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This is a key point. If you have a good job or other source of income this is a great place to live. Unfortunately a lot of people here don't fall into that category. They are stuck in a rut, mad and unhappy.
This is true, but I do believe you just described the US in general
Hello, all ~
On another website where they have list of best places to live and save money, Virginia Beach ranked #6 out of their top 15. I was quite surprised, simply because I wouldn't think any coastal/resort town on the Atlantic would be affordable enough to save money. Also, lists like that tend to favor the Midwest. East Coast states rarely come up on lists for affordable living or places to save.
They cite these reasons:
Median income: $67,001
Unemployment rate: 4.5%
Median home listing price: $264,900
Median monthly rent: $1,600
Average gas price: $1.552
Average cost of groceries: $32.24
Sales tax: 6%
Some of their figures are a bit different from what City-Data has to say, it seems.
They describe Virginia Beach (pop.: 450,980) as having the lowest sales tax among their top 15 best cities, and state that housing, groceries, and gas costs are relatively low for the Atlantic coast. Is that true?
In addition, they say that the median income in Virginia Beach is "well above" the national median income (but I know there are other ways to measure income that may be more realistic).
So, for these reasons, they say it is easier to build up some savings in Virginia Beach than in many other places. I live in NYC now and am looking for a place to relocate where I can save up some money for a few years -- NYC has bled me dry and kicked my butt, quite frankly. However, I'm a bit hesitant about the Midwest. Having always lived close to the ocean, I think I'd miss it terribly.
I only visited VB once, many years ago, and don't remember much about it. What do you guys think about VB being on this list I found and do you agree/disagree that you can save $$ there? Do you think any other cities or town in Virginia could more accurately be described as a great place to make a living and save money? Of course individual spending habits play a major role in that, but NYC is so expensive that nothing is ever left over to enjoy what's here, even when I'm disciplining myself to be very very frugal.
Would you recommend VB as a place to find work and affordable housing (rentals only - I don't intend to buy)? Also, how is the social (dating) scene for a divorced woman over 40?
I'm posting in the general Virginia forum because I don't know what regional sub-forum would be correct for VB. Thanks in advance for any insights!
Edited to add: Oh, I see my thread has been moved to the Hampton Roads sub-forum. Thank you, Mods!
Median income in Virginia Beach is high. It is expensive to live there. No, it is not a 6 digit median income here, as you might find in a city in Northern Virginia, but it isn't a low 5 digit median income either, like you might find in Ohio or Indiana. Can you make $67,000 in NYC? Then why would you move here, unless you're thinking home ownership would be cheaper here and you're sick of living in a studio apartment. People move here and make like $20,000. They struggle. They wait an hour for the bus, or they spend all of their money on a taxi or Uber. For every person in Virginia Beach making $60,000, there are like 20 in Norfolk making $15,000. There are free things to do in NYC, and you can easily walk around; here, it really depends on what you're into.
Just be sure that you can earn that median income. If you fall within a third or even half of that, you're in for a world of hurt.
Personally I don't see how any town in Virginia is great for saving money. How do they quantify this? What are the discretionary activities in Virginia vs a place like NYC that things are that much cheaper here? Parking is cheaper. Rent is cheaper. Food is about the same. Clothing is the same. Entertainment is cheaper, but that is only because the venues here are not as great as they are in NYC. No Madison Square Garden here, nothing close to it. Not even a radio city hall. The Virginia Beach Convention Center might be comparable to Javits. All of that should change once they build a new venue out near the Oceanfront.
I think it's rather speculative. Depends on what you want to do, and if, being in the Northeast or on the West Coast it's really cheaper here to do those things. Virginia Beach now has museums and performing arts venues and other amenities that (the lack of) we used to use as arguments for playing in the other cities, like Norfolk, and because they're new they are arguably better. Town Center/Pembroke is cleaner than what you'll find in Downtown Norfolk. So IMHO Virginia Beach is a lot better now than it was when I first moved here. But everything is still spread out and you have to drive everywhere. It should be better connected.
Would the Waterside activities (when they return this summer) be better or cheaper than say, Coney Island? What are we really talking about here?
That's just me; this is a great place to live, but as far as cheap, that really depends on your perspective.
