Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My husband arrived in Honolulu last night and today is his first day of officially being in Oahu. He already made somewhat of a friend on the plane before even arriving in Hawaii, he is a very friendly polite person. He got into a conversation with an older lady who was traveling to Honolulu to visit her son who is stationed there and will soon be going to Iraq soon. They spoke for awhile about Oahu and she even offered him a ride to our friends house which was so nice of her. Her son also gave him some advice about buying used cars. He said that when you buy a used car make sure that the vehicle has had a recent inspection done on it because if not then you can run into some problems and lots of expenses to fix the problems but I guess that can happen in any state its always a pain to go through inspections. So far he has just been taking the bus around to Kailua and Kaneohe where he will be working and said that the bus drops him right off at or near the base gates. So he is thinking about buying a pedal bike and hopefully can just bike the remainder of the way into the base to get to work. He said the bus system is awesome and he likes it so far and the people have not bothered him and they are really nice.
He also said gas prices were 3.45/gal there so not much more than here in CT or CA which is good. He went to IHOP this morning for breakfast and spent about $7 for food and got a decent amount of food so not much more here. I am sure other things are prob more expensive but guess it depends on what you buy. I am sure its pretty comparable to CA and CT so it might not be that much of a expensive shock to us since CT is expensive to live.
I will post more info on his journey as it comes this way others who are interested in moving can have more information in regards to living or information on stuff that hasn't been mentioned yet.
When buying a car, there are a couple things that he needs to be aware of.
Safety Inspection - these are annual. Make sure that the sticker and paperwork match. People steal stickers and place them on their own cars.
Registration - aka "taxes" - this is also annual and people routinely drive with expired registration. It isn't as simple as going into the tax office and renewing if it is more than a few months out of date. What generally happens is that people let it go for several years. If you buy the vehicle, you are then responsible for all of the "back taxes" (what locals call it) to get the vehicle up to date on the registration. If a vehicle is advertised as "plate turned in" it means that the owner voluntarily gave the license plates back to the state, ending the registration fees on that vehicle until it is registered again.
Because of the huge number of stolen safety and registration stickers, and stolen cars, do not buy any used vehicle without calling both the local police department and the tax office (registration). Have the VIN number, license plate number and registration sticker number ready for them to verify that the stickers do go with the vehicle you are buying.
If anyone presses you to buy after hours or on a weekend, be very, very careful!
mdand3boys wow thanks for all the great info. I am assuming thats what the guy that he met was referring too but didnt go into that much depth with it. I will let him know what you said I really appreciate the info def helps. Well right now he is going to try to take the bus to the base and I think he wants to get a pedel bike instead of buying a car since the bus system there is so good at least for now. Do you know at Kaneohe base if there is a bike path over the bridge to go to the base? I think he was telling me that there was a bridge/highway to go over to the base but he is not able to go on the highway with a bike but someone from HR said that she thinks there may be a bike path. If he ends up buying a motorcycle should he do the exact same things as you mentioned above for buying a vehicle?
Well thank you for the info!!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
