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In my opinion, you make out the most in the South if you are retired or if you are still in the workforce but work out of your home and it doesn't matter where in the country you live.
I'm retired, single and I have a pension. I rent in an apartment complex. I have lived in East Tennessee for over 8 years, lived in MD before that for 12 years and the rest of my life lived on Long Island.
My rent, for a twice as big (2b, 2b) nice apartment in suburban Tennessee is still less than what I paid for rent (1b, 1b) in suburban Maryland, 8 and a half years ago.
My home is all electric (washer, dryer, dishwasher, microwave, heating, air conditioning, stove/oven). My electric bill last month was $49. It is typically in the $60 - $70 range. In Maryland, for the smaller apartment, it was more than that, again over 8 years ago.
Gasoline for the car is cheaper.
There is no state income tax on my pension. There is a tax on dividends and interest.
There are no toll roads or bridges near me.
It costs $21.50 to renew your car plates (non-specialty, non-personalized). Emissions test is only required in the big cities.
As a renter, I don't pay for home repairs unless it's my washer and dryer because I own them.
To go to a state park it's free. To go to the national park it's free.
We have a sales tax even on food. Cable and cell phone is about the same.
I get a COL adjustment for my pension.
Wages are less here but things cost less here, especially your biggest expense - housing.
I think there's a lot of truth to this. It's basically arbitrage. You live semi-poor in the high cost area but you save what you can and/or are lucky enough to have a pension. Then you move to the low cost area and live better for less. But it definitely depends on what kind of job you have. The more expensive places tend to have inflated living costs, but better government pensions are part of that. But not everyone can work for the government. Sometimes the lower wages in private industry type jobs are still worth it because of the lower costs.
They can also offer a higher standard of living to the upper paid personal. Often they have to match California wages to get good people. With the lower cost of living, those people really make out.
Our Montana papers have been running articles, about how difficult it is to staff a company as we do not have enough people to fill all the jobs available. Unemployment rate is down to what is considered the full unemployment rate as there are always about 3 to 5% of the people that are temporarily unemployed by their choice.
In the last couple of years, several companies have wanted to move to Montana bringing good paying jobs with them, but they are told by the unemployment office, to advertise for help prior to making final decision to move here. One did in Billings our biggest city and biggest metro area, needing 350 people to be able to start up, and the pay was good pay. They got 70 applications and only 20 or so were for qualified applicants. The other 50 were minimum wage earners, who would never be able to do more difficult jobs. Every time they look to move here, we don't have workers to fill the need no matter how high the pay and benefits. When cost of living was taken into consideration, the states they did open in saw lower spendable incomes than they would have had here in Montana.
We simply have not got enough people to let the employment picture grow by much. High school kids get $9 to $10 to start for part time work, and in the summer when they could put in more hours they were being paid at $13 an hour or so. And it is almost impossible for those places to even get enough people to fill a shift. Example, McDonald's etc., don't just take applications but hire on the spot when they see a good applicant come in with an application.
I know it is hard for people on California coast, and New York, etc., to understand that there is a lot of so called fly over country that is doing so much better than those areas, especially when you consider cost of living, and the almost no unemployment problem. When I read the threads where people complain about how many applications they make, and how many interviews they make and how long after interviews before they even get the job, it is almost laughable that those conditions exist in the big city areas of the country.
It is so bad, that the news media is filled with the stories of how difficult it is to find workers of any kind. The other day they covered nurses, and how hard it is for medical facilities to find nurses. Our medical system keeps winning all kinds of awards for the quality of service, and is rated right up with the big ones. It is affiliated with Mayo Clinic as of a few months ago. They cover a big area including Montana, Upper half Wyoming, Western half of the Dakotas, and a big section of Canada. They keep 2 helicopters, and 3 twin engine turbo prop airplanes, with flight crews ready to go get people 24/7 which is unusual for any medical system. Our daughter needed to be flown to Billings one day. They landed at the Hospital/Medical Clinic each on one end of the building. The flight nurse in charge, was one of the most qualified I have ever seen. She read the chart, and her and her assistant took tests to see how stable she was and what may be needed in the flight of 50 miles. The hospital nurses let her run the show. They got her into a heated mummy suit, and left for Billings. The local nurses told my wife and I that that is one woman they all listen to as she is so superior in her knowledge than regular RNs. That is a demonstration of the flight crews that move people here in our area. She is American Indian and one would be proud to know.
The Clinics around the state, send nurses to Billings to train how to assist doctors for TeleConferencing with full equipment to hook them up to, and how to administering tests for the doctors back in Billings. It is amazing what a good nurse trained to assist with the patient, and a doctor on the other end with equipment to read what the test equipment is finding, to tap the knee with a hammer to see reaction, etc. as an example.
