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Just typical West Coast absurd mandates, over-regulation/taxation/spending and trying to achieve "utopia" for all, while lambasting capitalism and market drives. Cannot compare such socialist states, to an essentially independent Wyoming. I **** and moan in Oregon until I can break out myself.
Apples to parsnips. The prop. tax bill on my place here in Douglas County is TWICE what'd be in Park Co. Wyoming for the eqiv. ass. value!
Something way out of whack with bluepacifica's post ... per Wyomama and others ...
Some specifics:
Historical weather data 1980-2000 shows high temps in Kinnear reaching the mid-to-high 90's, not exceeding 100 ... let alone reaching 107F. During those same warm months, the overnight lows were down into the mid 40'sF. Essentially, as soon as the sun set, the temps dropped dramatically every night. In fact, the comparative cooling degree days for Kinnear is about 30% lower than the average of all of Wyoming.
To the best of my experience, swamp coolers have been and remain effective in that area due to the relatively low summertime humidity. Indeed, Kinnear has significantly less total moisture and less rainfall than most of the state. My source here is a fellow who grew up there on a family ranch and still operates it today with members of his family ... for the last 75 years. The only reason they've done well is due to the oil/gas found on their lands which have been producing for many years; the rangeland itself has been low producing for their cattle due to the low moisture levels.
Gasoline cheaper in Seattle area? Who are you kidding, bluepacifica? Outside of my own personal sticker shock on my trips to the Seattle/Bellevue/Clyde Hill/Medina areas in the last decades, that information is posted online through many "gas price finder" sites. A quick check tonight ... here in Wyoming, it's in the $3.25-3.39 range, and in the Seattle metropolitan area: $3.79-3.89 range.
Property taxes cheaper in Seattle/King county area than here in Wyoming? Not a chance. My Mom's townhome in Bellevue, as well as my sons homes in that area pay property mill levy taxes higher than what I pay in Vail CO (Eagle County) in a pricey resort community where the assessed valuations are high compared to here in Wyoming. My sis's house in Clyde Hill in the high 7 figures assessed valuation wouldn't be worth 1/4 of that here in Wyoming and her mill levy is over double what I pay here in Wyoming.
Food prices lower in Seattle area? OK, there's a lot of local produce as well as fish that's less expensive, as well as there's a much larger population base to support the sales. So Wyoming can be a bit more expensive when you're looking at fresh produce and some items due to the economy of scale and transportation costs. But my sons shop at Whole Foods, where the prices are astronomical to what I pay for food here in Wyoming at WalMart/Sam's Club/King Sooper's (Cheyenne). They offset those high prices by buying some specialty items at Trader Joes .... but it's still not a wash where they spend less money on food then we spend here in Wyoming.
Motor Vehicle registration costs lower in WA? Huh? You must be conflating the total tax and fees with registration costs. For example, I've recently renewed the licenses on two of my mid 1990's pick-up trucks, which have long dropped to the lowest category. The registration fee is around $40 for the county license plate. The balance of the $132 paid is ownership taxes, based upon the original list price. Similarly, my 2001 Subaru costs $135/year to license. Perhaps you're comparing the first year registration costs on a vehicle when the sales tax was collected on the purchase, where 5-6-7% of the purchase price was collected by the state and county in addition to the registration fees. I just bought a used RV out of state and I'm looking at 6% sales tax to now be paid, around $600. IIRC, WA state has their sales tax and fees on a vehicle purchase, too ... just collected by the dealer instead of the county at the time of titling and registration.
I've looked at real estate on Bainbridge and several other islands in the sound around the Seattle area. Outside of the transportation costs which are typically tied to the ferry service or being affluent enough to own your own waterfront property with a dock and your own boat capable of delivering routine daily transportation in the various weather conditions ... especially during the foggy months when it's cold, wet, miserable, and obscured visibility in the high water traffic areas and then dealing with the costs of a slip or mooring at your mainland destination .... there's not too many boats that approach the per-mile fuel costs of cars. I can drive from my ranch to Cheyenne on a gallon of fuel each way, I doubt that a ferry ride or running a private boat can approach that low a cost when you're taking an hour or so and few boats that can achieve a significant speed can do so on less than a gallon per hour.
