope it will revive a real middle class lifestyle that hasn't been possible there for the past few years.

The only way I'd move back to Southern California is if it started snowing in winter and the summer high temperatures went down 25 degrees.
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Old 07-14-2008, 04:42 PM
 
Location: The 719
17,930 posts, read 27,342,617 times
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I've responded to a post like this in the past, but it's been a while.

We lived in Chatsworth and I was 10 at the time that we moved to Southern Colorado. I was a big reason for the move. So was my oldest brother. He has a serious mental illness and Pueblo had a decent enough State Hospital to suite his needs.

I was just so sick of living in the valley and kind of wanted to get away from the congestion of that growing city. Remember, in 1977 the Valley had a bad pollution problem. I had a very diverse set of friends. My nearest neighbor and friend from the time I was months old was a black kid. We were salt and pepper. Way too young to know what stereotypes or prejudice were. I also had friends who were South Pacific, Asian, Hispanic, Russian, long-haired hippie surfer-freaks... no offense, but they were.

I say that to say this; they wanted to bus us from the Valley to south and east LA. My parents didn't want that for me or my older brother.

I always loved camping; Sesbie Creek (sp?), Cottonwood, Lake Cachuma, Carpenteria, Big Bear, etc. Once we went to visit Colorado, I loved it! It was like camping everyday.

Ummm, poverty. My dad did the best he could, but how good can a blue-collar worker make it in a land of DOD Engineers? Our old house that my parents bought for 28K goes for over 600,000 now. If the price came down to $200,000.00, it still wouldn't be worth it.

Earthquakes don't happen too often, but as a 5 year old in the 71' quake...I was spooked. I'd hate to be in the LA basin when that Tsunami hits. Let's hope that doesn't happen anytime soon.

If you can afford it and you're young, I'm sure California is just great. We just got back from a road-trip up and down NoCal and it was awesome.

If you want to check out some of my pics go here or here. Love to visit. Colorado is getting bad enough. But it always seems like it's about 20+ years away from the problems of growth in the Republic of California.
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Old 07-14-2008, 09:08 PM
 
Location: Colorado
6,665 posts, read 9,225,309 times
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I grew up in Pennsylvania, but lived in Redondo Beach for two years after I graduated from college. I loved Redondo and the South Bay and have no regrets about living there for two years, but I simply became tired of mostly living paycheck to paycheck because everything was so expensive! Just for the record, I have excellent credit and I manage money well, so I was already operating on a lean budget.

Anyway, I was eventually offered a job in Denver that paid $25K more than I was making in California and I basically do the same thing so I jumped on it. Some people say that salaries are generally higher in CA because of the high cost of living, but that's not true in my field, at least. There are so many people competing for a limited number of jobs that the salaries in my field are actually much lower than in other states and metro areas, at least in my experience. Traffic isn't an issue in Denver, people are much nicer in general (in my opinion), I can actually afford to buy a home, and I like saving money and actually using it to do fun things from time to time (I just got back from a vacation in Durango and LOVED it!) and overall I think Denver is a better fit for me anyway.

I'm being long-winded but basically my point is that I felt like the cost of living was/is way out of control and it was something I didn't feel like dealing with anymore.. so instead of complaining about it, I decided to make some changes and move away.
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Old 07-15-2008, 06:23 AM
 
Location: Las Flores, Orange County, CA
26,338 posts, read 93,537,811 times
Reputation: 17829
Quote:
Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia View Post
Was the purpose of your move to leave SoCal or was it to live in Colorado? If getting out of SoCal was the primary motivation, what were the top reasons you left? What would have to change to get you to move back?

Now the wrinkle: Housing costs are coming down, rapidly in some cities, in SoCal. Prices in desirable parts of Denver seem to be holding up much better. What if the SoCal "sunshine tax" gets wiped out in 3 years? Would you still move?
I completely understand your dilemma. For the past several years anywhere but SoCal looks appealing but now with housing dropping significantly, it might be worth reconsidering the move out of SoCal.

For me it is all about jobs. COS has a lot of them so does DEN for aerospace and engineering - just not a lot with my particular employer; with whom I want to stay. Otherwise, So far so good. Housing is much less expensive.

Even if SoCal housing comes down to maybe $200-$250/sqft in acceptable areas there are still other problems like traffic and budget deficits. We are on our way to moving to HSV; if that doesn't work in a couple of years we might consider going back to SoCal, maybe OC for jobs in Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Irvine....maybe live in Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Irvine, Rancho Santa Margarita, Lake Forest, Mission Viejo, places like those with good schools. (From reading your posts, sounds like you know these areas....I may have to ping you some day....)

