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Another post gave me an idea. Since there's been a mass exodus out of SoCal in the very recent years I wanted to hear from all of us that have done so, with the answers provided in my title. Since I created it, I'll go first.
We left Burbank in March of '07 for Greenville, SC and absolutely love it. We were paying $1125/month for a 1 bedroom apt, the day we moved out it was raised to $1250. We bought a brand new 4 bedroom/2 bath 2000sqft house with a 1/2 acre backing up to the woods for $181,500! We couldn't even get a cardboard box under the 5 freeway for that price. lol
The day after we moved in we found out that we were pregnant and Sophia Grace was born 11/24/07! My little southern belle. She better not have an accent though. We really like Burbank but we were never going to be able to afford to buy, despite making a very decent salary and I didn't really want to raise kids in LA. It is great here, the people are wonderful and the weather has been much better than we thought. Really, really miss In-n-out, Baja Fresh, El Pollo Loco and Trader Joes though.
This really ain't a California story, but I'm gonna lay it on ya anyway. (Hah) I graduated from the Univ of Colorado, Boulder in 92 and lived there until Aug 2007 when I headed out to LA. For years I thought Boulder, CO was the best town in the world and I would never leave. Had lots of great times there, some real trying times financially, and some real good years financially. One neat thing was, I was always learning and growing as a person and challenging myself. I reached a point where I felt I had sort of outgrown Boulder and wanted more opportunities, LA seemed like the place for a goodly number of specific reasons linked to my career/life aspirations. Because at the time I didn't have the money for the move, my Daddy kicked down for it. Well, after 2 months I couldn't get hired for more than $9/hr and would have had to sign a lease. I had to bail out. Right now I'm living back in Rhode Island where I grew up. I don't care for the Northeast in the least bit, and I think about moving back to Boulder (the best town in the world). One good thing here though is I don't pay any rent or utilities, so even though I have a crappy McJob, I am saving beaucoup bucks regardless. My parents are retired and have a pretty swank, spacious house I'm living in. I could pretty easily put myself through school and get another degree (yeah, one that isn't totally useless this time). However, I'd rather be on my own and living in Colorado no matter how financially/occupationally difficult it may be. Don't know how I could go back to school out there, had to work a lot just to make rent and keep a decent car on the road. My parents mean well, but they are clueless jerks with narcissistic personality disorder. They are the ones who set me up for a lot of severe pain, suffering, and loneliness in life and I hate to be around them. I'm really perplexed now. Should I try to cope, live rent free, and stay in this miserable state until I have the means/credentials to earn a decent middle-class living? Or should I move back to Boulder in a few months and go back to living a beautiful life the way I wanna live it (even if I'm always one paycheck away from homelessness)?
Yes, we moved out to Colorado Springs from Torrance Ca. about two years ago. Our family, my wife and three kids, are having a blast in the Rocky Mountains. We could 'finally' afford a nice, newer home for our growing family. And the cost of living on a whole is *much* better.
My 6 year old son Luke is always asking me when we are going to climb to the top of one of the really high 14ers out here. LOL...
Do I miss some things - sure. I wish they had Trader Joes out here. But after two years the thing I miss the most is 'the coast.' I am a born and bred surfer who also loves the mtns.
So honestly I told my wife that some day I may want to move back toward the sea - Maybe the PNW. But for now we are really enjoying our home in the Rocky Mtn. state. And we will *never* move back to S. Cal. - too over crowded, over priced and over polluted. It is really nice to finally experience open spaces without hordes of people converging on them. And no more 405 FWY. LOL...
We moved to Newfield, NY, a small town 7 miles outside of Ithaca (where Cornell Univ is). We came pursuing the wine industry, b//c we want to open our own winery one day. 20-35 acres in CA was a pipe dream running into the millions. Here on the Seneca Lake wine trail we can get 20-35 acres at around 200k or under.
We also left CA for many other reason i.e. cost of living, overcrowding, lack of sense of community, materialistic mentality. We were looking to move out for years, but just so happened to settle on NY, b/c it crossed paths with our dream to run our own winery. So I grabbed an apprentice job at a winery, and my wife snagged a job at Cornell. Life couldn't be better. We make roughly half of what we did in CA, but we are MUCH MORe comfortable, if you can wrap your head around that.
