how many transplants regret moving too Wi (Wausau, Merrill: condo, house)

[EnjoyEP]

I am regretting it.

I am kind of a transplant. I lived here the great majority of my life...from birth to mid-20s...then my wife and I relocated to Albuquerque, NM. After 4+ years there, now in my young 30s, my wife and I decided with two young kids that we'd really like to move back to Wisconsin to be close to many of our family and friends (many of them all live here).

While I really am always a proponent of the Milwaukee metro area (the area is my roots and I always stick up for Milwaukee and its 'burbs nationally in my business dealings and travels) and think MKE metro is highly underrated, and feel similarly about the whole state of Wisconsin in general, I really wish I had resisted my emotions and feelings of wanting to be closer to family and friends and stayed in the Southwest.

There are two major reasons that I am regretting returning to Wisconsin:

1) The weather -

OK, since I lived in our weather up here for so long, I thought adjusting to it again would be very easy and no big deal. I was wrong. Here we are in early December (after admittedly a more mild and sunny fall than usual for this area which in retrospect was a Godsend for my family and I) I am already fed up with the weather.

I don't mind snow in theory, however, getting up every morning a couple of hours early to shovel just hasn't been enjoyable for me. Similarly, navigating through snowy, hazardous streets (many streets, even if they've been plowed, have a nice 1/2 inch layer of icy, matted-down snow) while driving is just not fun...it obviously slows down getting to and from any destination, etc. (except for the real idiots who DON'T slow down on bad streets), it always creates the scary possibility of an accident.

Salt shmears constantly over my car and windshield. It shmears constantly over my work shoes as I head into the office.

It takes time and effort every time I want to go outside (I love walking and/or running outdoors and I refuse to let the weather keep me in) by putting on tons of layers of warm thick clothes.

Certainly, no one in the world enjoys going outdoors when it is below 20 degrees or so...and it has been that quite often already in this area. The scary thing...no improvement on the horizon temps-wise for quite some time.

Certainly adding a few hundred bucks onto the budget every month now for quite some time because of heating bills isn't a blast either...and we keep our heat pretty low (high 50s and low 60s) just to try to save pennies.

It gets dark by 4:15pm every day right now. It was one degree yesterday on my way into work.

Plus, I fail to think things will improve significantly in several months...December, January, February, March...even part of April. I was counting on the snow and extreme cold holding off until the end of December, not the end of November.

Before I am branded here a complainer or a wuss, again, I lived here for most of my life and thus, fully used to live in the weather here. I really just thought because of that, I would be able to deal with it much easier and happier now. I was wrong. It just is what it is...some people can deal with the weather just fine (many of those people have never lived south of say, Springfield, IL, but some have)...I guess I am just not one of them. At all. It is just like some people can live just fine in the boiling summer heats of Phoenix or Las Vegas...and some can't.

2) The taxes (specifically, the income and property taxes) -

They are just too high. I have two young children, and my wife and I feel strongly that we would like them to stay at home with my wife (as they do)...we understand many people need to utilize daycare, however, we think for us, if it is at all possible, it is better for them to be brought up by their parents, not paid help.

So, we try to make it on one income. Yes, that, in many regions of the nation now, just sends shivers down the spines of many...WHY wouldn't your wife WANT to work? Because she just thinks raising our kids is more important to her than paying someone else to raise them and having a few extra toys for ourselves at the end of the day.

Having said that, we are finding it is just so much harder to do a single income up here than it was in the Southwest, largely because of the income taxes, and even moreso, the property taxes. They are just too high - by far - and are just a huge drain on the pocketbook monthly.

Other cost of living factors in Wisconsin are actually not too bad, in many cases, pretty good. Things like auto insurance are priced very well in WI. However, at the end of the day, spending an extra $400 or so per month on property taxes and income taxes is just a significant financial drain. And yes, I would in a heartbeat give up plenty of these vaunted "services" (which are the most overrated things about living in WI) to save a few hundred on tax dollars.

----

My feelings are not to bash Wisconsin. Again, overall I love WI and will always have a strong sense of pride for the state. However, just for my situation, I regret having moved here. I returned here in only July, and already would give my left arm to reverse that decision and go back in time.

There are plenty of very nice things about living here. I could go on with a long list, but already have done so in many other posts. It is a fine state and area in its own right. Certainly my family is enjoying living closer to family and friends. It just isn't "for me" or "for us" anymore. So yes, I do regret relocating to WI, even though I fully understand why many people would highly enjoy living here.

[bettyboopster]

You pretty much said how I feel, EnjoyEP. Especially about the weather.

[sunflower53072]

I also agree about the weather. I like snow up until about Christmas. Spring snow is no good at all. Temperatures below zero are painful. As a gardener I'd like a longer growing season.

It has been hard to make true friends here, but after 3 years I finally have 3 good friends. People are friendly, but most are too busy with their extended families, childhood friends and college friends to really make new friends .

Things I like about Wisconsin:
The natural beauty
The relatively cheap cost of living(compared to the coasts)
Milwaukee and Madison
having Chicago less than a 2 hour drive away
the lakes
door county

Overall I don't regret moving here anymore, but if not for the kids and dh's job I would be fine about moving somewhere else.

