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My wife and I live in bergen county. We have become frustrated with the cost of living in this state and are considering moving out. What are some alternatives within state? I don't mind a long commute to be honest. I heard whitehouse station area is better.
Some additional background:
I make well into 6 figures.
My wife does not work
We are constantly over budget but are not big spenders
We have no cars payments
We have 3 kids. Ages 6,6 and 9.
I own a four bedroom house that is always needing repairs
I pay $11,200 in taxes per year!
I am willing to find a job where I can work from home some days a week which will make commute easier.
Only thing keeping me here is family and close friends.
I just can't take working hard, making what is good money and feeling like I am barely making ends meet. Plus just thinking of my kids future.
Opinions welcomed.
Last edited by jranaudo; 10-04-2011 at 09:07 AM..
Reason: clarifications
By brother and uncle lives in Bergen County... I think Paramos whatever the town is called where they have many malls... they moved there from other town nearby because taxes are very low in Paramus. Why not try to find a house there? I loved that town!
You might want your wife to consider finding a job, or move to smaller house.
How could you not make it with earning at least $100 K?
Paramus has pretty low property taxes.....some as low as 2k. Great Schools and a decent amount of low paying jobs...or you could move to upstate NY near Poughkeepsie and commute down. I would say Westchester County but that's worse , although you get more of what you pay for as opposed to parts of NJ. You can also look in Southern & Central Jersey there towns have lower taxes , as for Cost living its going to be Medium-high no matter where you live in the Northeastern US.
Hunterdon County would be your best bet in NJ combining lower prices with good schools, Lebanon and clinton/annandale areas. You could try Morris County as well but I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify a move. Taxes are still gonna be around $9-10K but you'll have a much bigger house and a lot more property.
For instance this is what your house could look like there, quite a bit different than I'm sure what you currently have.....
Ridiculous I know. I don't even have car payments. Just groceries and stuff. My mortgage is about $2450 which compared to others is not too bad.
I have a 2000 sq/ft house and it's old and not fancy by any means.
What town do you live in?
They have local farmers market in Bergenfield where you could buy fresh fruits and vegetables very low price !!
And buy the rest of things from ShopRite!
Don't send your kids to stupid private schools, if you do that.
Hunterdon County would be your best bet in NJ combining lower prices with good schools, Lebanon and clinton/annandale areas. You could try Morris County as well but I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify a move. Taxes are still gonna be around $9-10K but you'll have a much bigger house and a lot more property.
For instance this is what your house could look like there, quite a bit different than I'm sure what you currently have.....
i'm guessing OP doesn't make "well" into 6 figures - to me that's 300-400K and over, and with a mortgage of $2450 he most definitely would not be struggling.
assuming OP makes somewhere around $160K he's conservatively probably bringing in ~$8k a month (that includes 401K savings). Unless there are huge CC bills or some other unusual expense, I'm actually scratching my head at the struggling, even with an $11K prop tax bill - his mortgage isn't that high (probably less than $300K).
anyway, it's hard to recommend places with the vague job description and location.
I always assume an NYC commute, unless they post otherwise...a mortgage of $2450 would be a $475K if they aren't rolling their property taxes into it.
Still seems a little off since a $600K house would presumably be more like 13K in property taxes...
my mortgage without property taxes is slightly less than $2450, and my mortgage origination balance was $405,000. that was at a 4.875% APR, with about a $2350 mortgage payment (lower now since i refinanced at 3.875%!).
You're right loan principal would be about $450K-460K at 5% with a $2450 payment.
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