Va Beach is a unique place though in that urban, suburban, and rural components are all mixed together in a bowl and stirred up. So you have everything here in that regard. So sometimes it may shock you when you hear about a crime on the local news and realize that it is very close to you. Also its amazing how boring the tidewater area can be sometimes especially in the winter months.
Va Beach is a unique place though in that urban, suburban, and rural components are all mixed together in a bowl and stirred up. So you have everything here in that regard. So sometimes it may shock you when you hear about a crime on the local news and realize that it is very close to you. Also its amazing how boring the tidewater area can be sometimes especially in the winter months.
What you said. Definitely something for everyone in this region. If you still don't like it, there's something wrong with you.
People assume that Virginia Beach is all lilly White and picket fences. But even those areas, you would be surprised to find out who lives there. And there are some ghetto areas as well. They don't look as bad as they do in Norfolk and Portsmouth, but they definitely exist.
Personally I don't see how any town in Virginia is great for saving money. How do they quantify this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jillybean720
Wait, what year was this list made?
Sorry - didn't see your questions until just now. It came out in April 2016 at gobankingrates.com. Here is what they say about their methodology:
"Methodology: These findings are a result of a GOBankingRates study of seven factors affecting financial well-being in the 100 largest cities by population according to estimates by the Census Bureau. The study assessed the following:
(1) sales tax according to TaxFoundation.org 2012 data and verified against 2015 data and individual city government sites;
(2) median home list price and (3) median rent price, both according to Zillow data from January 2016;
(4) median household income (in 2014 dollars) according to U.S. Census QuickFacts;
(5) unemployment rate according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Unemployment Rates for Metro Areas December 2015 data;
(6) average reported gas prices from GasBuddy as of March 3, 2016;
(7) grocery costs based on the prices of 15 common items sourced from Numbeo data on March 3, 2016.
If data for any factor was not available for a city, then data for the closest major city was used. All seven factors were weighted equally. Each factor was given a rank on a scale from 0 to 1, with 0 being the best and 1 being the worst; a city's total score is the sum of the scores for all seven factors."
Sorry - didn't see your questions until just now. It came out in April 2016 at gobankingrates.com. Here is what they say about their methodology:
"Methodology: These findings are a result of a GOBankingRates study of seven factors affecting financial well-being in the 100 largest cities by population according to estimates by the Census Bureau. The study assessed the following:
(1) sales tax according to TaxFoundation.org 2012 data and verified against 2015 data and individual city government sites;
(2) median home list price and (3) median rent price, both according to Zillow data from January 2016;
(4) median household income (in 2014 dollars) according to U.S. Census QuickFacts;
(5) unemployment rate according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Unemployment Rates for Metro Areas December 2015 data;
(6) average reported gas prices from GasBuddy as of March 3, 2016;
(7) grocery costs based on the prices of 15 common items sourced from Numbeo data on March 3, 2016.
If data for any factor was not available for a city, then data for the closest major city was used. All seven factors were weighted equally. Each factor was given a rank on a scale from 0 to 1, with 0 being the best and 1 being the worst; a city's total score is the sum of the scores for all seven factors."
Good on paper. So this is data over several years.
This thread if very similar to one I created where I stated that a poor person would be better off in Virginia Beach, than Atlanta. I used methodology to support my argument, like you are here.
This is the thing. The premise is correct, no matter how you look at it. But the truth of the matter, and I mentioned this in my thread, is that this is largely because poor people in Hampton Roads do not live in Virginia Beach, but other cities like Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, and Newport News. You do have large, quantifiable segments of poor living in Virginia Beach proper, and that would be a big deal in some other metropolitan area, but the fact of the matter is that the lower and middle class populations in Virginia Beach are so large, that it effectively eliminates any true sociological impact that lower working class, or welfare, populations might have in the city. The difference in the environment is night and day. You don't need any studies to show you this.
None of these articles ever take a serious look at Hampton Roads in general. They always focus in on Virginia Beach or Chesapeake. And that would be okay were either of those cities, just said city and their suburbs. Virginia Beach and Chesapeake would be Madison, WI, or Boise, ID, were it not for the other six cities. Last time I was in Madison you had a homicide every four months; I know that is extreme, but I am just using that for reference. It is just a case of cherry picking in order to make the region appear better on paper than what it truly is.