Denver is really a nice clean city though...too bad my employer has barely any jobs there. Huntsville is wall to wall aerospace engineering jobs (kind of like COS). We're in HSV right now house hunting. Very green, no traffic, lots of nice homes and good schools.

I don't mind cookie cutter at all and I would love to live in Lone Tree or Highlands Ranch or Parker or Castle Rock. Lots of amenities, lots of neighborhood kids, lots of organized activities, etc.

Last edited by Charles; 07-15-2008 at 06:33 AM..
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Old 07-16-2008, 03:27 PM
 
6 posts, read 47,510 times
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New to the boards but have been doing research on CO for sometime. When I read this thread it made me sign up so I can put my 2 cents in. =)

I have lived in Southern California my whole life, mother, father and husband...their whole life. I loved California growing up, weather was always the same, flip flops during the winters, lot's of stuff to do, the beach on one side and the mountains on the other. Notice how I say LOVED ... past tense... the cost of living is horrible, middle class is no more, many cities being over run with illegals, bad schools, high crime, air quality not so great, traffic is a nightmare, and housing... don't even get me started.

My hubby and I want out!!! I never thought I would move out of CA but I think the good ol' days are done and are only going to get worse. I think I can handle a couple feet of snow and spontaneous thunder storms then this piece of crap I call home.=)
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Old 07-16-2008, 04:37 PM
 
Location: Western, Colorado
1,599 posts, read 3,109,614 times
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Just don't move to Colorado and make it East California.
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Old 07-16-2008, 04:46 PM
 
11,715 posts, read 40,361,816 times
Reputation: 7585
Quote:
Originally Posted by bugsy714 View Post
New to the boards but have been doing research on CO for sometime. When I read this thread it made me sign up so I can put my 2 cents in. =)

I have lived in Southern California my whole life, mother, father and husband...their whole life. I loved California growing up, weather was always the same, flip flops during the winters, lot's of stuff to do, the beach on one side and the mountains on the other. Notice how I say LOVED ... past tense... the cost of living is horrible, middle class is no more, many cities being over run with illegals, bad schools, high crime, air quality not so great, traffic is a nightmare, and housing... don't even get me started.

My hubby and I want out!!! I never thought I would move out of CA but I think the good ol' days are done and are only going to get worse. I think I can handle a couple feet of snow and spontaneous thunder storms then this piece of crap I call home.=)
Welcome to the board. I think we're pretty much in the same boat. Our lives are here in SoCal but the quality if life is on a downward slide. What stage of investigating Colorado are you in? Have you gone yet? If you haven't come across it yet, I posted a summary of my experience in Denver this last winter here: Report on Denver in winter from a SoCal native that might help you. It spawned a pretty good discussion too.
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Old 07-16-2008, 07:29 PM
 
Location: Southern California
19 posts, read 82,012 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia View Post
Welcome to the board. I think we're pretty much in the same boat. Our lives are here in SoCal but the quality if life is on a downward slide. What stage of investigating Colorado are you in? Have you gone yet? If you haven't come across it yet, I posted a summary of my experience in Denver this last winter here: Report on Denver in winter from a SoCal native that might help you. It spawned a pretty good discussion too.
I'm right there with you two. My husband is from Northern California and I am from Seattle, but we've been living in Southern California for 8-9 years. I think Colorado would be a great combination of Washington and California.

We were so excited to visit Colorado last October and it just confirmed everything I thought Denver/Colorado Springs would be. In fact, I had written off Colorado Springs, but I think I actually prefer it over the Denver metro area.

My husband and I applied to various companies in Seattle and Denver in the Fall of '06. A few months ago someone from a professional staffing firm in Denver contacted him. We're hoping this will lead to an engineering position that can relocate us. We're not in any hurry, so we're just waiting for the right opportunity to present itself since Denver/Colorado Springs is just the market for our line of work.
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Old 07-16-2008, 07:46 PM
 
6 posts, read 47,510 times
Reputation: 18
Quote:
Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia View Post
What stage of investigating Colorado are you in? Have you gone yet?
Thanks for the warm welcome and will definitely read your post! It is nice to hear there are other people out there in the same boat... big boat!=)

For the last 2 years, I have been researching and pretty much soaking up any information I can about Colorado. We went to CO about 10 years ago, but definitely overdue for a new visit. We are planning a trip in about 4-6 weeks hitting up Fort Collins, Castle Rock, Colorado Springs, and everything in between.
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