Other expenses ... I've been just about everywhere in the Seattle area for restaurants. Not counting the fast food franchises, where I don't go ... the restaurant scene in Seattle is a mixed bag. Lots more variety and availability than here in Wyoming ... but generally significantly more expensive. I've been at dives by the Ballard Locks, up on the sound coastline in nicer places, and in the pricey places that Seattle offers, too. Even Ivar's ain't cheap ... nor Uwajimaya where I can get my sashimi fixin's to make my own rather than paying their chefs to slice up a plate for a nice presentation.
Just about everything I've done in the Seattle area for recreation has been significantly more expensive than here in Wyoming. I've rented aircraft at some of the GA strips in the area, I've shot at Dave's pistol range, I've gone camping/fishing/sailing throughout the region on fresh and saltwater venues ... nothing in WA came close to the low costs of comparable activity here in Wyoming.
In all candor, if it wasn't for the generosity of some of my family that treats me to those activities in Seattle, I couldn't afford to partake of them. Especially when it comes to recreational activities or nicer restaurants in the area. On my budget, I'd just be bicycling the area for exercise and touring the neighborhoods, heading over to the Boeing musuem and similar activities, or just watching the waterfront and cruising through the marine stores and marinas or heading up to Kenmore Air Harbor. Oh yeah ... that reminds me ... my family has memberships in many of those museums, so that's how I get in to them for little or no cost; otherwise, I couldn't afford the admission fees.
Utility costs in the Seattle area are lower, but that's due to a lot of subsidized power. The hydroelectric system in that area wasn't paid for by utility consumers, it was built, developed, and subsidized by federal funds which were generated by all the states, not just WA area ratepayers. Unlike WY power production, WA's capital investment in the power plants was paid for by others and the rates paid by consumers simply pay for operating and maintenance cost overhead. The cost sources of the water aren't passed along to the ratepayers, either. There's a lot of infrastructure which delivers water to the power generating dams which the ratepayers don't have to pay for.
At this point, I'd say that the bluepacifica post slamming Wyoming costs is pure B.S. I know what my family members have paid for their housing in the area, and even if the mill levy was at the same low rates as here in Wyoming, they'd still be paying a lot more for their annual property taxes in WA.
Along with that, the assertion that "nothing is regulated in Wyoming" is pure nonsense. We have public utility commissions as well as an insurance commission, and these are highly regulated industries. While bluepacifica may have saved $500/month on their health insurance, there's no comparative basis offerred as to what the respective polices coverages were or the group size or so many other factors in the health insurance purchase ....
For what it's worth, my wife and I went out to Wyoming last summer to evaluate the exact same thing - should we retire there. We decided we wanted to and we will next year. We're moving from a town on the east coast that costs 10% more on average to a town that costs 20% less on average. (The average is the cost of living in the average American town.)
We already have as many friends in Wyoming as we have on the east coast.
More importantly to us, we're moving from a highly regulated environment to one that doesn't waste a lot of taxpayers' dollars trying to tell us how to live.
Couple of quick questions on the licensing fees. Every year you have to pay the fee to the state based on the value of the vehicle, correct? Do you also have to pay a property tax on the vehicle to the county or city/town?
Couple of quick questions on the licensing fees. Every year you have to pay the fee to the state based on the value of the vehicle, correct? Do you also have to pay a property tax on the vehicle to the county or city/town?
The fees are paid to the county, and include the county ownership (property) tax and the state registration fee. Ownership tax (which is reduced each year as a vehicle depreciates per their schedule to a base rate) is based upon the original list price and the state registration is based upon weight.
You can call a county treasurer vehicle license department and get a quote for a given vehicle's fees.
If you are bringing a vehicle into the state the first time for registration, you will need to visit the county clerk's office for a Wyoming Title, too. You can either have your existing title changed over to a Wyoming Title (which is typically the default mode of the clerk's office to get more fees), or you can obtain a "non-transferrable" Wyoming title for a nominal fee which they use at the Treasurer's office to issue your license plates. With a "non-transferrable" Wyoming Title, you'll need to use your prior title conferring ownership to sell your vehicle.
