Moving to Hawaii to get off the grid somewhat..REALISTIC ADVICE? (farmers, acre)
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Sadly, she isn't merely foolish, she is typical of many people here on City-Data and elsewhere. "I have a little money, I want to move where life is comfortable and happy year 'round, where all the pictures make it seem like you just open your hand and food and a home and jobs fall into it, I deserve it, someone help me make it happen!"
They really don't care about their progeny or what they drag them into or out of. They don't really want to take the time or care enough to do their research about what it takes to live off of the land, move to a place, deal with the weather or costs or prices. Life sux where they are, which means that somewhere else has to be better. They have little to no conception about planning, setting goals, working toward what they want; they don't understand how money works, neither macro-economics or personal finance - and most importantly, they can't be bothered with all of that hard and time-consuming stuff. They want what they want, they deserve it, and therefore they should have it. Now. They look around at the people who have the things that they want and think that they should have them, too. Otherwise it isn't fair. Most won't even accept the responsibility that their life sux because of them, not because of where they live.
That's why there was a housing boom and bust, after all - so many people honestly believed that they deserved a brand-new house, a brand-new car, brand-new furniture, and all of the trappings of 'the good life' - all paid for with a 40-hour-a-week, minimum wage, service-oriented job. They were told and believed that they deserved better, simply because the ads on TV and their politicians said so. Had they understood that buying a home and determining a future takes savings, planning, and effort, had most folks understood basic economics, the whole scheme would never have worked. Can't tell you how many times in the past two years I have disabused peoples' fantasies on C-D about the ephemeral joys of 'living off the land', 'raising my own food' 'having farm animals' - and caught holy heck for it, for mistreating the poor little darlngs with facts instead of sweetly-scented hyperbole.
No, the OP is not alone, not different, not individual, not atypical in either her purposeful ignorance nor her expectations. There are hundreds of thousands like her, all determined to have whatever they want, because they have been told that they deserve it... without effort, without thought, without planning, without any foundation or reason other than the fact that they exist.
You should see the Flori-duh boards. So many posts about people wanting to move to a warmer climate, very rarely are they retired or people who have jobs waiting for them.
They think moving with 3 months savings is OK.
Of course the FL boards are loaded with realtors and those who use CD to conduct business(which I thought wasn't allowed).
When you try and bring up that FL has one of the worst economies in the country and that many of the jobs are low paying and many people find they're further behind financially, you get outnumbered by those who are trying to sell houses.
You should see the Flori-duh boards. So many posts about people wanting to move to a warmer climate, very rarely are they retired or people who have jobs waiting for them.
They think moving with 3 months savings is OK.
Of course the FL boards are loaded with realtors and those who use CD to conduct business(which I thought wasn't allowed).
When you try and bring up that FL has one of the worst economies in the country and that many of the jobs are low paying and many people find they're further behind financially, you get outnumbered by those who are trying to sell houses.
I have to second what you and SCGranny have said, it happens here all too often.
Montana is a spectacular state, stunning vistas, low population, wildlife all over the place, and very few jobs, artifically high prices, minimal road maintenance, power outages from storms, extreme cold and wind, and folks just keep coming as fast as they can with no job or much savings or any plan beyond " I want my little McMansion in the country where I can have 4 horses on 2 acres to eat it into the ground, and let my little pitbull/rotweiller "Fluffykins" run free.
These folks are in for a rude awakening when they find the only jobs pay $8.00 an hour, fuel costs are high to keep warm during our long winters, the plow may be 3 days before it plows the county road, and doesn't come close to your house 3/4 of a mile from the county road, and you find that your rancher neighbor dosen't feel any obligation to plow your road despite what the realtor told you, and the rancher isn't too happy anyway because "Fluffykins" attacked his $5000 horse and ran it through a fence, causing such damage the horse had to be killed, and when the rancher shot "Fluffykins" as it was killing his sheep, you called the sheriff on him and tried to have him arrested even after the sheriff told you the rancher had the right to protect his stock and you were liable for the damages your dog did.
Then they also find out that they can't shoot deer or other wildlife for eating their flower gardens or destroying their landscaping. This is seen as "Not Fair".
Or we get the people who want to get back to nature, but don't count on our short growing seasons, lack of water and soil not well suited to most vegetable crops.
They find their $20.000 solar system doesn't provide the power they need as there are a LOT of cloudy days during blizzards when you need power the most, but they didn't want to spring the extra money for the gas generator for backup because they wanted "Free" "Clean" power.
It is hard for people to understand that Montana has had recorded temperatures of -78 degrees. -40 is not uncommon, and stretches of 2 or more weeks when the thermometer never gets above 0, then add winds of 60 mph or more for days on end, it takes a lot to keep you home warm and keep vehicles running in those conditions. Metal will shatter in those tempuratures, oil is sludge, any moisture in the fuel will freeze and ice in the line will stop you as effectively as shutting off the key.
