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We just relocated to Charleston (Mt Pleasant) from Washington DC after our friends moved here and we visited several times.
It's a great place to live but the cost of living is turning out to be higher than expected.
PROS
We love the people. Very friendly. Very clean. Lots of farmers markets and pick you own fruit and veggies! Downtown is awesome. Endless restaurants. Lots of shops. Crime is very low in Mt Pleasant. Beaches are right down the road. Nice park$. Plenty of gyms. Harris Teeter. Trader Joe. Everything you need is right here. Great place to raise kids.
CON$
This is a tourist town and you are paying tourist prices. Movie tickets, food prices, parking enforcement. You do start to feel gauged. We were caught off guard by the high taxes too: Sales tax is 8.5%, Restaurant tax is 10%! Personal property taxes are high. State income taxes another 6% or so. Traffic gets backed up fast and often. Lots of road work. Bugs! Humid. Can't buy wine on Sunday.
Although this is a nice place to live you better make good money.
Last edited by juggernaut; 08-13-2012 at 06:00 PM..
Thanks for all of the responses everyone! Driving back north was so depressing lol...the further we got, the more congested and miserable it became. We weren't even out of Virginia yet before someone yelled at me for no good reason
As far as the cost of living goes...it looks like it's very comparable to where we live right now (Syracuse), but having grown up in a ridiculously high cost area where families require 2 or 3 incomes to survive (Long Island) it seems perfectly reasonable to me, especially considering what we would be getting for our money. We don't have a very good feel for how much jobs pay compared to our region though, which is a factor. My husband is an Electrical Engineer, currently working for a defense contractor. We're assuming that salaries in his field will be somewhat comparable as well (assuming the defense contractors recruit talent from all over the country).
I'm used to 8% sales tax, I've never known anything different. Certainly welcoming the humidity over having to shovel feet of snow off of my roof...blah! I saw the rush hour traffic that I've heard so much about on this forum, and I guess I'm desensitized to traffic as well because I honestly didn't think it was bad at all. When I would drive through NYC, I would bring movies with me to watch because on more than one occasion I got stuck sitting in it for hours on end. As far as alcohol is concerned, I was so happy to see that you could buy wine in a grocery store! No place is perfect, and considering the beauty of this place, I'm very honestly surprised that it doesn't cost even more to live there. I will admit though, the one thing that has me kind of sort of terrified is the palmetto bugs. I think I have an irrational fear of them, and it's literally the one thing that could ever keep me out of the south. I don't really like cats, but I heard that they like to catch the palmetto bugs, so if there's even an ounce of truth to that, I'm getting a cat!
Thanks for all of the responses everyone! Driving back north was so depressing lol...the further we got, the more congested and miserable it became. We weren't even out of Virginia yet before someone yelled at me for no good reason
As far as the cost of living goes...it looks like it's very comparable to where we live right now (Syracuse), but having grown up in a ridiculously high cost area where families require 2 or 3 incomes to survive (Long Island) it seems perfectly reasonable to me, especially considering what we would be getting for our money. We don't have a very good feel for how much jobs pay compared to our region though, which is a factor. My husband is an Electrical Engineer, currently working for a defense contractor. We're assuming that salaries in his field will be somewhat comparable as well (assuming the defense contractors recruit talent from all over the country).
I'm used to 8% sales tax, I've never known anything different. Certainly welcoming the humidity over having to shovel feet of snow off of my roof...blah! I saw the rush hour traffic that I've heard so much about on this forum, and I guess I'm desensitized to traffic as well because I honestly didn't think it was bad at all. When I would drive through NYC, I would bring movies with me to watch because on more than one occasion I got stuck sitting in it for hours on end. As far as alcohol is concerned, I was so happy to see that you could buy wine in a grocery store! No place is perfect, and considering the beauty of this place, I'm very honestly surprised that it doesn't cost even more to live there. I will admit though, the one thing that has me kind of sort of terrified is the palmetto bugs. I think I have an irrational fear of them, and it's literally the one thing that could ever keep me out of the south. I don't really like cats, but I heard that they like to catch the palmetto bugs, so if there's even an ounce of truth to that, I'm getting a cat!
Plenty of work for him here. Lots of defense contractors. Shouldn't be a problem. I have a contact who works down here that also came from a Syracuse defense contractor, if you need one. Let me know and I can PM it to you.
Plenty of work for him here. Lots of defense contractors. Shouldn't be a problem. I have a contact who works down here that also came from a Syracuse defense contractor, if you need one. Let me know and I can PM it to you.
That's great to hear Yes, I would greatly appreciate it if you could PM me that info. Thank you!
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Yes, I would greatly appreciate it if you could PM me that info. Thank you!