I was with a retired GROUP insurance, I was a teacher. We paid $1531 a month with $65 deductible for a specialist. Well, they considered every doctor a specialist. They declared just about every claim to be "not reasonable nor customary" so we paid the difference on just about every medical bill. My husband has cancer so we couldn't just get regular insurance, sorry. If we stayed in Wyoming a one month premium on Wyoming's uninsured pool would have been $1601 at age 59 which he was at the time in 2007. No, we didn't drive a Bentley but we drove new or newer vehicles. Check out what you're paying as a use fee when you license a new vehicle. That, plus your license can run you around a thousand. Yes, it goes down every year for a few years then bottoms out but it still isn't cheap. Food is what was so expensive in Riverton. Check the high temperatures in Riverton in the summer of 2007. You just can't look at climate, that's an average. Go to Wyoming, live there, have a ball.
I was with a retired GROUP insurance, I was a teacher. We paid $1531 a month with $65 deductible for a specialist. Well, they considered every doctor a specialist. They declared just about every claim to be "not reasonable nor customary" so we paid the difference on just about every medical bill. My husband has cancer so we couldn't just get regular insurance, sorry. If we stayed in Wyoming a one month premium on Wyoming's uninsured pool would have been $1601 at age 59 which he was at the time in 2007. No, we didn't drive a Bentley but we drove new or newer vehicles. Check out what you're paying as a use fee when you license a new vehicle. That, plus your license can run you around a thousand. Yes, it goes down every year for a few years then bottoms out but it still isn't cheap. Food is what was so expensive in Riverton. Check the high temperatures in Riverton in the summer of 2007. You just can't look at climate, that's an average. Go to Wyoming, live there, have a ball.
OK, bluepacifica ... I went again to the NWS NOAA data site for Riverton, the reporting station is KRIW and checked the daily reported temperatures for the site. NOT the "climate", but the actual daily reported official temperatures for the location. As well, I checked the Lander site for daily reported temperatures. You can do it, too. Google the NWS historical weather data and you'll see the same weather reporting charts that I'm looking at. Not only that, but the charts have the historical record highs and lows for the reporting sites for comparisons.
In a word, what you are saying about the temperatures in the area simply doesn't match the NOAA data. I looked at every day of the summer/fall temps reported for 2007. The hottest was Riverton on the 7-12th August where it got into the high 90's, with overnight temps in the 50's. Nowhere near 100F, let alone 107F.
I also drive new or newer vehicles in my fleet. My pick-up trucks ... 3/4 ton diesels with manufacturer's new prices in the low $30,000 to mid $40,000 range never cost me more than $120 for user fees in 2000-2001 time frame when I bought them just a couple of years old. Similarly, my M-B's and BMW's never cost me over $130 TOTAL for an annual registration which included use fees and ownership taxes. I just sold my last MB 300Dt, and I had to register it for the trip where I was taking it for trade-in ... The TOTAL license fee was $134! Of that, since the car was registered for a year and I owned it only for another week before registering my RV and transferring the license plates, most of the fees were applied to the new registration on the RV for a year. Of course, I had to pay the sales tax upon bringing the vehicle into Wyoming and at 6%, that was around $700.00; a one-time fee and certainly not a user tax or recurring annual fee. Nor is that close to $1,000, either on the most expensive stickered motor vehicle I've ever owned in Wyoming. That class B RV I bought had a new sticker price of over $75,000! which is what the user tax is based upon; with it being a 1993 vehicle, it's dropped to the bottom of the use tax chart in Wyoming. Again, my bet is that you are conflating the sales taxes paid on your vehicles with the ownership/registration taxes collected on them. Yes, I'm actually able to read the registration documents and I DO KNOW exactly the amounts I wrote on the checks to the County Treasurer and the County Clerk here in Cheyenne; the numbers simply don't come close to what you claim as typical here in Wyoming.
RE your medical insurance costs: Apparently your insurance requirements place you into a higher risk pool due to the cancer diagnosis. I'm older than your husband and pay less than one-third what you say you paid in Wyoming ... and that's with a $30 deductible per office visit. I, too, have a pre-existing medical diagnosis which qualifies me for high risk, although it has long ago been treated and completely mitigated with corrective surgery performed in 2001. My wife's employer qualifies us for a group medical insurance here, and we don't even get the full employer contribution because of her work category. I'd be covered under her policy at almost no additional cost if she moved into another work classification. What we do pay attention to is the option to qualify us as "healthy" for a reduced rate cost with our annual check-ups, no smoking, no alcohol abuse, and annual blood test reports that are in conformity with their lower risk pool for health risks.
