Moving out of New Jersey?

[Senators Advocate]

Wife and I relocated to Southern California last year, and we are having mixed results. Weather is AMAZING..even better then advertised...lots to do here, never a dull moment..but man the housing market is beyond help, the crime rates are higher here (although the area we live in is pretty decent) and the houses and apartments in general are smaller. And as for $ for salary, its about the same as Jersey, some things are cheaper (really no tolls here, but gas and taxes are higher)...so we are leaning towards a return East.

Have you considered Oregon? Everyone I know who's spent significant time there raves about it. Consider that within about a half an hour from Portland exists: an ocean, a major mountain range and a rain forest.

You'd have to get used to a lot of days involving rain, but they're usually light showers and the temperature has a limited range compared to the Mid-Atlantic region.

Biggest problem is no NHL hockey, but anywhere along the I-5 corridor is just a day trip (at most) to San Jose and Vancouver and both Portland and Seattle, Wash. have Junior A teams.

[njdevils2003champs]

I've given some consideration to moving myself. Probably going to the Outer Banks of NC or Boston. It would depend on school and what kind of job I can get.

[PeteyNice]

I can't imagine living in a world devoid of QuickCheks and 24 hour diners.

It's great to know that if for some reason I need to have a chicken breast smothered in mozzerella and marinara sauce at 3 AM, that all I have to do is drive.

[maltieri]

The advice in the first couple of posts is good and I'll give you the opposite take--I lived in Jersey my whole life until 3 years ago when, after making some money selling our house, my wife wanted to try Delaware--we had been trending south with our homes anyway and NJ is expensive so why not (I could commute to my job in PA as easily from either place) right? The two years we spent in DE ended up being the worst two years of our lives and we moved BACK to NJ a year ago and couldn't be happier--thank God we had rented and not bought a house. Yeah my property taxes are higher and we pay sales tax but the cost of living in New Castle county DE is really no cheaper. There are costs you just don't consider as much like: the state income taxes are significantly higher, to register a car in DE they charge you 2% of the blue book value of your car--you have anything new or fancy it will cost you! The traffic was worse than NJ, the drivers worse than even Boston's Ma$$holes, the schools were absolutely terrible (had to send my daughter to private school--another cost)--the list goes on. There are worse places to live than the Garden State!

[HelenaHandbasket]

Excellent advice above. IAC27 is right, I did move. I moved from NJ to TX and it was a great decision. I did as Petey said, I rented for six months and then bought a house. This helped me make sure I liked the area and was able to adjust without being anchored down by a mortgage right away. I did have some family down here though and my sister had gone to school here years ago so I was semi-familiar with the area. Have you already visited NC/FL for other reasons to see what it's like?

If you are looking at hiring someone to move your stuff down there please stay away from any internet "site unseen" quotes. Go to http://www.movingscam.com/ and get some advice there. They saved me a lot of money and headache by showing me how to choose a mover. I believe another poster here, HelenaHandBasket also used them and got good advice.

[LOTCB]

You could do like many Californians are doing and move to Texas!

Then again I don't know if that would work with whatever your line of work is.

[sammyk]

It's funny but I have been here almost 1 year now and know 2 people that moved to Texas!

I am in the IT field, not sure how the market is where you are.

I'm not surprised by that, I see a lot of California plates around here. They sell their little shacks in California for $1M and buy mansions here out by the lake or something. OK, not everyone does that but you get the idea. This lady in my dads development sold her home in Cali and bought two here, one for her, one for her daughter.

I'm in the IT field too and it's pretty good here and Austin likes to tout the fact. Lots of high tech companies have a decent presence here like Dell, IBM, Motorola, Freescale, AMD, Sun, Raytheon, BAE Systems, and EMC just to name a few. I'm sure there are a lot of smaller ones too and of course non tech companies have IT departments as well. After that we have the University of Texas, City of Austin, Travis County and the State of Texas as big employers here as well.

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Helena, what sort of "standard" things were hard to find in grocery stores?