Biggest mistake I made was moving away from Ohio..... (Toledo: employment, college)

[Buckeye5b]

Originally Posted by Jame22

$

I would love to live in a 'hip' urban neighborhood someday but it will never be worth paying a few hundred dollars more per month.

I live in the burb's now and pay $1100/mo in Austin.

[Jame22]

Originally Posted by Buckeye5b

I live in the burb's now and pay $1100/mo in Austin.

That's really high. I'm paying $700 right now for a place off of Nuckols Crossing and I'm about to move into a place by the Domain for $940. Although both are in Austin they are technically in suburban environments. If you can't find anything under $1,000 you're not trying hard enough.

[Buckeye5b]

Originally Posted by Jame22

That's really high. I'm paying $700 right now for a place off of Nuckols Crossing and I'm about to move into a place by the Domain for $940. Although both are in Austin they are technically in suburban environments. If you can't find anything under $1,000 you're not trying hard enough.

I tried like all get out to find something more comparative. But every single place that I checked out that was under $900/mo they had horrible reviews.

But anyways it still isn't worth it. The way employers treat people here and people in general, plus I can make more money in Columbus.

Besides that I know a person could be searching the internet all day and still not find very much under a $1000, plus the apartment complexes here like to nickel and dime you! That $1100 is my total in rent. Which my rent in Columbus is going to be about 25% cheaper and I will be getting a huge pay raise.

[Buckeye5b]

Originally Posted by Jame22

That's really high. I'm paying $700 right now for a place off of Nuckols Crossing and I'm about to move into a place by the Domain for $940. Although both are in Austin they are technically in suburban environments. If you can't find anything under $1,000 you're not trying hard enough.

Plus all my co-workers and past co-workers tell me that is the hood at Nuckols Crossing, is that why you are moving to the Domain?

[Buckeye5b]

This apartment base price (in Austin) is about $740.00/mo but look at the very first review, bed bugs really:

https://www.apartmentratings.com/tx/...2693980878744/

For the same amount of money you can find a decent to really nice apartment in Columbus and not have to worry about bed bugs.

[Jame22]

Originally Posted by Buckeye5b

Plus all my co-workers and past co-workers tell me that is the hood at Nuckols Crossing, is that why you are moving to the Domain?

It's lower income families but I definitely wouldn't call it a hood. I'm headed up north so I can live with my girlfriend.

[PsychDoc]

I am from OKC, which is a mini version of Dallas. Growing up I spent tons of time in Texas. I've lived in various parts of the country for my training and have travelled a bunch. I ended up in Columbus almost four years ago and I love it here. Best city in the country for living, all things considered, in my opinion. People are super nice here (much friendlier here than in OKC and Texas) and the people just seem more intelligent. I love the climate here. We have four distinct seasons and each is beautiful. Granted, January and February seem to linger and I'm sick of the cold by then. Tons to do here with festivals almost every weekend. I am quite happy here and I plan of living here forever.

[Buckeye5b]

Originally Posted by PsychDoc

I am from OKC, which is a mini version of Dallas. Growing up I spent tons of time in Texas. I've lived in various parts of the country for my training and have travelled a bunch. I ended up in Columbus almost four years ago and I love it here. Best city in the country for living, all things considered, in my opinion. People are super nice here (much friendlier here than in OKC and Texas) and the people just seem more intelligent. I love the climate here. We have four distinct seasons and each is beautiful. Granted, January and February seem to linger and I'm sick of the cold by then. Tons to do here with festivals almost every weekend. I am quite happy here and I plan of living here forever.

Completely agree, since I have lived in Austin, Texas, I think C'bus is 100x better imo.

[Jame22]

Originally Posted by PsychDoc

People are super nice here (much friendlier here than in OKC and Texas

I hate to generalize but Texans are the type of people who think the rules don't apply to them. A lot of arrogance down here.

There are a lot of friendly people here too, but definitely not more than Ohio

[goofy328]

Originally Posted by Buckeye5b

I recently graduated from college back in May of this year for Management of Information Systems. I decided to move out of state and go where I thought there would be plenty of IT jobs and good money to be made. I honestly lived in Marion, Ohio for most of my life and moved to Bowling Green to finish my degree, I then moved to Toledo, Ohio (Maumee, Ohio to be exact) it was nice but job growth was very limited, I felt and job growth in Marion, Ohio was very limited, I felt to get the most bang for my buck for my degree that I had to move out of state.

