Best city to relocate between Orlando and Clearwater from upstate New York

[just_visiting 9]

What kind of job will you look for? Due to the amount of traffic in FL, you should live close to where you will work.

[paradiselost]

To address the author of this treaD at this point, I WANT TO stress enough to YOU TO exclude Central Florida at all costs and this from a college grad with a Masters Degree who has lived and went to school in some of the worst areas of PA and Tennessee in the past.
With 15 years experience living in both Urban Pinellas and Hillsborough county. The last few years were the worst. The UN-smart growth of this region is absolutely striking.
From Increasing goods and services to dealing with shady scam type people, to homeless people living next to new apartment complexes. The traffic went up significantly and so did my car insurance and rent the last 3 years. I seriously would rather a few snow storms and i hate snow and cold weather than live in Central Florida anymore. Its nothing but a hassle and burden for me.
Moving in a few weeks and will never return.

[Spring Hillian]

Originally Posted by paradiselost

moving in a few weeks and will never return.

praise be!

[CRG22]

Originally Posted by paradiselost

To address the author of this treaD at this point, I WANT TO stress enough to YOU TO exclude Central Florida at all costs and this from a college grad with a Masters Degree who has lived and went to school in some of the worst areas of PA and Tennessee in the past.
With 15 years experience living in both Urban Pinellas and Hillsborough county. The last few years were the worst. The UN-smart growth of this region is absolutely striking.
From Increasing goods and services to dealing with shady scam type people, to homeless people living next to new apartment complexes. The traffic went up significantly and so did my car insurance and rent the last 3 years. I seriously would rather a few snow storms and i hate snow and cold weather than live in Central Florida anymore. Its nothing but a hassle and burden for me.
Moving in a few weeks and will never return.

I was expecting this post to go in a different, logical direction. Can't really take this one seriously.

We have a relatively low cost of living and home prices still, good (hot) weather, and a lot to do nearby. I can't imagine where they think is far and above better. Of course traffic increases as more and more people realize the positive reasons to live here. I've lived here my entire life, and traffic is only bad if you live in the wrong areas or take the wrong routes at the wrong times. Car insurance is high? Shop around or improve your driving. I pay $160/m for 2 trucks with "full" coverage and a worse driving record that you almost guaranteed. And what exactly is "increasing goods and services"? Haven't noticed anything myself lol. Again, shop around. I don't think it's any different than the rest of the country.

[ColS]

What line of work are you looking to be in? Also, do you know anyone in the area? We were fortunate to have my best friend live here and able to use her address on my husbands resumes and job applications. At first, we used our own address (Indiana), and the got no hits for 2 months. Granted, he wasn't in the full fledged job search at that point since he still had a job. About a month before his work closed down, he went into full fledged job hunting mode applying to an average of 7 places a day and sometimes up to 20. For the first week and a half he still used our Indiana address. After convincing him to use my friends address and get a google phone number (so that we had an 813 area code) he started getting hits (people looking at his resume) and a few phone calls. It took him about 2 months to get a job and that was the most stressful 2 months of our lives. He's never had a problem finding a job because we always relocated to where the job was. We never picked an area and THEN tried to find a job. It was an eye opener for how it is for people who have never left "home" and have to find jobs.

Okay, all that being said.... get someones address you can use that is in the Tampa or surrounding areas. Get a google phone number. Use these on your resume and job applications. Have patience (haha yeah right!) when job hunting. Hopefully you don't suffer from anxiety or it'll feel like an eternity during the process.

Now, since you don't know where you want to relocate, I suggest you rent somewhere that is within close proximity to the interstate. We chose Land O Lakes and it takes us 20-30 minutes to get to the interstate. Plus we ALWAYS find ourselves in Wesley Chapel just about every day. Wish we chose Wesley Chapel to rent in, now, but it is what it is. We definitely will not be buying in LOL when our lease is up.

My son was all set to go to Hillsborough Community College and at the (literally) last minute (day before) he decided he wanted to go into the Air National Guard and attend college at the same time. So, he's now working on getting a little bit of weight off in order to get in and in the mean time he is job searching. At HCC his out of state tuition was going to be about $9,000 for the first year and $3,000/yr after he gained residency. I'm not a fan of him taking time off in between high school and college because I'm afraid he will become unmotivated to go back to school. At a state college the cost is going to be WAY high for someone out of state to attend. It really stinks that there is that year waiting period to establish residency in FL for college (but I understand why).