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Old 03-01-2010, 10:18 PM
 
Location: Arvada, CO
13,824 posts, read 29,797,901 times
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I mean no disrespect, but based on what you have said over the last two posts: I worry for your relationship.
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Old 03-01-2010, 10:33 PM
 
Location: Springfield, Michigan
8 posts, read 10,102 times
Reputation: 11
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Aguilar View Post
I mean no disrespect, but based on what you have said over the last two posts: I worry for your relationship.
Don't worry, no offense taken, I appreciate your honesty.

Really, when this whole move started to develop, I was worried about our relationship as well, because her desire to live in L.A. really seemed to be bordering on obsession, but as I said, we have talked about this a LOT since then, and while I will probably never understand what could drive someone to be quite so attached to a particular city (she promises me I will understand once I've lived there for a while, but I have my doubts about that), I do see and respect her obvious passion for it.

Just to clarify, because I just re-read what I wrote above and realized I may not have been completely clear; she didn't say that she was going to move back without me in the sense of ending our relationship over this, just in the sense that she would go take the live-in job, and fly back every few months so we can spend time together. She just feels like it is what she really needs to do. But honestly, I don't feel that would be workable for a whole bunch of different reasons. I do think that living a few hours out of the city and her spending 5 days/nights a week in the city would be workable... certainly not ideal, but at least workable. And hopefully down the road, when we're a bit better established, perhaps we'll be able to move closer to where she needs to be.
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Old 03-02-2010, 07:02 AM
 
4,483 posts, read 9,249,737 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xenium View Post
Unfortunately, to her it is worth it, yes. To her it is worth ANYTHING, no matter how big the sacrifice, even if it means spending the rest of our lives in poverty. . .

L.A. is the only place in the entire world that she is willing to live (or somewhere within a few hours of it.) . . . not willing to even entertain the idea of living anywhere else. . . she has absolutely zero interest in exploring anything else. She just seems to have this really, really strong homing instinct. L.A. is the only thing she wants.
I had this same thing, although I wasn't born in California. When I was 14 my family left the San Gabriel Valley, and I made other living arrangements rather than go with them. (Nothing against my family; I was just extremely attached to home.)

Something changed in my early 40s, and I willingly moved to North Carolina.

I still think you can live in the SGV on $55,000. Thousands of people do. (I never made anywhere near that teaching in private schools.)

From City-Data: Pasadena's (estimated) 2008 median household income was $57,796.
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Old 03-02-2010, 10:28 PM
 
Location: Nashville, TN
2,031 posts, read 3,212,753 times
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What about YOUR needs? What about YOUR wants? To be honest with you, I think she's pretty selfish. She may be fine with living in poverty to live in LA, but you need to have a say too. I agree with pp that I worry for your relationship. I know a lot of people like her that think LA is so great, but that's because they haven't been anywhere else and don't realize how overpriced, overcrowded, and congested this city is. They think this is "normal". I thought just like her before I met my husband who has lived in Maryland and Florida. His family lives all over the U.S. We have traveled together and now I "get it". We will never be able to buy a nice house here in a safe neighborhood. It's sad to leave my family, but I have to do what is best for my HUSBAND as well as myself.
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Old 03-02-2010, 11:25 PM
 
364 posts, read 988,409 times
Reputation: 245
I'm going to be honest as well; maybe you two need to spend time apart.

SoCal is a great place to live - but not right now. There are no jobs yet the cost of living keeps going up. People are actually leaving California. I think you would be miserable living near the "metropolis" of Bakersfield. And if there are no jobs in the second largest city in the country, I can tell you that no jobs would be available in Bakersfield.

I don't understand her obsession with living here. And I certainly don't understand why she would want to be a live-in nanny. I had a girlfriend who did that and she said it was the worst job in the world.

Relationships are about compromises. Try Las Vegas. Try Texas. Texas is apparently doing pretty good in this economy.

Again, I love L.A. I work in destination management so my job is about promoting the city and making sure people have a good time here. However, I'm not obsessed about living here. Does your fiancee have acting or screenwriting aspirations? Those are the only reasons I can think why people would be obsessed about living here.

If so - tell her she can audition with a videotape and live anywhere in the world. I know many casting directors and they tell me that they don't limit their choices to only local actors.
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Old 03-03-2010, 05:40 PM
 
Location: Woodland Hills, CA
106 posts, read 389,336 times
Reputation: 55
Just impossible.

