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My family and I are really considering moving from Cali to Ok, and I was wondering about a few things and any input would be greatly appreciated...
I've seen apartments.com and I saw that rent wasn't too bad, but wondering if I'm right or not.
Job Market...good or bad??
Healthcare...good or bad??
We just want to find a nice place to raise our son and a place that's not so expensive to live. Here in Cali it's getting way out of control and I can't take the cost of living anymore. Any insight would be great, TIA.
My family and I are really considering moving from Cali to Ok, and I was wondering about a few things and any input would be greatly appreciated...
I've seen apartments.com and I saw that rent wasn't too bad, but wondering if I'm right or not.
Job Market...good or bad??
Healthcare...good or bad??
We just want to find a nice place to raise our son and a place that's not so expensive to live. Here in Cali it's getting way out of control and I can't take the cost of living anymore. Any insight would be great, TIA.
Unemployment is high, but that has more to do with people wanting to huff spraypaint and pop out kids for a welfare check than with the job market. As in any area, the job market is generally driven by the economy of the area. Do not, for instance, be surprised that minimum wage here is $5.15/hr. Also, don't be surprised that, in Oklahoma, $8/hr is easily a living wage. In the smaller towns, rent and the house market are VERY reasonable. What you pay a quarter of a million for in California will cost you 80k here. For 250k, you can buy a virtual mansion.
Be prepared for a culture shock, however. We have more cows than movie theaters, more corn than gang members. People might stare if you go goth. However, the people here are nice, and you don't have to habla espanol as much as you probably do anywhere in California.
Are you looking for a large or small town? We have pros and cons in both here, and I'd answer any specific questions or guide you towards a town you'd like, if you want.
My family and I are really considering moving from Cali to Ok, and I was wondering about a few things and any input would be greatly appreciated...
I've seen apartments.com and I saw that rent wasn't too bad, but wondering if I'm right or not.
Job Market...good or bad??
Healthcare...good or bad??
We just want to find a nice place to raise our son and a place that's not so expensive to live. Here in Cali it's getting way out of control and I can't take the cost of living anymore. Any insight would be great, TIA.
Just watch Grapes of Wrath in reverse (or better yet, read it backwards), only imagine Hulk Hogan as Tom Joad.
Thank you very much for the information. My husband was thinking about applying at a school because he used to work for the school board out here in LA. As far as a small or big town, we would like a small town, and if my husband would have to commute a little to work he wouldn't mind at all because he does it here everyday. I used to live in Pennsylvania and I lived in a small town for many years and I loved it. We just want to find a nice area and not worry about drive byes and all the racism that I put up with because I'm white and my husband is hispanic (which if you close your eyes you would think he's white and came from a small town also...lol) we live in a highly populated hispanic area, and I'm like the only white girl here, (no joke) and I'm just tired of a lot of things here in Cali. Our son has a bit of a hard time at school as well cause most kids there are hispanic so he gets made fun of sometimes, and it's just not fair. I've seen that rent isn't too bad at all and it almost seems too good to be true..lol. How is the healthcare there? What is the average gas price?
Hi Lisa, I'm not an Okie YET, but I was just reading that the gas price between Tulsa and OKC is 1.97 a gallon. That was about two weeks ago and has probably gone down a bit since then.
We've been checking out the cost of living and it does look very reasonable there. I do a lot of reading on an OK forum and I'll venture to say that the rent prices that you're finding are accurate.
Tahlequah seems to be a pretty up and coming city. It seems to have a population of under 20,000 or in that area.
I'm not really sure what you consider a smaller town. We're looking at the Tulsa area and have heard mostly positives about it. We'll be there in less then two weeks and will finally know if it's the spot for us. It may be a bit too large so we plan on visiting a couple of surrounding towns, too.
Thanks to the info from Sooner, we're hoping to take a trip over to Stillwater, too. That looks like a very nice town. Good luck and let us know what you find.