Towns are small and a long way apart here, so gas costs are high simply because of commuting to jobs or just driving to get groceries if you live outside city limits, and even if you do live in a town, you may have to drive more than 100 miles to get medical care, or go to a Wal Mart. Distances here are long, and the roads can be very dangerous between black ice, whiteouts and animals on the road. Just last week a co-worker of mine just driving the 30 miles from where she lives to Helena had the pickup in front of her be totaled when it hit a bull moose. If she had hit it in her little car, it would have very likely killed her.
They find that cell service is non existent for large areas of the state, and that when they break down or get stuck on the side of the road, there may not be anybody driving by to help them for hours or days.
On the Montana Boards all of these topics are discussed with a lot of people that want the storybook picture perfect life of the remote cabin and the privacy, but have no idea what life here is really like when blizzards close the roads for a week, and the power goes out because snow has drifted over the lines and broken them. They cannot understand that for large areas of this very large state, there are very few emergency services to come and save them.
The situations between Hawaii, Florida, Montana, Alaska all vary, but the same basic situation of someone wanting an idyllic life somewhere else causes problems when they don't plan, don't listen to locals, do not have the resources or abilities to cope with the situations they encounter. It takes a very special skill set and a very self sufficent kind of person to live here. There are no pastoral little hidaways where your troubles dissapate like the smoke from your cabin's chimney. You simply trade one set of problems for another.
I don't blame anyone for wanting a better life in a place where they can raise their kids and have their dream home, the problem comes from folks not doing their homework and coming up hard against reality.
Every summer we get a new crop of bright-eyed dreamers, and every spring we have a new crop of "for Sale" signs as they pack up and move back to whereever they came from.
I love it here, my family has been here since before Montana was a state. We are adapted to live here, very few people from more temperate climates can make the adjustment. It destroys lives and families if they don't know and agree to what they are taking on before burning their bridges and moving here.
It is a sad cycle, but it has been going on here since the 1920's. I wish folks would take a little time and effort before they run to find out if what they are running to is better than what they are running from.
Last edited by MTSilvertip; 10-29-2011 at 10:35 PM..
You should see the Flori-duh boards. So many posts about people wanting to move to a warmer climate, very rarely are they retired or people who have jobs waiting for them.
They think moving with 3 months savings is OK.
Of course the FL boards are loaded with realtors and those who use CD to conduct business(which I thought wasn't allowed).
When you try and bring up that FL has one of the worst economies in the country and that many of the jobs are low paying and many people find they're further behind financially, you get outnumbered by those who are trying to sell houses.
Oh, Laws, don't even get me started, you and MtSilvertip!
Had a fella post on the NE forum, who said that he wanted honest information on moving out of NE to FL, had anyone ever been there, what were the pros and cons? A fella on the NE forum (he and I PM'ed a lot when he first moved to NE from SC last year) explained to this young man with 2 small children why he didn't want to go to FL. My friend was a fresh graduate of USC, originally from PA, who couldn't find a job anywhere on the East Coast once he graduated - and came out to NE. He talked about the FL climate, the jobs, what the education was like, etc. The OP immediately flamed him. I got on and told the OP what he could expect as well (I have friends in FL and used to lecture there, as well as lived not too far from JAX.) Again with the flaming - the OP insisted that since he had been to Disney World twice, he knew there were jobs and houses and lots of opportunity there. I've talked to people on the Las Vegas boards (where two of my kids live) as well as other state boards where I've lived or visited family extensively, and the Moving forum. Over and over again, I try to explain to people that just because you vacation somewhere and fall in love with it, what you see when you are there is not the reality - especially when you see it from a tourist's point of view, with a tourist's money in hand.
I guess what really upsets me, though, are the ones who think that they can drag their kids with them all over the country, with 'neither a pot nor a window' and think that by stuffing all of their worldly possessions into their SUV, strapping the kids in with the family dog, someone somewhere will provide all of their wants and needs, wherever they land... hopefully in a place where manna, milk and honey fall from the trees to fill those baby bottles. These people neither know nor care what this does to their children - their whole lives are so obviously built around "MEEEEE!" that the kids are secondary. And what they are teaching those kids is apparently the same thing that they were taught - that it is their right to require that all of their needs and wants be provided for them. I could care less what happens to the adults, they should learn the consequences of their choices - but what they purposefully, casually, are willing to do to their own children, who can't make their own decisions and are solely dependent on these 'parents' - is awful. Whether it's getting them in a miserable, overcrowded school in FL and living in their cars or in a cockroach-ridden shack, moving to Vegas where mom can only find a job as a stripper if she's lucky, or moving to those beautiful mountains where there are no jobs and they don't even have winter boots, a 4WD, or the wherewithal to heat their homes, doesn't seem to matter to them. They're going, dangit - to heck with what they make their own kids suffer. I've gotten my foster kids out of places where they didn't even have pillows or bedsheets, or winter coats, or where they were forced to live out of cars, and the parents couldn't understand why those mean and nasty, busybody social workers called it "neglect". Those kids were treated by their own parents like Doritos - "Go ahead and crunch them - we'll make more." More and more, that attitude seems to be the norm, rather than the rarity. Grrrr.
