People who left NJ...and never looked back (Newark, Elizabeth: transplants, rent)

[EEEPNJ]

*** UHM... you've ALL looked back or you would NOT be spending so much time on the NEW JERSEY board! ***

[lvkewlkid]

Originally Posted by yrgm

I can't say I left and never looked back. Born and raised 38 yrs before relocating to Charlotte one year ago. I love NJ and always will and don't like non-Jersey folks knocking the state, however, I am not sorry for one second that I left.

Yeah, I miss the family members, Italian specialties from K&S, half of a #5 w/ everything from the Hogie Hut. Going to those places makes NJ fun when we "go home" (I find myself calling NJ home sometimes).

I don't miss the nonsense coming from Trenton, I felt like I was being violated by the politicians. Everytime I hear one of those stupid ideas, like tolls on 78, 287 or 80, I say thank god I left when that door opened.

Until I moved, I never realized how "old" things are in Jersey; bridges, buildings, curbs, roads. Its a nice change being in a place where most things are new.

No regrets here. It's funny, it seems like half the folks here are from the north and whats even more funny is we've become polite.

one of the things i miss from Jersey is that everything is old...it is so much more beautiful with so much more character and history behind all the old stuff...there are still Main Streets...where i live now (Las Vegas) no one treasures anything old and it all becomes rundown and replaced especially after its 3 years old (yes i know there's rundown old stuff in NJ, but most of the stuff i've seen has been taken care of and what is taken care of ends up looking really nice)...i also am sick of the same stucco crap we have here and Jersey has that great Victorian architecture...and the food is so much better...

[BrianH1970]

Originally Posted by EEEPNJ

*** UHM... you've ALL looked back or you would NOT be spending so much time on the NEW JERSEY board! ***

pwned!!!

[stevemorse]

[quote=kelsie;6270718]We left S. NJ in 2003 for beautiful E. NC. We were both tired of "working to live". We both quit our high profile jobs, which after our move, afforded me to be able to stay at home and my husband to work a 40 hr. week in a HI store. Other then the cost of homes & taxes everything down here is as expensive as living in NJ, especially shopping for food. We live in a college town, where we have 218 restaurants, 50% of them fast food. Jersey Mike's is always packed lol. Car insurance equals out b/c when we first registered, there was $250.00 road use tax, and you are taxed yearly for personal tax.
What we love is the genuine friendships, kindness and warm people. They listen to what we say and no one is in a hurry.
Do we miss Jersey? Not really, I miss what it was like when I was a kid. The slower pace, everything closed on Sundays, the family time.
Do I miss Shop Rite & great pizza? You betcha!
What do we miss the most? Our kids and g'kids in Jersey. That being said, when we come up a couple of times a year it is the quality of time that we spend with them that reaffirms our best decision for moving out of NJ.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.[/QU


Maybe I am wrong but first thanks for such an honest post. Yes I explored NC Carolina area and found that by Duke U. was the only area I really like and around Chapel Hill. However these were not too much cheaper than NJ!

[kaday]

I look back. I have 5 siblings in NJ with playmate cousins for my kids. I miss being a part of life there. The cost of living turns my stomach every time. To live there would mean less savings for college, retirement emergencies. I'd love to move back and be with "my tribe" but I am no longer willing to sacrifice so much money just for the sake of living there. I have made my peace just recently and look back a lot less. I am just hoping a great pizza maker relocates to Atlanta so I may reap the benefits.

[Jerseyt719]

Originally Posted by kaday

I look back. I have 5 siblings in NJ with playmate cousins for my kids. I miss being a part of life there. The cost of living turns my stomach every time. To live there would mean less savings for college, retirement emergencies. I'd love to move back and be with "my tribe" but I am no longer willing to sacrifice so much money just for the sake of living there. I have made my peace just recently and look back a lot less. I am just hoping a great pizza maker relocates to Atlanta so I may reap the benefits.

We were in Atlanta this past summer and couldn't find any good pizza, you're right.

