People seem to dislike NE?!?? (Omaha, Lincoln: buy, income, taxes)

[Omahahonors]

Great jobs with good pay and very, very, very low cost of living. Great schools, great outdoors (especially in the north, northwest and panhandle), great restaraunts, one large hip urban center (Omaha/Lincoln), another very self-sustaining and growing market in the tri-citites.. And just darn good people.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by Omahahonors

Great jobs with good pay and very, very, very low cost of living. Great schools, great outdoors (especially in the north, northwest and panhandle), great restaraunts, one large hip urban center (Omaha/Lincoln), another very self-sustaining and growing market in the tri-citites.. And just darn good people.

Great paying jobs? With respect to what industries and career fields??? I never thought Omaha nor Lincoln had a huge amount of high paying jobs...
The cost of living is RELATIVE to what one does (good paying job, low paying job, self-employed, several jobs, underemployed, unemployed, etc).

I can think of many areas that have a lower cost of living than Omaha.

[SpongeBobSnakePants]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

Great paying jobs? With respect to what industries and career fields??? I never thought Omaha nor Lincoln had a huge amount of high paying jobs...
The cost of living is RELATIVE to what one does (good paying job, low paying job, self-employed, several jobs, underemployed, unemployed, etc).

I can think of many areas that have a lower cost of living than Omaha.

"Great paying" definitely being relative to the cost of living, however, there are a lot fo great paying jobs in the Omaha area. Omaha isn't just a service-sector type city, there are many specialized industries from medical/research, technology, engineering/architecture, military, and telecommunications.

I don't think they have a significant inordinate amount of high-paying jobs in comparison to other cities Omaha's size, but nonetheless, there are a good variety of high-paying jobs.

[DOUBLE H]

I have friends in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area I visit twice, sometimes three times a year. I've spent the night in motels in Cozad, Ogallala, North Platte, Grand Island, Odessa, and Kearney. One thing remains constant and that is friendly and outgoing people and I always experience that in my travels through Nebraska. Always.

If I wasn't sold on where I live I would have no qualms about living in Nebraska. None at all. In fact, my best friend who grew up in Norfolk is thinking about retiring there and also thinking about McCook.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by SpongeBobSnakePants

"Great paying" definitely being relative to the cost of living, however, there are a lot fo great paying jobs in the Omaha area. Omaha isn't just a service-sector type city, there are many specialized industries from medical/research, technology, engineering/architecture, military, and telecommunications.

I don't think they have a significant inordinate amount of high-paying jobs in comparison to other cities Omaha's size, but nonetheless, there are a good variety of high-paying jobs.

Yes, I do realize that Omaha has a diverse economy. I have traveled there several times. However, I will disagree about the cost of living being low in Omaha. A few metros I can think of have lower costs: St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Knoxville.

[jeffredo]

I went to college in Iowa and traveled by car through NE going back and forth to CA. My first thought when I hit the Platte River area was how nice it looked. The air smelled clean and fresh (big thunderstorm had just blown through) and the horizon was so HUGE! I really enjoyed the wide open spaces. When I hit Lincoln it turned to the rolling green hills covered with corn and soybeans. It has a subtle beauty. Plus the usual nice Midwestern people. I love my hometown of San Francisco, but I can appreciate other areas of the country. Some that are derided as "boring" appeal to me the most. The lifestyle, climate and topography is so different from what I'm used to its interesting.

[marmom]

The first time I visited Omaha I fell in love. Pretty neighborhoods, nice people, rolling hills. I moved there within six months and stayed for three years. I left because I thought the winters were horrible, and now am seriously considering moving back after twelve years (and am mentally prepared for the winters). Out of the places I have lived, hands down Omaha offered the best quality of life. There is a lot that I miss about it.

[SpongeBobSnakePants]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

Yes, I do realize that Omaha has a diverse economy. I have traveled there several times. However, I will disagree about the cost of living being low in Omaha. A few metros I can think of have lower costs: St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Knoxville.

The cost of living is low by any standard you use, but yes, it may be slightly higher than those metros given the higher taxes.

I think Columbus and Pittsburgh would be the only two cities in that grouping I would consider living in, though. Maybe Louisville.

[itsMeFred]

Originally Posted by DOUBLE H

In fact, my best friend who grew up in Norfolk is thinking about retiring there and also thinking about McCook.

I can't believe there's even a question... lol
Having grown up near Norfolk, but currently living near McCook, I'd never move back east/NORTH to the cold and snow!

[Omahahonors]

Quick note on taxes: for the umpteenth time, the tax foundation has Omaha's taxes about average. Sheesh...

There are nine fortune 1000 companies here(Berkshire, Con Agra, Union Pacific, Valmont, Mutual of Omaha, Peter Kiewit, TDAmeritrade, West Corporation, Werner Enterprises)[1]. That alone raises the bar, then through in Paypal operations center, Google Data Center, Yahoo Data Center, Major First Data presence, Verizon, Hayneedle, C&A enterprises headquarters (a large collection of national staffing agencies), nation's largest private bank headquarters in First National (see 44 story tower), presently luring PacLife and a few other large insurance companies to move here, Greater Omaha has a cluster of more than 65 defense-related companies dedicated to global security, defense contracting along with Offut Air Force Base, Total employment for computer and engineering occupations within Greater Omaha’s larger labor shed is nearly 30,000 with the nationally competitive wages (again very low cost of living).

Omaha's medical industry is consider elite in this country according to some ranking organizations such as News World and Report. Just recently two new hospitals and another women's only hospital has been built or in under construction. Every hospital in the city has undergone a $100,000,000 or greater expansion in the last decade with UNMC having their own skyline in midtown for both research and transplants etc.. Total growth in hospitals alone in the city have surpassed a $1,000,000,000 in the last decade.

Consider that along with: Creighton University ratedthe #1 midwest school for eight straight years, UNO with the University of Nebraska’s Peter Kiewit Institute of Information Science, Technology and Engineering, attracts some of the nation's top academic students and benefits from partnerships with over 180 businesses and agencies worldwide. View education data. UNMC is one of the nation's top medical schools in research, Bellevue University among other Universities.

• Greater Omaha is the headquarters to more than twenty bioscience companies including: medical instrumentation company, Streck Laboratories, and diversified agricultural giant, ConAgra Foods.

• Greater Omaha is home to two university research centers – the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and Creighton University. Both Creighton and UNMC have seen major campus expansions including a new undergraduate research building at Creighton and two new research towers at UNMC.

• This expansion has also expanded the development and commercialization efforts at both institutions. Both have recent spin-off successes, such as SafeStitch, Ximerex, and Transgenomic. In fact, the University of Nebraska has established a for-profit entity, UneMed, intended to help research and development commercialize technologies.

• Greater Omaha’s Midwest location has also helped it create a niche in the biofuels. First National Bank is one of the largest biofuels lenders and Tenaska is an emerging biofuels trader. However, the real strength of the Omaha biofuels market is the number of producers that have significant offices in Omaha – including Praj Energy, Prime Biosolutions, and Cargill which has a $1 billion biofuels operation in Washington County[SIZE=2].[/SIZE]

• Greater Omaha’s Midwest location has also placed it squarely in the middle of the food production pipeline. Thus, not only do companies like ConAgra Foods, Omaha Steaks, and Kellogg’s have large operations in the Omaha area, but companies that specialize in protecting the food supply and managing nutritional inputs to the human body also thrive.

[1]Fortune 500 2009: States: Nebraska Companies - FORTUNE on CNNMoney.com