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I would like to get a better picture of cost of living in Colorado. Can anyone compare monthly budgets. I currently have the following monthly budget: (Excluding mortgage)
Daycare for 1yr old =1200, After school care for 6yr old 450, Electricity+water+gas=400, Cable TV/Interne=150, Mobile phone=160, registration on 3 Vehicles=700, vehicle insurance=2,700 yearly, dog vet bills 500 yearly, grocery bills=500 that always varies. Those are the major ones. Dining out=300 here we love to grill not sure if people from Colorado are mostly vegans. Thank you for the responses I'm slowly forming an idea of what and where to go. I'm sure once I show the wife she will feel the opposite never fails.
It will be easy enough to go online to get budget information on a lot of things you've listed, like daycare/after school care, car insurance and cable.
The rest is different for everyone, depending on lifestyle, the house they're in and how they shop, etc. My highest electric bills are in the winter, at about $175, but I live in a very small house. A search of the forums will bring up some other threads about utility costs.
You'll have to let go of your love of water and water sports a bit, as has been mentioned. This area of the front range is really a high desert. You will most definitely want to stay away from HOA neighborhoods and the lack of personal freedom they demand.
And finally ... no, people from Colorado are not mostly vegans. Plenty of grilling and meat-eating going on, right next door to vegans and vegetarians.
ETA: For high-speed internet and cable, Comcast/Xfinity pretty much has the monopoly here. You can look on their website or call to get an idea of pricing.
Last edited by mtngigi; 08-31-2017 at 12:12 PM..
Reason: added text
MountainEarth, if you ever been in Los Angeles mostly everyone is a wannabe musician, actor, producer, etc..There is always some type of noise. I call it creative noise. I might have missed my shot to stardom but its always nice to dream. We live close to Pasadena and I know people who once lived close to Eddie Van Halen and they would play out of their garage with a full on band, the rest is history . Regarding the engine noise, my dad always said you want toys you fix them and so I have ever since. It gets expensive taking any power sport vehicle to the shop each time something breaks.
That may be the case in LA. But this isn't LA. You move here and make that kind of noise ... especially dogs barking all night ... you can expect a ticket.
Last edited by MountainEarth; 09-01-2017 at 12:21 AM..
I think you should think twice about the no septic, the type of place you are looking for is not going to fly in any community around here. HOA's abound, most don't allow more than 2 pets, some 3 & the noise you've described is not exactly going to make you a welcome neighbor. You will need to either get out in the country or maybe Pueblo or Canon. That said, keep in mind, many acreage areas ALSO have HOA's & regulations. I have a 35 acre parcel near Canon & based on what you've described here, that lifestyle would not be welcome. Many around here on ranchettes, value their peace & quiet.
Taxes are super cheap, utilities pretty average but water is hard to come by & can be expensive. Keep that in mind for rural properties, water is a BIG DEAL! Where is it? Can you access it? Do you have to dig for it? Dig into an aquifer or dig until you find it? I know people who have dug 1200 foot wells. Twice. And still haven't gotten water. Each individual property (rural) will have a different water situation & it's important that you do a lot of due diligence on that aspect! Other utility costs, there are just too many variables to say, house size, family size, usage patterns, etc.
While I like your 'this is who I am' attitude & appreciate the honesty, all that noise would not only not be welcomed in any community that I know of, but it would be acted upon immediately & HOA's are far more powerful than you might think. They can even put liens on your house & fighting them is a nightmare. You want a no covenants areas, with a lot of land. Most neighborhoods around here proudly display signs that say "A covenanted community" (is that a word)?
Another thing to keep in mind with all those pets is that CO in general is VERY anti fencing. Anyplace within an HOA or with covenants typically has extensive fencing regulations that are not friendly to those who have large pets. It took me 16 years to find a place I could have a 6 foot privacy fence in the city & I still can't put it around my entire property.
I think you're going to have to re-think the septic, if you want to make all that noise & have 5 animals. It's just not gonna fly in the highly regulated communities around her, even those with some land.