Do you really think it's that much cheaper in Atlanta? I found the home prices about the same as here. Am I wrong?

[kaday]

Originally Posted by Jerseyt719

We were in Atlanta this past summer and couldn't find any good pizza, you're right.

Do you really think it's that much cheaper in Atlanta? I found the home prices about the same as here. Am I wrong?

Yes....definitely more for your money and less money.

Yes. We live in the East Cobb area a closer in suburb with a 10 year old 6 bedroom, 5 bath home on half an acre with a pool. The schools here are excellent even by NJ standards. We paid less than $500,000 for our home. In this area you can find a 4 BR 2.5 BA home for about $350,000 and much much less if you are willing to renovate. My husband's stepborther recently purchased a new 4 BR 2.5 bath home in a farther out suburb for $159,000.

[kaday]

One thing I forgot to mention is Georgia has something called the Hope Scholarship for college. It is funded entirely by the Georgia lottery. If your kids graduate with a 3.0 from GA highschool, college is free at a GA state college as long as they maintain their GPA. Most private schools in GA offer a greatly discounted tuition as well. Some GA schools I would not want my kids to attend but UGA and GA Tech are great schools. So another reason to stay and forego good pizza.

[BrianH1970]

If you go into Mecklenburg County in Charlotte you'll find somewhat pricier homes and a bit higher in terms of property taxes, but certainly nothing approaching the average price in New Jersey. One county over in Cabarrus and everything takes another drop in price. We still find ourselves astonished over what you can get for less money.

Putting it another way, if you can barely afford the dust in some parts of New Jersey, then you can easily afford something extremely nice in Charlotte and the surrounding areas. Our two bed/two bathroom, large capacity washer and dryer hookups, dishwasher equipped, vaulted ceiling apartment home in Concord is costing us 850 dollars a month.

The crappy part is that big or small, there will always be that lure to come back home. I think a lot of us who have relocated out of the state will always battle that, no matter how much you may love where you are. If I ever did come back it would probably be within half an hour of the casinos. That would be my prerequisite. The more I think about it the more I doubt it'll happen but I never close the door on possibilities.

[kelsie]

Thank you Steve.

We carefully researched for 2 years before we moved to NC. Our thoughts were, if it doesn't work out we can always go back home to S. NJ. Unfortunately, we would not be able to afford a single family home there anymore. The home we sold in 2003, 4 bd, 3 bath, fr, formal lr, designer kit., 1000 sf bi-level deck is up for sale now for $20,000 more than what we sold it for, so they are losing money.
I am glad that we moved to NC for the reasons which I stated in my other post. There are quite of few differences when leaving the state you were raised in. When you enter NC, realize at that point NO ONE knows what a directional signal is, forget trying to make a left turn, if a car is 1/4 mi. down the road coming up in your direction, you will be sitting at that left turn light for a good 5 mins., the person in front of you does not move for any reason until that car passes. Merge--what does that word mean? There are frustrations moving to any state IMO. The $250 road tax is per vehicle, motorcycle. Food costs 1 1/2 times the price of NJ. It is actually cheaper to eat out than cook, but now we are talking fried, fried, fried.
This year my husband and I noticed how NJ is infiltrating E. NC, I have found Anthony's Italian bread shipped in from Fairlawn, and frozen pizza dough from Vineland. The Triangle, Raleigh-Durham is being called, "little NY, NJ".
We have a beautiful 3 bd, 3 bath home on an acre, mortgage, taxes, ins., $650 a month, as opposed to $1,800 that we were paying in NJ. The money we save in mortgage payments alone, affords us extra vacations and to come back to Jersey is see the kids and take them to Giovanni's in Northfield for a great pizza.
Getting back to the original question, do we look back, of course. There isn't a day that one of us says "Remember Jimmy Buffs hot dogs?" "Remember that street T. Soprano is going down in Elizabeth?" Would we have moved if it stayed the way it was when we were kids walking to church? Probably not, but now we are building new memories in a new State of mind.
Happy Sunday everone