Gas prices are about $1.97 currently where I live (Norman, just S. of OKC), but ony about three weeks ago it was closer to $3.20 per gallon.
Lisa Marie, my earlier response was pretty flippant. I am anxious to move out of Oklahoma (looking at Pennsylvania actually), but there are some pleasant towns around. I would have to agree that the Tulsa metro area is a better choice than the OKC area.
Tahlequah is a nice town, pretty scenery and has a small university. It's about an hour from Tulsa. Really, the further NorthEast you go in OK, the prettier it is.
Thank you for the helpful information. It helps to know different cities to look into. I'm from PA and it's nice as well. Why may I ask are you anxious to move out of OK? I've lived in PA for 25 years and I've lived here in CA for 2years. I'm ready to just settle down for a long long time. I'm going to be 28 in 7 days and I'm just ready to find a nice place and call it home.
Thank you for the helpful information. It helps to know different cities to look into. I'm from PA and it's nice as well. Why may I ask are you anxious to move out of OK? I've lived in PA for 25 years and I've lived here in CA for 2years. I'm ready to just settle down for a long long time. I'm going to be 28 in 7 days and I'm just ready to find a nice place and call it home.
I'm not a big fan of Oklahoma, but I will say there are worse places you could call home. I've lived in some.
The main reason I want to leave is the weather. Zero snow (I grew up in Minnesota and miss the snow and I want my kids to see some of it)...actually, it DOES snow at times, but the NE parts of OK, around the Tulsa area get the most of it. The last 2-3 years, central OK has barely gotten a light dusting, which melts in hours.
So, the winters aren't really winters to me. But the summers...good lord. This year we had almost 6 weeks of 100+ days--often feeling like over 110 degrees with the heat index. And NO RAIN that entire time. The allergens are absolutely terrible-- if you are sensitive to them, then coupled with the heat you will hardly be able to breathe for about one fourth to one third of the year.
Even now, the first half of October, the days are in the mid-90s and the humidity is crushing.
Beyond the weather, there is not much culture here. Everyone is pretty much into high school and college football. Tulsa has a decent museum (Philbrook) and a museum of Western history that isn't my thing really. Tulsa is a little more artsy than OKC and far prettier. In fact, OK is pretty much flat and barren in the center, with some lushness around the edges. And it's flat everywhere except around Tulsa which is only slightly hilly, being in the foothills of the Ozarks.
And also, this state is completely backwards from where my wife and I are politically. There's a lot of willful ignorance, ultra-conservative right wingers and ultra conservative christians. That's fine for people who are into that. I am not.
As far as places to live here, I would recommend the Tulsa area. Stillwater is about equadistant from OKC and Tulsa and it's not so bad, but I'd never live there. Closer to Tulsa, I think Tahlequah, as I mentioned, is fairly cool and one of the prettier towns in the state. Grove is run down in parts but is also in a pretty area. Actual Tulsa 'burbs vary. Broken Arrow is a pit...it's like a strip mall annex of Tulsa with little to no character. Whatever old town charm it once may have had is long gone. Bixby seems pretty nice. Jenks isn't bad and it has about a bajillion antique stores. Owasso is on the other side of Tulsa to the North and isn't terrible, though I hear it's being built up a lot. Skiatook doesn't have much going on but it isn't terribly ugly and property is probably pretty cheap. Sapulpa and Sand Springs are to the west of Tulsa and are rather pretty, but also really run down in some areas. In fact, West Tulsa (across the Arkansas River from the "Big Town") has a charm to it, but it is quite stuck in the past and very rural in some ways. There are also some pretty slummy projects there.
I don't know, I can't recommend Oklahoma overall, but I'd take it over some other places.
We are looking at several areas. Pennsylvania is high on our list because it's closer to the northeast, close to some urban centers we'd like to be close enough to to visit, seems to have nice people and our kind of weather and is undoubtedly prettier. Many places in NE PA are pretty reasonable as far as cost of living, etc.
Good luck to your family and mine! I hope you find what you are looking for.
