NY/NJ: Would you come back? (Fair Lawn, Eatontown: salaries, sales tax, to live)

[njmomto2]

I can't wait for my chance to LEAVE! I've been here all of my life and hate it. Property taxes and housing costs and insurance are astronomical! We are desperate to get out!

[BrianH1970]

Originally Posted by njmomto2

I can't wait for my chance to LEAVE! I've been here all of my life and hate it. Property taxes and housing costs and insurance are astronomical! We are desperate to get out!

Sounds like what a lot of us who are moving back once said.

I thought this was a "would you come back" thread, not a "are you leaving" one.

[Yorkiegirl16]

Originally Posted by njmomto2

I can't wait for my chance to LEAVE! I've been here all of my life and hate it. Property taxes and housing costs and insurance are astronomical! We are desperate to get out!

Be careful what you wish for. You just may get it.

I was so happy to move to NC because of the lower cost of living. I knew people who had moved to NC and didn't come back to NJ. When I transferred to my NC office and got to know my co-workers, I was surprised to learn how many of them worked two jobs. Yep, the housing and insurance costs are significantly lower, but so are the salaries. NC takes out a lot of state taxes (almost twice as what NJ did). I also suggest you have a job lined up when you come down here. Approximately 6500 transplants per month are moving to the Charlotte area for many of the same reasons you have in your post. People will be fighting for every crumb of decent work. I wish you luck with whatever you decide.

[TheEmissary]

Originally Posted by Yorkiegirl16

Be careful what you wish for. You just may get it.

I was so happy to move to NC because of the lower cost of living. I knew people who had moved to NC and didn't come back to NJ. When I transferred to my NC office and got to know my co-workers, I was surprised to learn how many of them worked two jobs. Yep, the housing and insurance costs are significantly lower, but so are the salaries. NC takes out a lot of state taxes (almost twice as what NJ did). I also suggest you have a job lined up when you come down here. Approximately 6500 transplants per month are moving to the Charlotte area for many of the same reasons you have in your post. People will be fighting for every crumb of decent work. I wish you luck with whatever you decide.

Yorkiegirl - I think that too many people on the New Jersey CD Forum think that NC is a "paradise on earth" for the harried and overtaxed residents of this state. The housing costs and car insurance costs are much lower in NC and that isn't going to change anytime soon. Jobs in NC are another story! With the influx of NJ, NY, CT, and CA residents, the job market in the major metro areas of NC is not what it was, 5 or 10 years ago. Jobs that pay well by NJ standards are few and far between. Sure, it's easy to get a $10 or $12 an hour job down here, but a $70,000 job doesn't fall into your lap the minute you arrive in town. For many people they'll spend inordinate amounts of time looking for a job in that salary range, which they will never find. To NJ residents who may think of making the move to NC without a job - bring lots of cash! A year of your old NJ income may be necessary to tide you over, until you find a comparable job, at about half of what you would make in NJ! I think more than a few NJ folks moved to NC and bought a home for what they would have spent for one in NJ, and then got jobs that pay a fraction of what they made in NJ. Not a good situation to be in!!

It is so easy to "overbuy" on a house in NC! If you were going to buy a $450,000 house in NJ, or have one to sell at that price, buy something in NC for about half of that. Chances are the NC house will have more amenities and be newer. You'll end up in much better economic circumstances.

For me, taking early retirement and living on $25,000 to $30,000 a year, moving to NC was a wonderful decision. It's so easy to manage as a single person on that amount of money in NC vs NJ. My federal pension isn't taxed at all in NC, while in NJ, that money is treated as taxable income. My property taxes are 40% of what they were on a house 3x the size.

So what would make me come back? Well, no taxes on my pension for a start. A 3000 sq ft house in Ridgewood or or a similar community for about $225,000 and taxes of $2000 a year. I suspect I'll be waiting for "hell to freeze over" for that to happen!

Brian1970 - I'm so happy for you! NC is not the "promised land" for everyone. I've always thought of Toms River as a "retirement place" - it just seems to me that years ago, it was the NJ "alternative" to a Florida retirement community. I'm sure that has changed! LOL Keep us posted on both the NC & NJ forums of your "adventures in relocating".