[ekg56]

I know it gets dark here by about 4:30. I know out East it is even earlier. So what time does it get dark out west? Are the days any longer. My husband doesn't like the short days but I don't think in winter there is any where in the US that still would have long days. Right? He talks that when we retire in 10 years about going out west for a month but I don't think their would be more daylight. Or am I wrong?

[escapetacoma]

Originally Posted by ekg56

I know it gets dark here by about 4:30. I know out East it is even earlier. So what time does it get dark out west?

It's not east or west that's the issue except within a given time zone (the further east you are in a time zone the earlier it will get dark, but also the earlier the sun will rise.) If you want longer winter days go south. For example, in Blue Jay, California sunrise today was at 6:43 and sunset at 4:39. In Tacoma, Washington it was 7:45 and 4:20 - basically Blue Jay got an extra hour+ of daytime. In the summer the situation is reversed and Tacoma gets longer days.

I'm pretty sure that the longest winter days in the United States are in Hawaii (Hilo's sunrise today was 6:43 and sunset will be at 5:42.)

[Drover]

Originally Posted by ekg56

I know it gets dark here by about 4:30. I know out East it is even earlier. So what time does it get dark out west? Are the days any longer. My husband doesn't like the short days but I don't think in winter there is any where in the US that still would have long days. Right? He talks that when we retire in 10 years about going out west for a month but I don't think their would be more daylight. Or am I wrong?

It depends on a couple of factors: where you are in a time zone, and how far north/south you are. The further south you are, the longer days are in the winter compared to the north. (The tradeoff is that we get longer days in the summer.)

A big part of why it gets dark here so early is because we are on the very eastern edge of a time zone. Go across the lake to the Michigan side to, say, Kalamazoo, and the sun sets a good 45 minutes later in their respective time. They don't get any more actual hours of daylight, but they get more daylight on the back end of the day since they're on the western edge of their time zone. Since we're on the eastern edge of our time zone, we get more daylight at the beginning of the day. Great for early risers; wasted on the rest of us.

So, how many working hours of daylight you get in the winter can be noticeably increased by moving further south and situating yourself near the western edge of a time zone -- such as, say, Phoenix, where this time of year the sun sets at about 5:30 instead of 4:15 like it does in Milwaukee. Right now Phoenix gets one more hour of daylight than Milwaukee due to the latitude difference (10 hours versus 9). Six months from now, it will be Milwaukee getting one more hour of daylight over Phoenix.

[Dolly]

We regret it now. We moved up and signed a year lease at an apartment complex. My husband lost his job two months later and we are stuck here in this apartment until next June. Neither one of us has been able to find a job in Green Bay so we have started looking out of state again. Let's see, that leaves us a house payment on a home in Illinois, a rent payment on this apartment and a new rent payment on another place if we have to leave the area to find jobs. What a nightmare. I am to the point that I just hate going into Green Bay, not that we can afford the gas anyway. I cannot believe how much gas is here. We fill up when we go home to southern Illinois and pay at least 20 cents less per gallon. I don't think people here are that friendly, especially if they know you are from Illinois. I am so sick of the FIB jokes! We discovered there is a vast difference in Northern Wisconsin and southern Illinois in attitudes. (Southern Illinois is a lot more "laid back" and not so serious. All these Technical Colleges here apparently think they are Harvard which is such a laugh.
At this point, we just want to go back home, but southern Illinois is so economically depressed, there just arent many decent jobs there.

[ekg56]

Thanks for the sunset info. Someday when we retire, we talk about going west for a month each winter. And I wondered where it would stay light later. And hubby likes AZ so it does give us something to ponder but we are still at least 12 years away from retiring.

[LeaveWI]

Sorry all I can't wait to get out of here- Mainly the weather, but also the social climate. Employers here way too full of themselves,treat workers liek disposable diapers, mediocre women thinking they are SI supermodel material, holding out for the wealthiest sucker-no thanks. Was born and raised here, love to bicycle, but it's time to move on to someplace with a better job market, better climate, better social climate. I tried hanging in there, focusing on the good things about WI, but the neg outweigh the good.

[ravenstone]

Originally Posted by EnjoyEP

Salt shmears constantly over my car and windshield.

Zeibart! ...a service you don't find on every corner in Alabama. In fact, you won't find it anywhere but dealerships, and it's not Ziebart, just generic rustproofing.

Originally Posted by EnjoyEP

Certainly, no one in the world enjoys going outdoors when it is below 20 degrees or so...and it has been that quite often already in this area. The scary thing...no improvement on the horizon temps-wise for quite some time.

It was one degree yesterday...

Plus, I fail to think things will improve significantly in several months...December, January, February, March...even part of April.

It just is what it is...some people can deal with the weather just fine (many of those people have never lived south of say, Springfield, IL, but some have)

You are making me more homesick. I have a hard time dealing with the hot summers here, and while it gets good 'n' cold here, it's not like back home, and there's normally no snow. Or, the snow we get melts by daybreak. The ground just doesn't freeze much below the surface here. I loved the winters in WI and other parts of the midwest. Now I live about 3 hrs north of the magic line that separates climates -- where you can go outside at midnight on New Year's Eve in a T-shirt. I love being here because I am with my sweetheart, and I am slowly getting used to the heat, but I'll always prefer a good freezing Wisconsin winter.