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What? No UPS in Maui? A UPS truck driver delivered a big package earlier this week. Yah, I know, Big Island but I'm surprised they aren't on Maui.
Despite many recommendations before our move that we would need Amazon Prime, we have been able to order things we needed from Amazon with free shipping since moving here. Yah, I know, we suck, we should buy local but (a) I hate shopping and when I need something, it's easier to just click and be done with it instead of driving from store to store trying to find it, and (b) Amazon prices are so much lower....for instance our rice cooker recently bit the dust and a really nice replacement on Amazon was a fraction of what it cost locally. Since we don't watch TV, the "free" Amazon Prime movies don't appeal to us.
We don't drink milk but I every once in a while I get nosy and look at the price in the store, it's about $6 a gallon, not $10 (not mentioned in this thread, but another one today). I have no idea if $6 a gallon is expensive or not since we don't drink it. Sometimes I see signs that it's on sale for less.
And why would anyone eat chain restaurant food when there are so many awesome local options? I never ate at Ruby Tuesday when I lived on the mainland, I can't imagine doing it here.
My landlord pays for our water here, but I paid about $50/month for water in Florida. What do y'all pay here? I also paid about $200/month average for electricity in Florida for a similarly sized home, and my most recent bill here was $117. Apples and oranges because we have a solar water heater here and I had central air there...but still! I hear that an electric water heater makes your bill 33% higher so our electricity would only be about $160 which is really cheap IMHO. We don't need A/C here, that's a nice savings. The landlord said that the single guy who lived here for a few years before we did paid about $99/month for electricity, and he watched TV (we don't). I know this thread is about Maui but I've heard that B.I. electricity rates are higher than the other islands due to customers being spread out over a larger physical infrastructure.
Property tax here seems to be ridiculously low. While there is a sales tax on everything you buy, other states have higher sales tax rates...yes, some things exempt but at the end of the year, I'll bet it's pretty close in comparison.
If you can't afford $200/year to register your car, perhaps you shouldn't own a car. Just sayin'.
I can't talk about the rental rates in Maui...but after looking at rental rates vs. what you get for your dollar on all of the HI islands, we settled on Big Island, where rental rates seem to be quite similar to South Florida. The home I'm renting now rents for exactly what I would have gotten for rent on my old home near Ft. Lauderdale if I hadn't gotten lucky and sold it ten days from listing (a major miracle, but I digress). Maybe people should consider B.I. instead of Maui if they want to save on their monthly rental cost.
Finally, what's up with the zoo thing? Take your kids snorkeling for heaven's sake!!! You can rent the stuff cheap or just buy it and do family snorkeling adventures every weekend.
Last edited by HiloDiver; 12-01-2012 at 01:44 AM..
Location: not sure, but there's a hell of a lot of water around here!
2,682 posts, read 7,579,782 times
Reputation: 3882
'What? No UPS in Maui?' Sure... No UPS on Maui, 49% of the homes here have electric heat, and the cannibals have taken over costco, and are holding the manager hostage by the meat grinder in the beef department. Of the above three statements, three are not true,, guess which one it is....
we have UPS, now, can you see how these rumors get started???
What? No UPS in Maui? A UPS truck driver delivered a big package earlier this week. Yah, I know, Big Island but I'm surprised they aren't on Maui.
Despite many recommendations before our move that we would need Amazon Prime, we have been able to order things we needed from Amazon with free shipping since moving here. Yah, I know, we suck, we should buy local but (a) I hate shopping and when I need something, it's easier to just click and be done with it instead of driving from store to store trying to find it, and (b) Amazon prices are so much lower....for instance our rice cooker recently bit the dust and a really nice replacement on Amazon was a fraction of what it cost locally. Since we don't watch TV, the "free" Amazon Prime movies don't appeal to us.
We don't drink milk but I every once in a while I get nosy and look at the price in the store, it's about $6 a gallon, not $10 (not mentioned in this thread, but another one today). I have no idea if $6 a gallon is expensive or not since we don't drink it. Sometimes I see signs that it's on sale for less.
And why would anyone eat chain restaurant food when there are so many awesome local options? I never ate at Ruby Tuesday when I lived on the mainland, I can't imagine doing it here.