This is a great area if you're earning better than what someone in the service industry would. A city like Virginia Beach, if you're making $50,000 a year or better you'll have a much better quality of life than someone else in a cheaper city would, because you don't have the social inequalities, and the crime that goes along with that, plus race relations are a lot better here. You don't have the obscenely rich, and the devastatingly poor, like you would anywhere else. Money will be tight, but for the environment that Virginia Beach provides it may be worth it to you, even though taxes are higher here and home ownership is more difficult to obtain here, because of price. I've often found that for an undisciplined person, like myself, cities where the rent is cheaper tend to make up for it in terms of entertainment and retail as there are very expensive things to spend your money on, and people often do because they're not putting money into shelter. You would be surprised how many ways you can blow your money in a city like Detroit, for example.
Goofy328, I find your response interesting and I will check out the thread to which you provided a link. However, my focus in starting this thread was not about places where poor, low-income people could survive. My interest is in finding places where, for the most part, the salaries keep pace with cost of living and, whether someone earns a lot or a little, can they put aside any money for savings?
There are plenty of places where salaries are high, but so is COL so people there struggle and have huge debts even though they're making what is perceived as a lot of money. And there are plenty of places where cost of living is low but so is earning potential.
Ideally, I want to know where salaries are higher in proportion to the cost of living in that place, and someone living there can build up a nest egg. The list I found at gobankingrates.com ranked Virginia beach as sixth in a list of fifteen places where it's possible to save money, or where one's dollar "goes further" than in other places. So, it's not about how much people make there, but what they can do with it. It was the ONLY place on the East Coast on their list, which made me curious. As I said in my initial post, I didn't think there were any cities on the east Coast where the ratio of salary to COL makes saving money possible for most people, on average. It seems that most of the East Coast is notorious for a high COL that is disproportionate to salaries.
Goofy328, I find your response interesting and I will check out the thread to which you provided a link. However, my focus in starting this thread was not about places where poor, low-income people could survive. My interest is in finding places where, for the most part, the salaries keep pace with cost of living and, whether someone earns a lot or a little, can they put aside any money for savings?
There are plenty of places where salaries are high, but so is COL so people there struggle and have huge debts even though they're making what is perceived as a lot of money. And there are plenty of places where cost of living is low but so is earning potential.
Ideally, I want to know where salaries are higher in proportion to the cost of living in that place, and someone living there can build up a nest egg. The list I found at gobankingrates.com ranked Virginia beach as sixth in a list of fifteen places where it's possible to save money, or where one's dollar "goes further" than in other places. So, it's not about how much people make there, but what they can do with it. It was the ONLY place on the East Coast on their list, so I thought it notable. As I said in my initial post, I didn't think there were any cities on the east Coast where the ratio of salary to COL makes saving money possible for most people.
The only reason Virginia Beach can make that list is because you have other options here outside of Virginia Beach that make it work. You could work in Virginia Beach, not be able to afford to live there and commute from Suffolk. Technically that should not count for that methodology, but practically, it does because a city like Suffolk is still in the MSA. That is the only reason Virginia Beach can make the list. It is not cheap to live in Virginia Beach, and it does not pay more in comparison to other cities on the East Coast. The jobs that are available pay what the jobs should pay; if anything they probably pay a little less because the economy here hasn't been in line with what people need to live here for over a decade. The wealth is in real estate; prices dropped a little after the housing crisis but they have returned and may eventually rise beyond what they were back in 2008. The finding is somewhat disingenuous, as having lived here for around 10 years I can tell you that definitely is not the case.
You are not going to find a city on either coast where you'll find what you're looking for. The only major metropolitan areas that are still affordable and salaries are high are Indianapolis and Columbus, OH, along with the major cities in states like Nebraska and a few in Texas. Cost of living is high everywhere and most working class people are either getting priced out of their metro area, living on the fringe/exurb of that area, or moving to smaller cities, where the metro is more like 250,000 people instead of millions of people.
If you're looking to move here, you'll do okay but you won't automatically save up a bunch of money because your rent will be high, and you won't make as much as you do back in New York doing the same type of work.
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