We have always been cold climate people though, so the snow doesn't affect us. We used to go to he mountains all the time during CA's "winter", and I'm an avid snowboarder. We love balance in our climate. Winter SHOULD be cold, and snowy, and I'll take 6 mos of winter over just constant brutal heat almost all year round. Also, I'll take 6 mos. of winter, because I know when it's over I have 6 months of just UTTERLY GORGEOUS summer and fall. It's just stunning with all the greenery, and green mountains (as opposed to CA brown landscape), and the beautiful lakes and, dont get me started on how perfect this place looks in the Fall. It's drop dead gorgeous...It almost makes you believe in a higher power if you don't already.
Also people are a lot more slowed down here, and just enjoy their lives. It's not centered around the biggest house, or cars, or paychecks..that's not important. People tend to be nicer, and more honest, and down to earth. And the sense of community if you live outside of the main towns is just unheard of for us. People help JUST FOR THE SAKE OF HELPING :P
Who says you have to be indoors all winter? To us that would be such a shame, to move to someplace so beautiful and not enjoy it, regardless of weather. I hunt, both bow and gun (it's a big culture out here, because it saves you TONS of money during the winter on meat), and teach my daughter the love for the outdoors as well, so regardless of weather (save for a major blizzard or something), on any given weekend you can find my daughter and I exploring trails, or even simply just following a stream. Children adjust to weather, just like adults do, they just take longer.
Should I try to cope, live rent free, and stay in this miserable state until I have the means/credentials to earn a decent middle-class living? Or should I move back to Boulder in a few months and go back to living a beautiful life the way I wanna live it (even if I'm always one paycheck away from homelessness)?
Wow, I'm sure there is more to the story than you have written here. So I don't know if anyone can really give you the best answer. Boulder is an awesome city. So I recommend one of two things which both invlove continuing your education.
1. Go back to school in Boulder.
2. Hang tough where you are until you finish a more in demand degree.
Ask yourself some tough questions. Which place will help to better become the man you want to be in 5 years. Sometimes in life you have to give before you can get. No pain no gain my friend. You can always get student loans and live like a starving student for a season. But maybe it would be better to do that 'temporarily' where you are.
I know what you me about difficult parents. My dad was an alcoholic. But over the years I learned to forgive him and let all that garbage and pain go. It only holds you back unless you do, trust me. Once I got to that point we established a much better man to man relationship. I know it is not easy. But just keep your dreams in mind and work toward them whether here in Colorado or there on the East Coast. And remember 'this too shall pass.'
Wow! I really could go for a good DOUBLE DOUBLE from In & Out or a good bottle of two buck chuck (Charles Shaw Wine) from Trader Joes nowdays! Texas is not all that is was cracked up to being. The job market is horrible. I'm barely making ends meet. From what I see there is no middle class. And where can I find a good burrito and pastrami? I'm here now and will just make the best of it. I'll will visit Los Angeles again soon enough...
Moved from LaCrescenta (near Glendale/Pasadena) to a suburb of Rochester, NY and am very happy!!
We left for many reasons (took years to get our courage up). For starters, it was taking nearly 90 min to get to the westside in the morning/evening; everything in LA became a hassle and/or too expensive to enjoy. I grew up very middle class and we always went to Disneyland and Dodger games, etc. These things, and many others, really became too expensive for the average Joe. Way too many people in LA and real estate was out of the question.
Greater Rochester is somewhere near 1 million people, but where I live, every store/restaurant/cultural event you could ever want to do is a few miles away, and only a mile in the other direction are a bunch of cornfields
I think what I noticed first after leaving was how much calmer I began to feel. There's something about all the open, green space and lack of traffic that just does something wonderful to one's attitude. As a previous poster mentioned, the people here are really nice and welcoming. As a middle-aged woman, it seemed to me that many women my age in LA were spending way too much time worrying about looking 30 and not enough thinking about everything else. I don't miss that one bit. It's not that people here don't care, they are just not obsessed.