My landlord pays for our water here, but I paid about $50/month for water in Florida. What do y'all pay here? I also paid about $200/month average for electricity in Florida for a similarly sized home, and my most recent bill here was $117. Apples and oranges because we have a solar water heater here and I had central air there...but still! I hear that an electric water heater makes your bill 33% higher so our electricity would only be about $160 which is really cheap IMHO. We don't need A/C here, that's a nice savings. The landlord said that the single guy who lived here for a few years before we did paid about $99/month for electricity, and he watched TV (we don't). I know this thread is about Maui but I've heard that B.I. electricity rates are higher than the other islands due to customers being spread out over a larger physical infrastructure.
Property tax here seems to be ridiculously low. While there is a sales tax on everything you buy, other states have higher sales tax rates...yes, some things exempt but at the end of the year, I'll bet it's pretty close in comparison.
If you can't afford $200/year to register your car, perhaps you shouldn't own a car. Just sayin'.
I can't talk about the rental rates in Maui...but after looking at rental rates vs. what you get for your dollar on all of the HI islands, we settled on Big Island, where rental rates seem to be quite similar to South Florida. The home I'm renting now rents for exactly what I would have gotten for rent on my old home near Ft. Lauderdale if I hadn't gotten lucky and sold it ten days from listing (a major miracle, but I digress). Maybe people should consider B.I. instead of Maui if they want to save on their monthly rental cost.
Finally, what's up with the zoo thing? Take your kids snorkeling for heaven's sake!!! You can rent the stuff cheap or just buy it and do family snorkeling adventures every weekend.
We pay about $160 for water, but its a 2 month bill so around $80 a month? That's to water a 1/2 lot in Kihei where it doesn't rain. Electricity for me fluctuates to 250/350 month. We have an electric water heater, and I run the ac on all day to chill my computer down, but that's 4 days a week or so its on. Without the ac I think the bill would be closer to 250 on the high months. This is to power 2 old fridges, an electric water heater, a huge computer, and 2 acs in the house, 5 acs if all of them are going.
If it ever gets cold I turn the ac off, and the computer heats the room pretty fast. I wonder if that counts as a portable heater?
I'm pretty sure Mauidude said they don't ship US postal service, and only ups. I've seen that plenty of places, but it depends on the vendor. What kinds of things for work did you need? I'm always curious to know what we can, and can't get.
Speaking of Costco. The one on Maui now have serves fettucini alfredo.
If it ever gets cold I turn the ac off, and the computer heats the room pretty fast. I wonder if that counts as a portable heater?
I don't think that counts as a census question - but certainly, given the high number of people that heat their homes in Maui you must have plenty of space heaters, electric blankets, or keep your stove on all night.
If it ever gets cold I turn the ac off, and the computer heats the room pretty fast. I wonder if that counts as a portable heater?
Sure, it does for me. I know my big flat panel TV is nice to sit close to on a chilly night.
Anyway, thanks for inadvertently making my earlier point. A couple of my friends here are getting their yuks because they can somehow only imagine people with a "system" possibly wanting some heat in their house, when in fact people all over the islands find occasional need to take the chill off, one way or another.
If you get the survey, you should check off "electric."
WRONG.
First of all, Hawaii doesn't have a sales tax. They have a general excise tax, it is NOT the same thing.
From one of the articles below.
Our 4% rate may appear low, but a big chunk of the tax burden is hidden in the prices of goods and services. For example, suppose you buy a loaf of bread for $3.00. The store adds 4% tax and charges you $3.12, so the “visible” tax is twelve cents. In reality, however, the State is collecting a lot more than that. The $3.00 price has to cover the store’s costs, which include the GE tax added on by the bakery when the store bought the bread at wholesale, the GE tax added on by the landlord when the store paid its rent, the GE tax added on by the seller when the store bought its shelves and display cases, and the GE tax paid by the store to a number of service providers, ranging from repair and building maintenance to accounting services. When you add it all up, the State is eventually going to end up with a lot more than twelve cents out of the $3.12 you paid.
In fact, our “four percent” GE tax is equivalent to approximately an 11% sales tax – if we actually had a sales tax that worked like the typical mainland sales tax, the rate would have to be about 11% in order to generate the same tax revenue that our “four percent” GE tax produces now. (This is based on a study done for the 2005-2007 Tax Review Commission of the State of Hawaii.) If you compare apples to apples – instead of apples to oranges – then we effectively already have an 11% sales tax (and that’s before considering the extra tax on Oahu). A “one percentage point” increase could put us at the equivalent of about a fourteen to fifteen percent sales tax rate, measured on an apples-to-apples basis.