I guess what really upsets me, though, are the ones who think that they can drag their kids with them all over the country, with 'neither a pot nor a window' and think that by stuffing all of their worldly possessions into their SUV, strapping the kids in with the family dog, someone somewhere will provide all of their wants and needs, wherever they land... hopefully in a place where manna, milk and honey fall from the trees to fill those baby bottles.
This is what is called looking for a "geographic cure." Typically people who hate their current location and its residents, culture, terrain, etc.; all certain that when they can move to [fill in the blank here] all will be better. People in their own town are so unfriendly, unsophisticated, prejudiced, etc., but people in [fill in the blank] are nice and friendly and welcoming and way cool.
Trouble is, wherever they go, there they are.
If a person can't make friends, get a job, find a partner, locate a good restaurant, etc. and there are 200,000 people living where they do, its them and not the location. In the off chance that a person finds himself in a town with population 500 or less and the nearest hospital 200 miles away, and they don't like small towns, then there is the chance that they may need to move.
Just to add about Hawaii, when inquiring about water catchment, a Hawaiian said that many residents depend completely on water catchment as their source of water and it works good.
Pardon the following novel (and off-topic from Hawaii novel, at that):
I'm generally on the opposite end of this argument here on CD forums. I've written plenty of posts on the topic over the years here. The problem is that there is a very long spectrum of what "living under the rainbow" means--it's different for everyone and heavily influenced by our respective lifestyles and expectations.
I will agree that if a person is expecting to move to the wilderness away from society as a whole AND live their life as our modern societal expectations and assumptions dictate... then yes, they are going to have to have either a) a lot of money b) a way to make big bucks independent of location, or c) both.
If you want a McMansion and a "millionaires lifestyle" out in the boondocks... well, you're going to have to be a millionaire.
Now, having said that, I'm going to repeat as I always do that if you lower your expectations and "primitivize" your lifestyle, that knocks out the need for much of the cashflow that the modern person needs to survive. Bag the big house; bag the fancy new car; learn to fix your own crap (cars, broken toilets, etc); learn to supplement your typical grocery store food supply by hunting/growing/picking/gathering; plan on not doing most of the "givens" in today's society (such as vacations, restaurants, weekends away, lots of recreation, etc); you have to learn to exist outside the norm of society and learn to exist on very little cash. I could go on with this, but I've said it all before. Basically, if you are not willing to do this and much more, then your chance of making it on a wing and a prayer outside the city is minimal.
I'm not looking to offend anyone here or step on any toes, but with a few exceptions, the impression I get on this forum is that most survivalists/preppers who post here are quite well off financially. I know there are some exceptions (and those exceptions are good examples of how to "make it" as a survivalist with hardly any money at all). Now, this being the case, the typical posters here are coming at the problem of survivalist/prepper from their perspective--the perspective of having sufficient funding to obtain what they feel they need to exist in a self-sufficient manner, yet maintain their modern lifestyle for the most part. And there is NOTHING wrong with that. I'm not discounting it. I'm just saying that it is one perspective of many possible perspectives. One plan out of many.
In the area I live, there is a vast, largely uninhabited desert "wasteland" to the west. In that desert, there are many, many counterexamples to the supposed requirement that you be independently wealthy to live a largely independent life. I'd doubt that most folks would want to live that lifestyle, but it is possible. There are several ways to go about it, and all of them revolve around minimizing expenses, as opposed to maximizing income. For those who are actually within arms reach of any sort of civilization, they make an $8.00 an hour job work--because there is next to nothing out there in the way of traditional employment, save a few mines here and there, ranching, and a few areas of agriculture. For those folks who live way out... I don't know each person's specifics, but they do it on even less money. There have been a few authors who've written books/studies on these people basically by going out and living among them for a time (they are out of print, but I have a couple of these books because I've been very interested in this sort of thing over the years). Largely, the ones who are way out in the middle of nowhere live as someone might have 150 years ago--no phone, no power, no anything we take for granted (with the exception that most have some sort of vehicle). I have actually met a couple of them in the past, too. Not an easy life... but possible.