We may be in fly over country, but it is not that much different than in big cities. And due to the lower cost of living, a lot of people make a lot more disposable income than they do in the big cities.
Don't think living in the big cities, has all that many advantages over the fly over country many of us live in.
One thing that you have to admit though is that places like Montana are not destinations for most folks. Even if they aren't doing so great "back home," it takes a kind of special person to want to live in an isolated state like that.
Here is a list of what have been judged the 50 best places to live in the U.S. None of the big city areas of the country even qualify to be on the list.
Note the median income in these areas. The people actually make more money when adjusted for cost of living in these areas, and if you compare them with the big city areas, these people have a better quality of life, and that is why they are considered the best places to live.
GeoffD---Note that neither Boston or Chicago are on the list of best places to live.
The problem with that list, is that for the unknowing, the locations appear to be detached towns of mostly 20,000 population or so. If one digs deeper, they will discover that almost without exception, the towns listed are upper middle class suburbs of metro areas with 1 million or more population. So essentially this is a big city list, with individually chosen suburbs.
Look at the real figures, when incomes are adjusted for cost of living, and you see the actual median income for the state for buying power, and find fly over states are often higher income states than the high flyer states like California, and New York.
I rather take the cost of living being cheaper in the Midwest and South and vacation in NYC and SF or wherever whenever I want... just a thought.
There is some truth to this. The problem is it's often easier said than done. Jobs can create a lot of constraints on how much and when you can take vacation.
The problem with that list, is that for the unknowing, the locations appear to be detached towns of mostly 20,000 population or so. If one digs deeper, they will discover that almost without exception, the towns listed are upper middle class suburbs of metro areas with 1 million or more population. So essentially this is a big city list, with individually chosen suburbs.
Yeah, I noticed that too. It's really annoying when they misrepresent stuff like that.
One thing that you have to admit though is that places like Montana are not destinations for most folks. Even if they aren't doing so great "back home," it takes a kind of special person to want to live in an isolated state like that.
Most of Montana is less isolated than much of California.
California has the lost coast, the most isolated coastal area in the USA. North West California is all small towns, many of those are smaller than average towns in Montana, and the largest is much smaller than the largest towns in Montana. None of the high schools in Montana are nearly as small as what you can find in California. How about the one in Petrolia, where the enrollment is the grand total of 6 students. One teacher who also doubles as the PE Coach.
I chose California as I was a third generation native born in 1931, because it is the most populated state in the nation. Population crowed into certain areas of the state, and some of the most isolated areas in the nation.
Most of Montana is less isolated than much of California.
California has the lost coast, the most isolated coastal area in the USA. North West California is all small towns, many of those are smaller than average towns in Montana, and the largest is much smaller than the largest towns in Montana. None of the high schools in Montana are nearly as small as what you can find in California. How about the one in Petrolia, where the enrollment is the grand total of 6 students. One teacher who also doubles as the PE Coach.
I chose California as I was a third generation native born in 1931, because it is the most populated state in the nation. Population crowed into certain areas of the state, and some of the most isolated areas in the nation.
Give us a break. Montana has what 1M people? California has 38M.
Sure, you can always cherry pick certain spots to prove your point, but it's still cherry picking.
Sure California has 38 million people. With nearly all of them living bunched up together in very small percentage of the total state. 10,000,000 people in one small county alone Los Angeles County, down to 1,159 in your least populated county. California has compact areas with people packed in like sardines, and then they have vast areas of the state, with few people. In California you can live in tremendous over crowded areas, or in vast areas with few people more like Montana.
As a third generation Californian, I left the state with my family when the air pollution got so bad in the Silicon Valley that the doctors told me to either move my family out of the state to a clean air area, or be prepared to bury my wife and one son within 6 months. And that is due to being heavily populated in the area at that time. I did and they are both alive and in good health today.
Just think due to all those people, 21,000 California people will die this year due to the pollution caused by all those people living there, and several times that number will have serious health problems for the same reason.
That is why I live in Montana today, out where the air is clean. We live in he snow shadow of the Rockies, which means not much snow and decent weather though a little cold even in the winter.
Too many people with the problems caused by too many people creating air pollution, is just one of the reasons that a lot of us live out in what you consider fly over country. You seem to think crowding a lot of people into a few areas of the state of California makes it great, when a lot of us look at as destroying the area and making it unlivable. We would rather live where the population is smaller, and the air is clean so we and our families are still alive, instead of burying them in California many years ago.
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