ETA: Your question abt houses cracking in half, it's called expansive soils & is more prevalent closer to the mountains & on the west side, but is definitely something you'd need to do due diligence on. Also, we can have radon issues here all over the front range.
We're mostly vegans, shivering in the cold. That's funny. You are in HVAC, you should know how we keep warm. BTW, furnaces are standard in every house you will find here. By contrast, air condition will be found very infrequently.
I've been building and driving competition vehicles for 30+ years. I occasionally need to run uncapped, high compression engines for tuning, loading, and unloading. I've lived in numerous neighborhoods in the city. I've been open and communicative with my neighbors about it and makes sure I do not do it beyond certain times, like between 8pm to 8am over night. If I have to leave early, I load early the next night and I do not unload late at night. I have only ever had one problem with one family in one neighborhood. Everyone else has been very tolerant or even inquisitive about it. Unless you are working into the wee hours of the night doing this, you may find the same, DEPENDING in large part on where you live. As many have pointed out, newer neighborhoods tend to have covenants against this, the quantity of vehicles you can have, or even when your garage door can be open. Same with guitars. Shop carefully.
As others have pointed out, the dog situation is borderline. You are already over limit for El Paso County. You'll have to figure out how to manage that or if you are willing to risk non-compliance. Barking, even more than loud engines, will get you into a conflict with your neighbors faster than nearly anything else I've encountered. People will loose their minds when dogs start going off at night. Extra space around you and your neighbors would be good for helping avoid this.
Speaking of space, you have a truck, some quads, some watercraft, bikes, probably the associated trailers, and I assume your daily driver vehicles. That's quite a collection and will require a fair amount of space to park them all. I'm going to guess that you will need around 10,000 sq ft of lot to park that all within your property line. Possibly more if you also want yard space for kids and dogs. That big a lot can be found within the city limits, but not easily. This will probably limit you to areas built from around 1960-1980, or nearer the center of town with alley access. You may be able to push as far out of the city boundaries as Cimmaron Hills and Falcon to the east, Widefield or Fountain to the south, and maybe towards Hanover to still be on a municipal water and sewer system. Out past that where you can get 5 or 10 acre parcels, most will be on well and septic systems. However, these larger parcels will also have or have the potential to have out buildings and large structures for parking. Leaving all your toys outside in Colorado will lead to fast degradation. The intense sun combined with wide temp swings will burn, blister, and crack the paint, decals, and vinyl of toys left outside as well as prematurely age trailer tires that sit idle for months at a time.
Watersports are possible, but not widespread. There is A lake (singular) in Cos, but you have to buy a membership to use it and hours are very limited. Pueblo is the closest large body of water about 30-40 minutes away. There also are several large reservoirs in Denver an hour north. Due to the popularity of these, summer weekends can often have waits just to get on the water. To avoid these you are looking at 2+ hour drives to the east or south to find warm water, or 2+ hour drives into the mountains. Water temps in the mountain lakes will tend to be around 40* even during summer months. Also, not all nearby lakes allow water contact sports like watercraft. It is prohibited at nearly any large body of water in El Paso, Teller, and Park counties.
Similarly, off roading here is not all open, designated, free for all areas like Azusa Canyon, although areas in Deckers may come close. Most of the off-roading you find here will be more technical and remote, like Rubicon.
Schools, you didn't make too much mention of these. Most districts here are pretty decent. However, given your line of work and what you may or may not want for your kids, D49 and D11 are probably the area leaders in non-college prep programs. Both offer and are expanding trade related training pathways on top of traditional school subjects. I know D49 has several pathway programs such as construction, auto tech, manufacturing trades, health trades and D11 offers concurrent enrollment for many college level classes. D49 is the far east side of Co and D11 is the largest central district. Other districts around the city may be higher performing on test scores and are much more college preparatory focused.
As MsMetal said above, expansive soils are foundation killers and found primarily west of I-25. However, if you are locating within the city, be sure to ask about it anyway as well as mine subsidence, underground water, sandy/loam, and slide zones. All can be found in various areas throughout of the city. Buyer beware and you real estate agent may not know, so don't trust their word unless they have more than a couple decades of LOCAL experience. A by product of all the migration here is agents who have only lived in Cos for a few years and have no background on these issues and where they are located.