A yard is a luxury in LA. You will need at least 1600-1800 to get a townhome in the Valley and not even a nice part of the valley.
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Old 03-04-2010, 08:08 PM
 
Location: Springfield, Michigan
8 posts, read 10,102 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CantWait2Leave View Post
What about YOUR needs? What about YOUR wants? To be honest with you, I think she's pretty selfish. She may be fine with living in poverty to live in LA, but you need to have a say too.
Well... I do see where you are coming from, and in a sense I feel that she is being a bit selfish too, but to look at her side of the story (which I admit there is some logic to), she has already tried living in two other places which she didn't like for me, so she feels that it would actually be selfish for *me* to not be willing to try living in a place for her now. Of course where that logic breaks down is that we lived in the first of those two places because I had a great job there (which unfortunately ended up not lasting very long), and the second because I had no choice (I owned some investment properties here in Michigan that were doing really badly and really had to come back here for a year to deal with them and get rid of them so I could move on with my life.) We didn't move to those two places because I *liked* them or just because I thought they would be really cool places to live, which is the motivating factor for her wanting to move to L.A.

But of course I do have a say, and that indeed is why I'm here... trying to find a solution that will meet BOTH of our needs. If I were only looking at her needs, then my original post would have been more along the lines of "hey everyone, we're moving to downtown Los Angeles, anyone want to meet up for coffee?" :-) But I was trying to find out if there was a community within a few hours of L.A. that was affordable, not so crowded, no so polluted, not swelteringly hot, etc... because those are MY needs. Her needs are basically just 1: be within a few hours of Los Angeles, her "home". :-)

Meeting MY needs is exactly why I'm posting here. And as I said a few posts ago, Tehachapi does sound like it might be a compromise that really would work for both of us... not just for her, but I really need to learn more about the city before making such a major decision (we're hoping to make a trip out there towards the end of this month to do some detective work in person, once we've narrowed down our choices.)

Quote:
I know a lot of people like her that think LA is so great, but that's because they haven't been anywhere else and don't realize how overpriced, overcrowded, and congested this city is. They think this is "normal".
My thoughts exactly, and I have been trying to convince her of that and get her to open her mind to the idea that there is a big, wonderful world out there, and we should explore other options, there may even be other places that she would like *better* than L.A., but thus far she has held steadfast to the feeling that she can't possibly be happy anywhere else. (She is reading this thread too, so perhaps your and everyone else's insight will help her to better understand all of this.) There is one thing about her obsession that I do understand; that she misses her friends and family, and I can certainly sympathize with that. (Although ironically, a few of them have left California themselves, as so many people often do when they grow up and want to put down roots somewhere new.)

And also the last two years, that we lived in Redding and Michigan, those were the exact opposite of what she's used to in L.A.; they were in the middle of nowhere, with miserable weather, far from everything she's familiar with, so of course she was miserable. I've tried to explain to here that there are OTHER places, which are not like Redding or Michigan, but not so overpriced, crowded, polluted, etc. But I really haven't been able to convince her to consider anything else. (She said she would be willing to look at somewhere like Phoenix or Las Vegas, but that was only because she could make the five hour drive once a week and still spend more than 50% of her time in L.A. doing the live-in nanny thing.)

Quote:
I thought just like her before I met my husband who has lived in Maryland and Florida. His family lives all over the U.S. We have traveled together and now I "get it". We will never be able to buy a nice house here in a safe neighborhood. It's sad to leave my family, but I have to do what is best for my HUSBAND as well as myself.
Well, you're definitely preaching to the choir. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing *against* southern California... I just feel like we can do better. Maybe a lot better. But she just loves it there so much. Relationships require compromise, and that is what this is all about; I am trying to find a compromise that will allow both of our needs to be met. It may turn out that it's not possible... that's why I'm here in the first place, to try to figure that out. :-)
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Old 03-04-2010, 08:43 PM
 
Location: Springfield, Michigan
8 posts, read 10,102 times
Reputation: 11
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lovetheoutdoors View Post
I'm going to be honest as well; maybe you two need to spend time apart.
Well... I didn't really come to city-data looking for relationship advice. :-)

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate everyone's concerns, and some of them are certainly justified, but at the same time I'm not a 20-something just out of high school with the "love of my life" that I've known for all of a month looking to get our first apartment away from mom and dad... I'm 40, have had a good career (even if it hasn't been so good as of late), a pretty stable person, and have been in several long-term, committed relationships before. My fiancee and I have been together for almost three years now, and have lived together for more than 2 of those years. We have run a small business together. I can see where going only from the little bits that I have posted how all of that may not be apparent, and how it might look like I'm just some kid who's been blinded by love, but really it's a lot deeper than that.

Yes, as others have said, I think her singular desire to live only in SoCal and unwillingness to even consider anywhere else is a bit selfish... and short-sighted, but at the same time we do both very much want to leave the "great state" of Michigan and settle down somewhere that we will both like better, closer to the things we both like to do, somewhere with better weather, etc. Where we differ is that to her that means one thing and only one thing: SoCal. To me, it could be SoCal, or it could be any of a number of other places like Texas, Arizona, Florida... really the only places I'll really rule out are the snow belt. That's why we're here, looking for options.

