Why you should be careful before moving anywhere

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Happy Birthday to a fellow Leo! Mine was last week. Now's the time for a count-down clock. You leave it at work and will be pleasantly surprised at how much less time you'll have left after each weekend, holiday and vacation.

Of course, I cheated. One fine day I knocked two years off all at once and went on to retire "early!"

Now that I think about it, at five or six years out I started counting working Mondays left until retirement. Holiday Mondays and planned vacation Mondays didn't count. I started the countdown timer (Google them) at year three.

Counting down working Mondays was fun and they disappeared quickly.

[todd00]

so why do pple dump stuff? because its gotten expensive to do the right thing, taking all the stuff to the dump. to take an old a/c window unit here in iowa, its 10 bucks for that one item, and i have several of these pieces of junk window a/c units built to break after a yr or 2. so pple might say, hey i pay alot of tax for this and that and i dont have the extra so ill let it sit on my land or dump it on the road somewhere and let the county deal with it. my exwife was from another country, they dont charge to take stuff to the dump there, she said if they did, pple would just dump it anywhere cuz they didnt have the extra money to spend. i think there should be something like so many times free a yr to the dump per household, that would encourage pple to clear off the junk. in many of these rural areas good jobs are not plentiful, pple live hand to mouth, just getting by. so i see why they pile the junk somewhere and leave it be.

throwing trash out the windows happens in cities and rural areas everywhere. while i dont like trash littering the highways, im more concerned with "adopting", and helping homeless animals pple dump. thats a far greater problem in my opinion.

[P-Nut]

Originally Posted by simplewife&mom

This is exactly why I am in love with Southern MO and I have no doubt we would be perfectly content there. We'll leave our little rural CA town, and never look back!

I wish you luck! As someone who left Southern California four years ago to come to Southern Missouri, it was definitely a big shock. There are plenty of houses for sale here from people who came here from other states and can't wait to leave. Many are just "walking away" from their homes.

I didn't know that you had to really watch the home builders. My real estate agent told me that the builder of my custom home was very good.... yeah right! It was supposed to be done on the 15th of April, but when we drove up six weeks later with a large U-Haul truck, a moving van, car and trailer loaded down, along with my daughter and three grandkids, they were still working on the house. They were laying the carpet, the septic tank and not even been dug, there was no kitchen counter, and all the floors that were not covered with carpeting had 1/4" of wall board dust on it including the garage floor. I had hired two people to help unload all this stuff and there was not a clean place to put it. All of the tile floors and garage floors had paint, glue, and varnish dripped across the floors. It also appeared that they had laid something on the tile floor and sprayed it with varnish because I could see the outline of something. There was a small corner left bare where there should have been a small piece of tile next to my kitchen counter. When I mentioned it to the builder's assistant, he just swiped some grout into it. It looks horrible. The tile in the bathrooms next to the bath tub were not cut straight and they left a big uneven gap... no grout at all. Two weeks after moving in, water backed up into the basement carpet because the so-called plumber left some paper towels in the pipes. We have discovered many leaks throughout the house and had to get a "real" plumber out to fix them as we have found them. We bought appliances from Sears, but it cost us $80 for delivery, by a contract person, to our small town and this heavy set man with only one tooth in his mouth gouged a big chunk out of the wood door panel and laughed and said "Sorry 'bout that" and didn't offer any kind of fixing of his mistake and the builder wouldn't come back and fix things after he got his money. Anyway, much more is wrong with this house, but we decided we didn't have any other alternatives, so we decided to just fix everything ourselves and put it up for sale, which is where we are now.

Anyway, good luck to you people who want to come back here to Missouri. I wish you a lot of luck, but I'm outta here!

[P-Nut]

Originally Posted by simplewife&mom

I agree with mo wannabe, in that I am willing to give up some things if we leave CA and head to MO. I do not expect all things to be the same - some may be much better, some worse. But I think Mr. Ozarksboy was speaking more to people who have not done enough research and looked at all angles of the move. People have to decide what they are willing to give up. Frankly, I don't give a hoot about the produce being less fresh, we're having a large garden anyway. But to the people he quoted, that was a big issue for them.

Mr. Ozarksboy is speaking to people like me. I've lived in the same little county in northern CA all my life. For years I've longed to be in southern MO and sincerely believe I would love it there, fit in perfectly, and overall our family would greatly benefit from the move. However, I've never set foot east of Nevada! It would be foolish and naive to act on my romantic dreams of our glorious life in the Ozarks without doing more serious research than just spending way too much time on city-data and other internet sites. But for mo wannabe, it might not be such a leap, having already lived in the midwest.

Although, these days sometimes families just have to go where the job offer is, regardless of how much they know about the area. Maybe that will happen to us. It's scary, but kind of exciting too.

I would suggest that if you're moving to Missouri, check out the quality of the house you buy. In some areas of Missouri, there are no building codes, no inspection of homes, no rules. Check things out very carefully. I lived in California for forty years after growing up in Indiana for 18. In Indiana, a handshake was as good or better than a piece of paper. Here in Missouri, they will try to take advantage of any outsiders. I was told before I came, that people here hate people from California. I couldn't believe such a thing, but I asked a neighbor who has lived here all his life about it and his answer was, "unfortunately that is true." I couldn't believe it. We have been told that "I bet you thought you were going to come out here and live like kings." We found that the real estate agent and the builder of our house were "real tight" and she didn't look out for our interests. The bank that we got our loan from, her son was the president. Our house was such a mess that I wanted to sue the builder and real estate agent, but living in a small town where everyone knows everyone, I knew that would be fruitless, so we're getting out of here as soon as we can. Also, the prices of food and utilities are comparable to what we paid in California. The housing prices and real estate taxes are lower, but I figured out my state taxes for Missouri and California and my income taxes would have been lower in California, if you can believe that. Anyway, good luck. Maybe it's right for you... it's just not right for us.