Community is what you make it, unless you are looking for a designated, HOA affiliated area, which is somewhat counter to your desires. I have found this can vary widely from area to area. Some places are much tighter, many are much less so. Cos is full of transplants from other places, so they can tend to either be very friendly and very distant. We have a large % of military in the area that also drives this. You may find our population to be somewhat transient as a result, but you do find pockets of people who have lived here for decades and are very engaged with what is going on in their local 'hoods.
Cost of living here overall doesn't sound like it will be radically different. However, your vehicle registrations and insurance will probably take a big jump up. Later model vehicle registration will probably be several hundred up to a thousand dollars depending on age. Trailers and watercraft will be around $30-50 each. Same with home owners insurance. We get hail and high winds that tend to create at least one large event a year that will cause extensive damage. Utilities aren't too bad, but we do have tiered water rates so the more you use, the higher the rates go. Job pay rates may be a bit of a shocker as many industries tend to pay LESS here than other places in the country. I'd recommend checking connectingcolorado.com to see what sort of offerings are available locally. HVAC techs do tend to be in demand, but there are a wide variety of employers from small to large and, I assume, a fair range of compensation to go with them.
Access to Costco, Target, Whole Foods, and consumer retail means you will probably want locate within the Front Range corridor. This is the area that is within 30 minute east/west of I-25 from Ft Collins to Pueblo, so you have a fairly expansive area open to your scrutiny if you are unable to find the best combination of what you want in Colo Spgs.
She thought colorado had more trees without having to go into the mountains. Is colorado restricted with water use, she likes to plant her garden but majority of locations I've been looking in COS have a desert look. I'm assuming the freedom I'm looking for doesn't exist within the city limits. Yes 400K is max and a 3bd 2bth with basememt is target. How strong are the winds and is the seasonal or at any given time.
She thought colorado had more trees without having to go into the mountains. Is colorado restricted with water use, she likes to plant her garden but majority of locations I've been looking in COS have a desert look. I'm assuming the freedom I'm looking for doesn't exist within the city limits. Yes 400K is max and a 3bd 2bth with basememt is target. How strong are the winds and is the seasonal or at any given time.
City ordinance is one tree per front of house or something. You could look at the Black Forest, Woodland Park or Florrissant for more trees. They're all nearby.
For more freedom but close by, you could also go further east to Peyton. You can get more land, and some houses have barns or detached garages for extra stuff. It's commutable to the Springs, but not a lot of trees.
You can garden anywhere.
Winds supposedly are stronger this further East you go, however wind damage has occurred elsewhere. It's not often or daily. It seemed really windy most of June, but the beginning of the year saw the damaging windstorms I believe. It's not like an everyday part of life though.
She thought colorado had more trees without having to go into the mountains. Is colorado restricted with water use, she likes to plant her garden but majority of locations I've been looking in COS have a desert look. I'm assuming the freedom I'm looking for doesn't exist within the city limits. Yes 400K is max and a 3bd 2bth with basememt is target. How strong are the winds and is the seasonal or at any given time.
A lot of Colorado is high desert or nearly so - we do not get a lot of water here all the time. So sometimes we have water restrictions. Some places do not allow certain types of gardens in the front yard - ask before you buy. Growing things here can be quite a bit more difficult compared to where some folks come from - shorter season, for one, and less water. We're lucky to get some things out of the ground. Farmers markets start later here than many people expect because we're often not planting most things until after Mother's Day. But lots of people do some kind of gardening. We have a quite a few community gardens around, as well. Colorado is relatively windy by comparison to a lot of other places. Usually that means a nice breeze, but damaging winds do happen and can happen in any season. One day last January we had an usual wind storm that was strong enough to damage thousands of roofs and structures and knock over a bunch of semis on the Interstate. Usually it isn't that extreme, but I hear people complain about our wind sometimes. I like it, as long as it isn't damaging.
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. Regarding the engine noise, my dad always said you want toys you fix them and so I have ever since. It gets expensive taking any power sport vehicle to the shop each time something breaks.