Hard to believe your claim of "food so expensive" in Riverton. With a Safeway, WalMart SuperCenter, and Smith's (aren't they affiliated with Albertsons'?) ... the mainstay staples of food are pretty much a commodity item price point. While they are more remote and have higher transportation costs per unit than the high density population center of Seattle, it's not that much more expensive. The only place I can draw a significantly lower price point in Seattle would be at Trader Joe's. The regular supermarkets in Seattle aren't that much lower in price points, and at that ... Costco has a huge presence in the area with it being their initial market. Again, Costco doesn't have that great a variation in their prices from marketplace to marketplace ... although they have no presence in Wyoming (closest is Colorado) ... but they are competitive with Sam's Club, which does have presence in Wyoming. In any event, my personal shopping experience in Seattle certainly doesn't reflect your assertion that food in Wyoming's towns with a WalMart is so much more expensive that it would be noticeable on a monthly food budget ... with the exception of fresh vegetables and seafood. At that, I've dropped hundreds at Uwajimaya for fish to feed 6 people sushi and sashimi ... as well, I've spent hundreds per day to go salmon fishing in the Seattle area and came home with a "limit" which was enough fish to supplement a meal on the bar-b-que of other items.
It appears from your comments that you were less than happy with your circumstances here in Wyoming and prefer Seattle to this area. So be it, I'm happy that you're happy now. But I think you'd present a more cogent argument for your "lower costs of living" in Seattle if the readily available data for same backed you up. For example, your observation that fuel is less expensive in Seattle. One simply has to google the "gas buddy" type sites and get the color coded fuel cost chart up on your screen ... where the Pacific NW (as well, the entire West Coast of the USA) is graphically displayed in yellows/orange/red color spectrum and all of Wyoming is in light to medium green colors. There's a substantial difference favoring Wyoming expenses there ... and it's not subject to your opinion, it's readily verifiable and documented and published for all to see.
On the same front, the mill levy rates in the Seattle area on real estate ... as well, the prevailing real estate prices ... are readily accessed on the 'net. There's no comparison in just how much more expensive the Seattle area is to Wyoming. In particular, since I recently had to work on settling my parents estate and get appraisals for their residential properties ... I know what the PSF costs are in the general sense used by the county assessors as well as the specifics on their properties. Along with my son's homes in the Seattle area ... they're in $7-figure homes that wouldn't bring 1/4 to 1/3 the price in Wyoming (except for Jackson, which is a whole 'nother locale). One son moved from Bellevue to Snoqualmie than back to Issaquah trying to get some rural peace and quiet compared to the pace of Bellevue-Redmond and found that the commuting to Redmond was intolerable on a daily basis in the traffic ... the benefits of living on a lake front property in the Snoqualmie area didn't offet the daily aggravation of heading back to the close-n property. So after a few houses on an acre or so lot ... all priced at double to triple what they'd have brought in Wyoming ... in the more rural areas of the Seattle area, they moved back to $million houses closer to work.
Honestly, you'd do a lot better trying to make your points by not insulting the intelligence of the folks on this forum. When you make outrageous claims about the benefits of your chosen area compared to Wyoming ... and the information contrary to what you post is readily accessbile via a google search ... then you don't come off as credible to many people. Seattle has it's charms and attractions, but they're not among the qualities you've claimed as an advantage over Wyoming when it comes to financial aspects.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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with due respect to
Quote:
bluepacifica
, As a previous WY resident, and have been living in WA for the last 28 yrs.... I would choose WY for retirement due to high cost of living and wacko legislature in WA. My WA property taxes are $12,000/yr ($33/day (up from $3/day 10 yrs ago)) on a joint I built for under $100k. Less than 20 acres of unusable land (very steep, federal restricted scenic area (no timber cutting, subdividing, or commercial operations (no B&B or events allowed).
9% sales tax, and HUGE business taxes for retirees expecting SE income (B&O / use / personal property, L&I ...)
YMMV,... My vehicle license fees went WAY up when they passed a law to reduce fees from 'Value-based' to $35 + GTM. (hint: trucks / motorhomes are $$$$$$$ to license). My $35 cars (50 mpg VW's) went from $18/ yr to $42/yr. I was not impressed.
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