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Hello my fellow garden staters! My company is offering to relocate my husband and I to NC. the idea seems great BUT some of our friends our dampening our optimism. They claim we are hard core NJ natives and wouldn't like the NC LIFESTYLE. I can keep going, but I would like to know if any one here has left to NJ, to reside in NC, and then back to NJ. If so, what made you come back? What made you stay? And yes, j will also be posting this in the NC forum. Thanks in advance!
The lifestyle is more laid back. You will need to get used to this. It is hot and humid in the summer, usually worse than here. In general natives do not care for Yankees. You will always be an outsider to them. It may not matter if you live in the city but if you are in a more rural area it might. In general food quality and diversity at restaurants isn't what you have here. There are exceptions to this especially if you live in or near a city. This might not matter to you. If you lose your jobs you will not make near what you will here. The quality of life is better but most expenses are the same with the exception of property taxes and car insurance.
How do you and your husband feel about it? Are you excited about the opportunity and ready for a change?
Friends and family care about you which is undoubtedly why you are considering their opinions but at the same time you have to realize that they may be consciously or subconsciously trying to dissuade you from going for their own motives. They don't want you to leave because they will miss you and your relationships will change or (I hate to say this) out of jealousy. You need to do what is best for you and your husband not what others think is best.
Personally, I don't think I could hack it in NC because as a native NYC'er I have very little patience and want things to be go, go, go. I've even had a little bit of a hard time adjusting to the slower pace in NJ (which most would agree is not that slow!) and have to remind myself to chill out quite often when I feel my blood pressure start to rise. But if my husband was offered a job down there, got to keep his current salary and got a relocation bonus I might just suck it up! LOL I'd buy one of those huge houses you see on house hunters for $250K and enjoy paying what used to be one months worth of property taxes over the course of a year or two.
Like I said I grew up in the city and was a real city girl, my friends probably would have thought I’d be happiest living on the Upper West Side. Instead I moved to the “boonies” and people are always shocked but I’m happier than a pig in *ish, and the most shocked person of all is me. You’ll never know if you like it until you try it.
If you really hate it you can always come back, NJ will still be here!
Grew up in NJ, moved to Florida for several years, then came back to NJ. I don't like the south. The weather is terrible, unless you enjoy hot and humid most of the year. Schools are awful. Wages are lower. Crime is higher. Pace is too slow, and I don't mind slow, but down there it is slooooooooow. NC is a red state with their red state mentality, that would bother me. I don't need any hillbillies telling me what I should believe in or what people can or can not do with their bodies.
To the comment that said you will always be viewed as outsiders, the south is filled with so many transplants from all over the USA that unless you are moving to a truly rural small town you will find people from the NE pretty common.
I didn't live in NC, but did live in Georgia for 16 years and thought it was great. Six of those years we lived in a college town called Athens, 3 years we lived in midtown Atlanta, and 7 years we lived in a suburb of Atlanta. If I had to pick an area where I felt the most out of place, I would pick Athens because it was the smallest, their did seem to be some generations of families that lived there and would be considered true natives, but more so because it was largely populated by college undergrads and we weren't undergrads.
Once we moved into a more city-like environment, it was a wonderful to place to live.
I never really experienced the lazy work ethic or going-nowhere-fast attitude that people up north tend to complain about. In face, I found the customer service to much more friendly and attentive there than here. In NJ, I find people (i.e. big box store employees, counter service) will help you when/if they feel like it, and make you feel like they are doing you a favor even though it is their job. For example, at a big store that starts with T, in NJ I ask if they know where I can find flashlights, for example. An employee would say, "No, I don't know. I don't work in that department" and then walk away. In Atlanta, if an employee doesn't know he/she would walk you to a different area of the store and try to find another employee to help you. This difference was quite an adjustment to get used to when I moved back to NJ (for my husband's job, otherwise we would have stayed).
Our neighbors down the street are moving to NC for a job opportunity and are very excited, including their kids. I think it is a lot about your mindset when you make the move. If you are hopeful and optimistic, I think great things could happen to you. I wouldn't let others comments (which most likely reflect more about how they would feel about moving than what you will probably experience) sway you away from a great opportunity.
Plus, if you end up not liking it, you could always move back, as other posters here have done.
If you have kids, the only advice I would give, is to research the school your children will be attending. While I may be overgeneralizing, I found the schools in NJ to better, on average, than the ones in the south. That's not to say that you can't find a great school in NC, because they are there, but you just might have to do your research to find one you will be happy with.
I don't need any hillbillies telling me what I should believe in or what people can or can not do with their bodies.
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