So I decided to move to Austin, Texas. At first jobs were very promising, and many promises were made to me, I was doing a job that I loved, the bad part I was only a contractor which means they can end your contract at any moment. I was hired on for a project, the staffing agency and Dell made it sound like that if we did a good job and did what we were suppose to do then we would get extensions (all of us that were hired) and we could stay there for quite a long time , 4-5 weeks later after our current project was almost done they let every single one of the contractors they hired go. I was very disappointed in both Dell and the staffing agency especially after they had promised us so much. The pay wasn't that great for IT in fact it is quite low for IT only $14.00/hr. So this was only the beginning, it seemed like every where I turned no one would no one would tell the truth or stick to their word, I mean I honestly never had this happen to this degree in Ohio. Anyhow what they call IT technical support down here really means call center jobs, I started to work these jobs as this is what I needed to do to survive. They don't seem to pay very well here for entry to mid-level IT people, I even have 2-3 years of experience in IT, down here, they act like this is no experience. The only way people make decent money down here is if they have a niche in what they are very good at or they have tons of experience and they are making 6 figures, however the rest of the IT people here are not making it. I currently have a co-worker of mine who is from Idaho and he has 10 years of experience and he isn't making any decent money here either, we are both talking about moving out of Austin very soon. I just wish I knew how it really was down here before I moved here, career wise. Any IT jobs here are HIGHLY competitive to get into and the market is saturated with IT people.

The cost of living here is ridiculous, the min ave rent is around $1000.00, I currently pay $1100.00 a month. Food is higher, Pizza on average costs $20.00 where back in Ohio, I could get the same pizza for less than $10.00. Everything here is so spread out and the traffic is horrendous, that it takes a long time just to go do basic things, like grocery shopping and etc.

I honestly thought that with the cost of living being higher that the market would support that cost of living, that just isn't the case at all here.

I tried to do as much research as I possibly could before I moved to Texas and filled out tons of applications too before I moved too. I read many relocation guides and fortune, wsj, usa today, none of what I read about IT jobs seems to be true at all or the predictions, what I should of done is see how many national or international companies were here before I moved here and it might have given me a better indication before I moved of how good the job market honestly would have been. I even believed all of the low unemployment numbers they have here too, but those numbers are skewed, because after talking to locals they try to kick anyone on unemployment off as soon as they can and thus in doing so they can keep their unemployment rates very low that way and make it seem like there are tons of jobs here, when that is anything furthest from the truth. There are tons of homeless people here, which should raise some eyebrows.




What I should have done is look very heavily into the Columbus market for IT jobs, in fact I know I had better jobs even before I graduated college, I had better job offers in Ohio than what I did here in Austin, Texas. I will admit, that I particularity didn't enjoy living in Toledo. Although Columbus is a very nice area and I should have tried way harder getting into good jobs there in Columbus than here in Austin.


So where do I go from here? Do I move back to Ohio? Do I try to get jobs in Houston, where I here locally that there are way more jobs there than there is here. Do I move to San Antonio? Which I actually do like a lot, I mean a huge amount, but the problem there is jobs are very low wages and the economy isn't that great, but what I do love about San Antonio is the amount of trails they have where I can get out in nature and through enjoy nature, the RiverWalk (not just downtown) is amazing and very well done, their Greenway trails are extremely nice too, Austin has none of this, most of the trails around Austin are dirt trails and heavily over grown.

I will have to say another thing I noticed is how dirty the streets and roads seem to be here in Texas in General, Ohio seems to take care of their roadways (as a whole) way better than Texas does, and I don't remember tons of trash on the road, like they have here.

The overall education here is very low, which if anyone does a search you will find that Texas is one of the worst in the Union as far as education goes, it is very disappointing, to be honest I really feel like I went back in time moving here, like everything here is so far behind compared to anything in Columbus.

I will have to say that in my opinion the people in Ohio seem to be way nicer than the people here in Texas. Plus I think the people in Ohio in general is waaaaaaaaay more honest than the people in Austin are. The people here are very shifty, it's literally like one moment they are trying to be your friend then the next minute their completely gone, literally. Everything here feels very superficial when it comes to the people here in Austin, like there is no real friendships. I've had deeper friendships in Ohio than I've had here.

Sorry for the really long post, but I was just wondering if anyone else had a similar situation. I also want to say that certain parts of Ohio are not that bad at all. I honestly miss people actually being honest and trustworthy compared to here.

You're homesick. Move back to Ohio. You will be okay.

If you're educated why continue to be miserable in Texas? You've experienced it. You don't like it. Not like you'll be poor and destitute in Ohio.