Help On Finding Best Area For Me (Active Life, Computer Science)

[march2]

Not sure if cost of living is in your equation, but I second the Raleigh/Durham area. Denver, Seattle, Portland, and Austin were all affordable areas at one time. But not any longer. RDU, for now, still is. Those areas still have their merits and are good in many ways, but I just think RDU would be the better choice overall. Good luck in your move!

[bluescreen73]

Originally Posted by jayzupp

Definitely some good suggestions worth checking out. A lot of people seem to say the Denver and Raleigh areas are worth looking at, gotta do more research on here!

Eastern (mostly NE) PA and Northern NY are really nice though, I've actually gone there a few times and love what they have to offer as far as outdoor activities goes. They're probably beat on jobs unless you stay near the major cities. It seems like the further up you get from me on the East the worse the job availability gets, besides the NYC and Boston area. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Being able to do outdoors stuff easily seem like it'd be awesome, but I guess my access would be limited cause I'd have to work a lot to afford to live somewhere haha

This stuff is tough to determine cause I also know there are factors like affordability, crime rate, taxes, etc.
Anyone have any good resources on figuring out which criteria would be most important to me? There was this really good quiz I found a while ago that used all of those and gave percentages for each state based on my answers, but I can't find it anymore.

Affordability is relative. If you're a single software dev pulling down 80k+ per year you can afford Denver, but if you're married with kids 80k probably isn't gonna cut it.

Colorado has a state income tax, but the average tax burden is low (7.97%). Compare that to NY (12.94%), NJ (10.14%), PA (8.52%), and NC (8.33%).

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-wit...-burden/20494/

I personally prefer the Rockies to the Appalachians. Fall foliage in the NE is nice, but give me the vistas above timberline that you simply do not get in a majority of the Appalachians. I'm a bit of an altitude snob, too. The highest point in the Appalachians is a mere 500' higher than my house in suburban Denver. Granted, someone in western Canada or Alaska looks at our 14ers and chuckles.

I also think humidity sucks. Colorado's much drier than most states in the Midwest and anywhere east of the Mississippi.

I have a C-D album of hiking pics from the past few years here. I need to add more pics to it. Most of them are 2-4 years old.