The thing is, these people have no voice on a survival and self-sufficiency forum like this one, because they have no internet and seldom even come in contact with the outside world (outside their local area/perspective). So, you will never hear their voice. You will never hear them tell you how they do it. How they started. Where they came from. How difficult it is. Etc. There are a few posters here that are close (and I appreciate their perspective immensely, because they represent survival/sufficiency without a lot of money). I think the key is being prepared to turn your clock back 100 years (at least in many respects) and work your ass off. That's a start. As I said, if you are looking for a comfortable life with a white picket fence, two cars, a McMansion in the woods, a smartphone and internet connection... or even those newfangled electric light bulbs (), you're going to have to generate income in the modern workaday fashion... or be a millionaire.
My motto is "think small." And persist. You'll get there eventually even if you don't have a lot of money. But don't just pull up stakes one day, quit your job, hop in your ailing car, and start driving toward the horizon you chose by flipping two coins. If you don't have a lot of money, it's critical you have a persistent, long-term plan of attack. It will take you some time. But it's better wasting half your life rather than all of your life.
If a person can't make friends, get a job, find a partner, locate a good restaurant, etc. and there are 200,000 people living where they do, its them and not the location. In the off chance that a person finds himself in a town with population 500 or less and the nearest hospital 200 miles away, and they don't like small towns, then there is the chance that they may need to move.
It's funny the way folks can understand one direction of this logic, but not the other: the city guy needs to leave the pop 500 hamlet because the area is not right for him and there is no hospital to hang out in daily; but the country guy does not need to leave the pop 200,000 anthill--if he does, something is wrong with him.
Im a 32 year old woman who has had this survialist/minimalist attutide since I was a young teenager. I have lived poor, but in cities all of my adult life, have had great times, met great people, and wouldnt change those learning experiences for the world.
I have always had the naive dream of living off the land, having all my close friends around with like ideals and making a go of getting out of the tangled web, if not off the entire grid completely.
I have also had a magical, undenieable pull to the ocean.. I love the tropics, I love the ocean.. I have lived in california bummin it at the beach a few times, and those have been the happiest times of my life.
I live in AZ currently, and have lived in MIchigan, Minnesota.. so I have had my fill of the cold and the dry!!
Anyways I would love Costa Rica, but it is hard to gain citizenship and gain employment.. last year I decided on Hawaii because it is US and there are some jobs even if they are not plentiful.. Although my eventual goal is to not work. I would like to build, farm, maintain property and enjoy nature.
I now have a seven year old daughter who is very much like me, I have a very close female friend who is eager to come with me and help .. I also have a few male friends who would share the load if I could make something happen.
Next summer, I may have 10,000 saved and will be ready to go. I want to move to Hawaii, and I know I could money down on land near Puna, but I do not like the Big isalnd much, it seems thats where all the hippies and communes are though.
I am in love with Kauai, yet it doesnt seem that there is as much of an opportunity to move there and find a cheap, sustainable living situation out in nature.
Can some one please give me advice?>!??
As it is, I may just take my money, move to Kauai with my daughter and roomate, pay rent in a 1000$ studio for 6 months and maybe hopefully find work in Lihue or Kapaa.. We both have hospitality, server exp. I have health insurance lisense.. But then I would blow through my savings and be back on the grind!!!
Is that even realistic either??? I know there are a few jobs, as I am on CL job listings for HAwaii, but if anyone who lives there..could let me know the real scoop.
What I would really like is to find an established community and move there with money build a little place and be free.. where could I do that?
As long as its tropical .. Im good.. beaches.. yes
We're talking HAWAII here. Whay can't you just do some long-term camping at the state parks? (according to my friend Mr. Google, there are three:....
Camping
Camping is offered at three Kaua’i parks. Koke’e State Park in the uplands above Waimea Canyon, and Polihale State Park, boasting a long white sand beach on the island’s west side, each offer tent camping opportunities with minimally developed campsites.
I also recall talking with a person who lived in Hawaii, and he told me that locals often camp out on the beach (This was on the big island, however, so I don't know if that applies also to the other islands).
I would expect that locally grown food is very inexpensive. Again, since it is a tropical island, it would seem that some kind of food would be available all year around. Most notably fruit, vegetables and fish.
My suggestion would be to live as much like the natives as possible. I know someone whose uncle (recently deceased RIP). Lived *very well* on a meager monthly VA disability income (less than $2,000 per month). But he also supplemented his income by buying a cigarette rolling machine and rolling cigarettes and selling them to his friends way below market value. He also sold things on ebay.
If you have a low maintenance lifestyle, you should be ok. Why not figure on going for a while and see how you like it?
If I wanted to do it, and was in a position to do it, I sure would. Nothing is stopping you except a lot of negativity. Just ignore the nay-sayers and follow your heart.
20yrsinBranson
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So many posts about people wanting to move to a warmer climate, very rarely are they retired or people who have jobs waiting for them.