I would advise anyone that if you're not happy where you're living, to move someplace else (within your own economic limits)! Life is too short not to get some enjoyment out of it!!!

[fblumberg]

i came back... florida 5 years hurricanes and rednecks low iq's lousy fried foods
georgia 2 years, baptists, power outages, rednecks, baptists, guns, low iqs... pork or chicken, catfish, yuk again all fried... heart disease rickets its still happening!
jersey is heaven

[TheEmissary]

Originally Posted by fblumberg

i came back... florida 5 years hurricanes and rednecks low iq's lousy fried foods
georgia 2 years, baptists, power outages, rednecks, baptists, guns, low iqs... pork or chicken, catfish, yuk again all fried... heart disease rickets its still happening!
jersey is heaven

fblumberg - I suspect it's easier and more nostalgic to come back, if you end up in Rumson, rather than Camden!!

[NWPAguy]

I wouldn't go back. My business did really well in NJ but I was tired of the mentality that people had where I lived... of everyone having to keep up with their neighbors in terms of the things they owned.

Too much traffic, too many oppressive laws, taxes are too high, you can't pump your own gas, there are roadway tolls on pretty much every major highway, and try finding a good truck stop at which to sleep for the night!

On the upside, high taxes have one plus... cigarettes are extremely expensive, which encourages people to avoid smoking. They did ban smoking in all public places... I liked that. You don't have to file local income tax returns in NJ... but the property taxes are outrageous, so that evens out, I guess. Their gas prices are lower than those in most of the rest of the country... but that's because money that most states get from gas taxes is collected in NJ in the form of roadway tolls. I'd bet that NJ residents would take higher gas prices any day if it meant abolition of roadway tolls and the inevitable traffic jams they cause.

Nope... not going back. I'm in PA now, and shall soon be heading south. If I ever go insane and decide I want to return to the Northeast, I'd probably examine lower-tax Republican-leaning states like New Hampshire or Indiana. (Is Indiana considered "the Midwest"? )

[todd72173]

The places you guys are choosing - NC and Florida- is what everyone else did..You followed all the hype..Too many people moved to these locations and ruined both of them. Staying in NJ is not the answer. A better solution is to pick a place where most of the entire country is not going to.

[Ciao9999]

Originally Posted by BobKovacs

Been there, done that. We moved to Las Vegas in 1994 (back when it was still affordable and English was the predominant language....lol), and came back to NJ in 1999. Since then we've had the opportunity to relocate to Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta and Charlotte with work, but in none of the cases did it make sense- financially or otherwise. Sure, we would have had a newer, larger house in any of those cities, and sure, our property taxes would have been lower- but is that what life's about? A big house and low taxes? Not for us it isn't.

Bob

Thank you Bob, that's an excellent post. I find the motivation for many people debating leaving or in the process of fleeing is to keep up with the Joneses.

I've heard time and time again of retirees moving to Florida and the South, only to miss their family, and to miss out on seeing their grandchildren grow up. I did leave NJ for a job in Boston, but it's only a 4 hour drive. This mother's day, it weighs heavy on my mind that my parents won't be around forever, and I just can't imagine being someplace so far that I can't be around for these family occasions.

Of course I have a wish list for NJ of problems that need to be fixed. And maybe it's time people get real about fixing them and thinking outside of the box.

[Diane Giam]

Originally Posted by Yorkiegirl16

Be careful what you wish for. You just may get it.

I was so happy to move to NC because of the lower cost of living. I knew people who had moved to NC and didn't come back to NJ. When I transferred to my NC office and got to know my co-workers, I was surprised to learn how many of them worked two jobs. Yep, the housing and insurance costs are significantly lower, but so are the salaries. NC takes out a lot of state taxes (almost twice as what NJ did). I also suggest you have a job lined up when you come down here. Approximately 6500 transplants per month are moving to the Charlotte area for many of the same reasons you have in your post. People will be fighting for every crumb of decent work. I wish you luck with whatever you decide.

We moved to Nashville, Tennessee and would never come back to NJ. As far as Jobs, my husband is working for the same company and is now making more than before we moved 2 years ago. State Taxes? None here. There is a high sales tax though, but that depends on what you consume.

Diane G