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If living in a box for $400 a month and living a struggling life paycheck to paycheck is your idea of a high quality of life then the West Coast can't be beat.
If living a middle class lifestyle and enjoying the American Dream, Actually owning a home, Not wasting hours each day to commute to work and have extra money in your pocket to travel the world and enjoy life Then the Midwest is the best choice hands down.
Pretty sure no one is living a middle class lifestyle anywhere in America paying $400 a month for housing.
Pretty sure no one is living a middle class lifestyle anywhere in America paying $400 a month for housing.
Five of the ten cheapest rental housing markets have median rental values below $550 a month so it's entirely feasible to find middle class rentals in the sub $500 a month range.
Five of the ten cheapest rental housing markets have median rental values below $550 a month so it's entirely feasible to find middle class rentals in the sub $500 a month range.
I guess, I just kind of wonder what kind of neighborhood nice $400 rentals would be in even in these cheaper cities.
Probably a middle class working neighborhood? You can buy a decent house for under $100k in NYC exurbs one and a half hour drive from Manhattan in one of the smaller PA towns, so I would imagine the cheap smaller cities would have the same.
Average rent here where i live is $500-600 a month for a 1 bedroom.
So yes the Middle Class Lifestyle is still going strong here. Sure its dead on the coasts but the east and west coasts are only 10% of America. There is still the other 90%
Sure that's middle class if you're single with no kids.
Jesus, I thought Minneapolis rents were cheap. How is the average 1 bedroom only $580 a month in Indianapolis?! You can't even get a studio apartment here that isn't a squalid rathole for that.
A lot of this is subjective. There are a lot of pluses in CA/west coast: beautiful geography and nice climate. But there are key negatives as well: Brush fires, earthquakes, water issues, smog, extremely high cost of living, highest income taxes in the nation, chilly ocean water (I know, sounds picky, but important to me. I MUCH prefer the SE warm ocean water, lol). I've been to CA. I think many of those who wax poetic about CA get too much of their opinions formed from TV and movies or live there and are sheltered that there is actually life outside of the west coast (I've experienced both from people many times over the decades). I know this will ruffle a few feathers; sorry lol. Nice area to visit, but I personally would never want to live there, even if cost were lower. A good state/region in many ways, but definitely not the best, IMO.
Probably a middle class working neighborhood? You can buy a decent house for under $100k in NYC exurbs one and a half hour drive from Manhattan in one of the smaller PA towns, so I would imagine the cheap smaller cities would have the same.
The monthly payment on $100k house is double $400/month.
Which more and more Millennials are doing.
Delaying Marriage and starting families.
So the Middle Class is going strong here point still stands
I don't doubt that at all, just question paying $400 is middle class anywhere, certainly not for a family. And even for singles it sounds like $400 a month would put you below the median rent which means likely more lower middle class.
How is Texas crowded? You can go a few hours on the interstate with nothing but open plains with a few small towns in between. All of the big cities are spread apart and hours from each other. Only the DFW metroplex can claim any kind of crowdedness.
And metro Houston??
You can do the same in California. But instead of open plains that don't produce anything a vegetarian would eat, you drive through either farms that grow actual food or through deserts, mountains, and coastal forests that are publicly accessible for outdoor recreation and scientific research as opposed to private property owned by entities suspicious of public access and enforce it through the second amendment.
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