Griffis is right, the heat here at the moment is ridiculous! We topped three digits here yesterday, and we're in the Northern part of the state, where it's usually a bit cooler. Also, it's unusually freakin' windy here right now.
As for gas prices, strangely, here in Ponca City, gas is usually a few cents higher than it is in most areas in Oklahoma. However, we were the first area to climb below the 2.00 mark a couple of weeks ago. That said, we only ever went to $1.99 (I think. It was there when I left for New Mexico, and there when I returned), and now it's up to $2.05. Still cheaper than the rest of the country. When we drove to NM last week, knowing that gas here was $1.99. we paid up to $3.08/gallon in some places to fill up!! Made us want to carry a sixty-gallon reserve tank or something!!
We moved from Bakersfield, CA to Stigler, OK in May 2005. I retired from law enforcement and my husband left his job in the oilfields. We lived in Bakersfield, Kern County, CA. We sold our house in CA and took the money and ran to Oklahoma.
Our experience has been VERY positive and the move was a fantastic one for us. We basically knew when we left that we couldn't go back, the Bakersfield housing market was BOOMING and we priced ourselves out of the market there.
We bought a 2 1/2 acre parcel of land with a 100-year old schoolhouse on it that had been converted to a home in the 1970's. It had been left empty after the death of the elderly couple who lived here for about twenty years and we bought it lock, stock and barrel for $80k cash. We proceeded to gut the place and put it back together and put an additional $170K into it. Right now, we are upside down in the house by about $50k, but that's okay---we love our house and wouldn't trade it for the world. We ended up with a 4 bedroom, 3 bath unique, historical house and a 200 acre view out the back door.
My husband bought a 10-wheel dump truck and is now self-employed. He has been working ever since we got here and makes good money and loves working for himself.
Houses here average about $80k to $100k. Gas is right at $2.04 per gallon right now. Our town is about 2500 people and we have a small Walmart with the promise of a new Supercenter next year. Our property taxes are about $385 per year. My husband says that anyone who is willing and wants to work can find a job here. I believe that a good-paying job here is about $13 to $15 per hour and we left $20 and $25 per hour jobs in CA.
Honestly, you know what I miss about California (besides a few people/family/friends)? Good Mexican food (chile verde), an honest to God carwash (everyone here uses a spray rite and vacuums inside themselves), and Target. The closest one here is Tulsa. Tulsa is a gorgeous city, but parts of it have a very high crime rate. There are good doctors and hospitals there and I have no complaints about medical care here. We live 35 miles from Ft. Smith Arkansas and go there for shopping and medical care also. It's a nice, smaller city with plenty of stores and restaurants to shop/dine at.
I will tell you that making this change at our ages (55) took alot of thought and we finally just took the big leap. I'm happy to say it worked out for us. Depending upon your age and financial situation, I would say, just do it. Take the chance and make it work.
It is a wonderful place to raise children. We have a 7 yr. old granddaughter who came with us, along with her mother, (my daughter) who is age 30 and went through a divorce just as we were making the decision to move. Our granddaughter is doing VERY well in second grade and loves living in the country. She has a horse and enjoys her other animals including four dogs, a cat, and a turtle.
We love quiet, country living. It is peaceful and the people here are very nice. It has been a wonderful year and we look forward to many more in Southeastern OK. My husband lived here with a prior wife during the early
90's and he believes that Southeastern OK is the prettiest part of the state. We have lots of trees, rolling hills, wonderful lakes close by (Lake Eufaula is about twenty minutes away and Lake Tenkiller is about 40 minutes away) and definite seasons of weather.
Last year it rained about 25 inches and we are needing rain right now, down about 3 1/2 inches from last year. It gets wicked hot here in the summer, just like Bakersfield, in the high 90's, low 100's and plenty of humidity. We bought a storm cellar to be safe in case of bad storms and have gone down there once as a drill so our granddaughter wouldn't be afraid.
Hope this gives you some insight into our part of the country. Good luck.
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Move from CA to OK