To put this in perspective, if we compare sales and excise taxes across all 50 states, on a dollars-per-capita basis Hawaii is number two – second highest out of all 50 states (based on US Census Bureau statistics from 2005, before the rate on Oahu went from 4.0% to 4.5%). The only state ahead of us was Washington State, where they have no state income tax.
In 2006 Hawaii rated FIFTH in the nation for the highest percentage of state and local tax burden as a percentage of the 2006 state income. ... FIFTH.
Good info. Glad you shared it. FYI: I'm sitting in Bakersfield, watching TV at this very moment (drinking Kona coffee, and planning our Costco run.)
I've never spent more than a month in Hawaii at any one time, but I've been there so many times in the last 40 years that I've lost count. Living in California, I'm not exactly a newbie to hidden taxes. We constantly have new "fees" that used to be included in our property taxes. For example, I pay an annual fee to our PD for the privilege of having a burglar alarm on my house. (And no, they didn't provide it.) Yesterday, a new mandatory recycling bin was dropped at every house in my area, and a fee of $36 was "added" to my property taxes. I already recycled, but now I get to pay extra to do it.
I don't expect taxes to be deal-breakers for me, when I move to Maui. What I am concerned about is some unconsidered issue that might make me not want to stay. Example: I travel every year, (nearly 100 countries, so far). The additional cost of going from Maui could be that one big issue. I hope that I will enjoy Maui so much, that travel will not be as important to me.
BTW: Am I correct in believing that my Ca. State Retirement income will be exempt from Hi state income taxes?
Anyway, sorry for the ramble, and thanks to everyone for the Q's & A's posted on this board. I've really learned a lot. I mean, who would have thought heating was such a big issue in Hawaii???
Carry on.
Last edited by Futuremauian; 12-01-2012 at 10:28 AM..
Reason: rong puntuation
I'm pretty sure Mauidude said they don't ship US postal service, and only ups.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mauidude
You want to buy something online, they don't ship USPS, they only ship UPS. You pay $30 to ship a $2 item.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HiloDiver
What? No UPS in Maui? A UPS truck driver delivered a big package earlier this week. Yah, I know, Big Island but I'm surprised they aren't on Maui.
We have received packages shipped UPS, and we moved here using USPS...they both work just fine for me...but I'm not on Maui, perhaps all the UPS drivers on Maui were devoured by ravenous cannibals.
Just an FYI in CO:
I paid $71.57 for a 1985 Nissan I use just to haul yard stuff to Hagemans (they make it into mulch or compost)
and I paid $319.84 for a 2010 toyota. And if you miss the renewal time there is an additional $100 regardless of the vehicle.
water is the one thing that does go down in the winter but is a little over $100 in the summer.
and the store shelves do get bare especially if there is any kind of a storm warning. Personally the one time I do enjoy winter is when we get one of the 100 yr storms that shut things down. You get to see your neighbors, because everyone is out shoveling. Otherwise you don't see your neighbors much in the winter, I realize that when I run into a neighbor that has grown a full beard since I saw him last Just out of curiosity the other day I was wondering do locals generally put up Christmas trees or no? Not a big deal just curios and if they do what kind are they? I can't imagine anybody shipping live cut trees over there to maybe sell them.
Last edited by lanormun; 12-01-2012 at 10:58 AM..
Reason: transposed numbers
Lanormum, there are plenty of places selling real Christmas trees here, from charities to Home Depot. I don't know what kind of Christmas tree as I'm not up on Christmas tree breeds, but they look like Christmas trees everywhere else I've lived. Pretty, good smelling fir trees in a variety of heights. The prices seem to be on par with Fort Lauderdale tree prices from a couple of years ago when I last lived there.
And there is the same variety of artificial trees in the stores that you'd see on the mainland.
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) 
(And no, they didn't provide it.) Yesterday, a new mandatory recycling bin was dropped at every house in my area, and a fee of $36 was "added" to my property taxes. I already recycled, but now I get to pay extra to do it.