I will say that over the past few weeks and all of the research we've done, and all of the comments that folks here have posted in response to our thread, I think she actually is finally beginning to look at things more realistically, so this has certainly been a worthwhile endeavor. Yesterday we were talking about this and she said she's actually been looking online at real estate in other states with warm weather, like Texas, and has been amazed at how affordable it is. We also had a long discussion about taxes, and she admitted that she had no idea that CA's 8.25% sales tax was higher than most states, or that there are states with no income tax, or lower property taxes. As someone else here already said, she never knew anything else, so she pretty much just accepted that what she knew was "normal". So she seems to at least be finally considering other options now, although I know that the fact remains the same that her first choice is still SoCal, and even if it means making considerable sacrifices, that is still where she would very much rather be.

Quote:
SoCal is a great place to live - but not right now. There are no jobs yet the cost of living keeps going up. People are actually leaving California. I think you would be miserable living near the "metropolis" of Bakersfield. And if there are no jobs in the second largest city in the country, I can tell you that no jobs would be available in Bakersfield.
That is what I feared as well, especially after looking at sites like Monster and CareerBuilder and comparing it to other major metropolitan areas. I have tried explaining that to her, but she just keeps telling me that I'll easily find a $100K/year job there. (Yeah right... my field pays about $60K in most parts of the country including L.A... slightly higher in some other places, I have researched this.) I don't think she's being realistic at all. She hasn't even been in L.A. (except for a week-long visit) since before the current recession started. I don't think she has any idea how bad it actually is.

As I mentioned in my original post though, I do have the option to continue working for my current employer, which is work that I can do from home, until I do find something else. The pay isn't great (actually it's not as bad as it could be, just very limited hours), so it's not as if I need to be able to find a job within a month of getting there, or anything like that. And there's also the very real possibility that I may be able to do some additional freelance work with all those hours I'm currently not working, I just don't want to have to depend on that to survive, because it's certainly not guaranteed, and can be irregular even when it is available. So I would prefer to be within commuting distance of a reasonable job market, just in case. (I have always been the more pragmatic one in our relationship, she's more of the "I just want to have fun" type.)

Quote:
I don't understand her obsession with living here.
Well, that makes two of us. :-) I have asked her so many times over the last few months to try to explain it to me, so I could understand it and maybe even feel it myself, and have some real motivation to want to do this, but she can't seem to describe it other than by saying things like "it's home". She has also said things like, "well, I want to be able to go out to nice restaurants with you", and "I want to be able to go to the beach with you", and I've pointed out to her that we can do those things in any major city that's near a body of water, not just L.A. (And that in L.A., on our budget, we're not really going to be able to afford to go out to nice restaurants anyway.) Honestly, I don't think she really knows why herself, it's just one of those things.

Quote:
And I certainly don't understand why she would want to be a live-in nanny. I had a girlfriend who did that and she said it was the worst job in the world.
Well that's an easy one to answer: because it would allow her to live in Los Angeles. :-) (and Beverly Hills at that.) Really, it's not her first choice in what she wants to do, it's just an opportunity that presented itself through someone she knows, and she was offered the job. I really think 100% of her decision to accept it is simply based on the fact that it will allow her to live in L.A., I don't think it has anything to do with the job itself.

Quote:
Relationships are about compromises. Try Las Vegas. Try Texas. Texas is apparently doing pretty good in this economy.
I've looked at Las Vegas a little... of course that's attractive to her because it's still close enough to L.A. to regularly make road trips out there. In researching it I kind of got the impression that the job market/cost of living/etc. wasn't a whole lot better than SoCal. Somewhat better, but not a whole lot. And it's pretty hot, which was something in my original post I said we were trying to avoid.

We've been looking at Texas also (the Houston area in particular... we saw one article that listed it as one of the 10 best cities in America to live in right now.) Honestly, I think Texas sounds like a much better idea than SoCal. Real estate prices there are fantastic, we could pick up a very nice house with a lot of land for under $100K, easily. And there's no income tax. But there's still a lot of research to do, and of course it still isn't SoCal, which is what she really wants.

Quote:
Does your fiancee have acting or screenwriting aspirations? Those are the only reasons I can think why people would be obsessed about living here.
Nope, none whatsoever. She just likes the SoCal "lifestyle".
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Old 03-04-2010, 09:18 PM
 
Location: Arvada, CO
13,824 posts, read 29,797,901 times
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I would throw the Texas idea out. If you are trying to avoid "hot", it's not the place for you. Compound that with high property taxes, which all but defeat the purpose of said "affordable housing".
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Old 03-04-2010, 09:27 PM
 
Location: Nashville, TN
2,031 posts, read 3,212,753 times
Reputation: 536
I disagree with the above poster. I know lots of people from LA who have moved to Texas and are doing much better financially. I think it makes a lot more sense to move there.
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