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The commute time, (or lack there of) will have no bearing on us. My husband is an electrician and will be responsible for everything within a 4 hour radius of Raleigh. Yes, it sucks. Right now he is in a different division of the company, and is usually on a project for weeks or months at a time. His daily commute is rarely less then 2 hours. Luckily he has a company car and they foot the bill for his gas.
The problem is, I love the area. I'm just not sure that's enough.
The commute time, (or lack there of) will have no bearing on us. My husband is an electrician and will be responsible for everything within a 4 hour radius of Raleigh. Yes, it sucks. Right now he is in a different division of the company, and is usually on a project for weeks or months at a time. His daily commute is rarely less then 2 hours. Luckily he has a company car and they foot the bill for his gas.
The problem is, I love the area. I'm just not sure that's enough.
Just from what little I know about your situation? I think you're going to wind up at a financial disadvantage if you move here.
Did you sell your house?
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Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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A lot of people on this thread are comparing the costs of living in the Triangle to New Jersey and New York, and that's not really relevant. Maryland does not have taxes as high as those two states. Coming from Hagerstown, I would think the cost of housing won't be too different. Property tax on housing might be less here. If he is regularly commuting to the DC area, though, I think you will find that traffic is a lot less here and it is pretty much only during rush hours. That might be less stress for him, even if he is driving the same distances.
Property tax on car is an added tax you will have. You have already paid that sales tax on your cars when you bought them. Now when you bring them into the state you will pay an initial tax plus tax each year.
Don't forget there are a lot of costs associated with moving. We just moved here in January and the startup costs were crazy between the house sitting empty until we rented it out, the actual moving costs (which were reimbursed for us), the car tax, the "initiation fees" for things like the pool that may already be paid for where you live, starting up utilities, etc. It took about 6 months before we felt like we were paying just our regular monthly living expenses.
We moved from high-cost Fairfax County, but to get into the same quality school district (similar test scores) to one we were at, we moved to Chapel Hill. And although we got more house for our money, the property taxes are actually higher for a house of the same worth. But I know Maryland's property taxes are higher than Virginia's, and if you're not moving to Chapel Hill (which has the highest property taxes), yours might go down. Other than that, food is about the same, gas is the same, sales tax is higher, income tax is higher (might be similar to MD, though), and activities are about the same.
That's my best guess. I lived in Maryland for 10 years before I lived in Virginia for 12 years before moving here.
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