[P-Nut]

Originally Posted by ozarksboy

I cringe whenever I read a new post from someone in another state saying they want to move to Missouri because they drove through here a couple of times and just loved the place. I know many of you do, too, because I've read your cautionary rebuttals urging those folks to visit several times, preferably in different seasons, to make sure there's a "fit."

There are so many things to consider before you leave your home state and move to Missouri--or any other state. Even the quality and freshness of avocados and the price of grapefruit should be taken into account, as this post, which I found on the Arkansas forum, attests:



The moral: Do lots of research. Investigate everything. Make sure you REALLY want to give up everything that's available in your home state and city.

We researched Missouri for five years and came back several times over that period and it seemed to fit, but after we got here, it wasn't what it was over that five year period. Researching didn't work for us.

[Lake Junkie]

Originally Posted by P-Nut

I would suggest that if you're moving to Missouri, check out the quality of the house you buy. In some areas of Missouri, there are no building codes, no inspection of homes, no rules. Check things out very carefully. I lived in California for forty years after growing up in Indiana for 18. In Indiana, a handshake was as good or better than a piece of paper. Here in Missouri, they will try to take advantage of any outsiders. I was told before I came, that people here hate people from California. I couldn't believe such a thing, but I asked a neighbor who has lived here all his life about it and his answer was, "unfortunately that is true." I couldn't believe it. We have been told that "I bet you thought you were going to come out here and live like kings." We found that the real estate agent and the builder of our house were "real tight" and she didn't look out for our interests. The bank that we got our loan from, her son was the president. Our house was such a mess that I wanted to sue the builder and real estate agent, but living in a small town where everyone knows everyone, I knew that would be fruitless, so we're getting out of here as soon as we can. Also, the prices of food and utilities are comparable to what we paid in California. The housing prices and real estate taxes are lower, but I figured out my state taxes for Missouri and California and my income taxes would have been lower in California, if you can believe that. Anyway, good luck. Maybe it's right for you... it's just not right for us.

I had a similar experience in the first tiny berg we found in SW MO...my rule of thumb now is that if the town hasn't seen much growth in the past 100 years and if all the kids leave as soon as they graduate high school...they may be resistant to you and resent you because they think, coming from California, that you're rich!

Not EVERYONE was clique-y and rude, mind you, there were a number of very good kind-hearted folks out there in the sticks...but I personally prefer the wild-and-crazy vacation wonderland down here by the bottom line. It's such a melting pot that it's easier to make friends and make a life. To each his/her own, eh?



I'm so sorry, p-nut, that you had such a hard time with the inbred crowd.
Get down to the lake much?

[bethmarywhite]

Originally Posted by ozarksboy

I apologize for not writing this clearly enough for you to understand what i was talking about. When a reader misses a writer's point, it is the writer's fault. No, I don't think avocados are going to get in the way of your moving to Missouri. Avocados are not the point. They are a metaphor for all the little things that you have in your life in your home state or home city that make you comfortable and that you count on to give you pleasure. This gentleman from Texas values produce, and he found that in his new home in Arkansas he was unable to obtain produce at the same level of freshness and at the same inexpensive price that he had come to expect in Austin, Texas. He should have investigated this prior to uprooting and moving to Arkansas.

If you're going to move anywhere, you need to assess your current lifestyle and figure out what it is you really like or dislike. Then, thoroughly investigate the places you THINK you'd like to live to see if they fit that lifestyle you have come to enjoy. Arkansas is a wonderful state and it has many strong points. This gentleman doesn't care about those attributes; he misses the cheap, fresh produce available in Texas, something apparently not available at his location in Arkansas for whatever reason; it could be shipping issues or contractual arrangements with suppliers, I don't know. Whatever the reason, this lack is causing unhappiness in his life. He should have discovered this before he moved.

Now, what is your "avocado"? What are the many things you have come to enjoy about life in Phoenix? What do you take for granted? Are you certain these expectations will be available in Missouri? If not, are you going to make adjustments or are you going to bemoan the fact that Missouri isn't like Arizona, the way this gentleman has done as he wails that back in Texas it was better than it is in Arkansas. To avoid such a tantrum, anyone planning a move anywhere should thoroughly investigate their targeted location. That means more than just a few posts on city-data, more than visits to the chamber of commerce website, more than some brochures. Silver Mouse has said on numerous occasions that people should visit more than once, and she's right.

Cali Bassman understands why I try to discourage people from moving to Missouri: I want them to be absolutely sure they want to become Missourians before they take up residence here. If not, they'll just be people who live in Missouri and they'll be unhappy, and they'll cause a lot of unhappiness around them. Do you think this gentleman from Texas is a joy to be around in Arkansas as he longs for the way it was in Texas? I doubt it.

Now, down in Texas, they're fond of saying: "We don't care how y'all do it up Nawth; here in Texas ...." I wonder what this gentleman would say if someone in his new home state would turn the tables on him.

I wonder what Californians and others who move to Missouri without understanding what Missouri is like and then complain about the things they miss would do if we started to say, "We don't care how y'all lived in California, here in Missouri we ..."

OK, I hope I've written this a little more clearly. Thanks for readin' it, and please understand I'm not bashing Californians or Texans or anyone else. I'm just trying to get you to think, investigate--and then move if you must.

Ozarks Boy

I thought that was a beautifully written piece.