People actually look at those they meet on the street and smile.
The winter, thus far, hasn't been bad at all. It was often so hot and uncomfortable in La Crescenta that I didn't want to do anything outside. It's rarely been too cold to go out and there's nothing more beautiful that the fresh snow covering everything. Summers are not humid like NYC and were, for the most part, 78-82 and breezy. Summer thunderstorms are great!!
All in all, the quality of life here is MUCH better!! In many ways, it reminds me of the LA of old, with lots of greenery and more open spaces. Just heard that Rochester area schools were ranked #6 in cities over 1 million and 5 of our high schools were in the top 15% nationwide according to "Newsweek." Nothing like having to plunk down $500K for a 2-bdrm house and also having to pay upwards of $600/mo more for private school in LA.
Like everyone else has said, I miss Trader Joes, but we have Wegmans
YAY! another upstate NY CA transplant. Wegmans IS wonderful isn't it? LOL. What you mentioned is exactly what my wifes best friend and her husband said. They were HARDCORE city folk, they moved from LA to NY City (Brooklyn) a year before our move to upstate. Well they visited the Ithaca area once, and came w/ us to my winery on the Seneca wine trail, and they just fell in LOVE with the region, and now THEY are planning all they can to move out here in a few years..aiming for 2-3 years. Her husband said "...in the city, you have to FORCE yourself to slow down, it takes so much conscious effort...out here, you just cant help BUT slow down..you don't even notice it, until you're fully relaxed and youre just smiling because you havent felt that feeling in a really long time.."
I only moved once in my life from Los Angeles in the summer of 1988 at age 13 to Rancho Cucamonga. I'll be 33 tomorrow. I was too young to have my driver's license back in LA, so I couldn't just go anywhere I wanted. I liked living there, but I love where I am now & could probably stay here the rest of my life. I like to visit LA every once in a while. I'm not a homeowner yet, but I plan to be & I'm very happy here!
Obviously, a person's feelings about a certain area are different when they're a kid & can't drive around from when they're an adult & know a lot more about things.
First time poster, but I frequent a few other of these urban message boards. I was born in Los Angeles and raised in the San Gabriel Valley. I headed out to the cold and frigid east coast (actually I was forced out east by my parents but that's a different story) for college, and am now in medical school in the terrible little city of Boston. I wanted to head back to LA for medical school, but despite what elitist east coasters try to say, California schools are easily some of the best and most exclusive.
Even now, I'm hoping to get residency in head and neck surgery back in LA, but it's unlikely... again because California is simply the most selective, most desirable place for a large, LARGE number of applicants. A "lower tier" program in California (if you rank by the strength of the program) is still far more difficult to match at than a more highly reputed program elsewhere in the country.
So I've lived now about 7 years outside of California, and I'm counting down the days to my eventual return. I definitely wouldn't say I'm happy living on the east coast, but I will say that it's given me a lot of perspective. I honestly never realized how amazing Southern Californians have it. Too many of us buy into the BS rhetoric spewed by transplants and the east coast-centric media, and it's truly sad. Too many SoCal people don't realize how much they take for granted (even things so simple as not having to shovel out your car every time there's a snow storm).
This forum has a quite a far reaching reputation for being filled with senseless haters and closed minded individuals. I just thought I'd make this one time post to vindicate some of the true Angelinos here who aren't afraid to defend their beautiful city. Believe it or not, the vast majority of LA expatriates I've met dream about eventually returning to sunny SoCal. The nation's view of Southern California isn't nearly as negative as these haters would want you to believe.
Anyways, enjoy your beautiful weather. Us less fortunate beings here in Boston are expecting another snow storm come Friday.
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We really like Burbank but we were never going to be able to afford to buy, despite making a very decent salary and I didn't really want to raise kids in LA. It is great here, the people are wonderful and the weather has been much better than we thought. Really, really miss In-n-out, Baja Fresh, El Pollo Loco and Trader Joes though.
Ohh, me me me, I'm next !
