Where is it most economical to live with best quality of life?

[PRICEPLUS]

I like the suburbs but I can see myself moving to a more rural setting. Having grown up in the city I found that living there was quite expensive. Maybe it is more of a regional thing. NYC was a bear for renting and forget owning in a fairly decent area. We got out ot the burbs before hte prices went through the roof. I do like the thought of a small town though.

There are questions of downsizing and possible loss of wages with a new situation. Small town living appeals to me though. Anyone else thinking about going for quality rather than quantity?

[meaghanchan]

I live in NYC and don't think it's expensive when you're single. It's possible to find a great place to rent in NYC for not a whole lot of money, especially if you share (I pay $565). Plus, think of all the money you save not having to own a car! Besides the actual cost of the car, you save gas, insurance, repairs, maintenance...

That said, if you're a country or suburbs person, I think that's where you're going to have the best quality of life for the least amount of money. In the country you're going to spend more for gas, but you get a lot of land and a lot of house for your money.

If you have kids, though, it definitely changes the equation.

Then you have to consider median salaries- There are many economically struggling areas of the country where maybe you can buy a house for $80,000, but you're making a median salary of $20,000, and you're not really getting ahead the way you might if you were living in a more expensive area but making the national median salary, which is right around $40,000, I believe.

So... Yes, it's a very complex question, and there's a lot of variables to consider. I don't think there's one place that has the best cost:quality of life ratio. Just depends on the individual and their situation.

I have friends (single, no kids) who are considering moving up to NYC and they always say, 'but it's so expensive...' ... I think that's mostly a myth. Sure, if you want a McMansion and an SUV, yeah, it's expensive. But when you start having your kids share rooms (didn't we all have to do that once upon a time?) and you give up the car because you don't need it, I don't think it's that much more expensive at all.

I'm sorry if I'm not conveying my opinion very well- rereading this post, it's all over the place.

[cercis]

I will never move more rural until my kids are grown. Rural schools suck. I grew up in one and it sucked. Advanced classes never made because there weren't enough people interested in them. The only advanced class I managed to have was physics, and that was via a satellite connection. I basically ended up teaching myself and I wasn't ready for that. My HS counselor had no idea how to tell us how to apply for colleges, I wrote to colleges for applications and then was stymied because they wanted $100 or so just to apply. He had no idea how to tell us to write to request they waive that fee. My school didn't even know how to prepare us for the pSAT/SAT (they gave us the pSAT but because other things were going on, there wasn't time to allow us to even read the instructions, it was "we have only enough time to just get through this test, no breaks, start now").

Rural kids don't grow up thinking college is a possibility. We only know a few people who have gone to college - our teachers and maybe one or two other community adults. Our parents didn't, our church leaders didn't, our friends' parents didn't. All we hear is how expensive college is and without adequate test prep, we can't expect to get much scholarship money.

I do think the rural experience is wonderful, so my kids spent at least a month on the farm with their grandparents. I make sure they know where their food comes from (true story - I met an adult who had no idea flour came from wheat, not even that it came from a plant). But as long as they are in school, we will live in metro areas. Maybe not large metro areas (our metro area is less than 100k), but metro areas with good schools.

When the kids are grown, I would absolutely love to move to a farm to live.

[PrincessPerky]

I grew up without the school period and I managed quite well

Suburbs is my current choice, becauase the gas to go someplace isn't out of this world, I wouldn't want to live to far from a museam or science center and the like. (I never knew how lucky I was living near pgh, carnegie was an awesome guy!) and the neighbors I can't hear, I hate hearing my neighbors from in my house. The only thing I would like schoolwise is more cooperation, but I will live.

I would love a real rural area, but I can't afford the land or the gas. (and I am often amazed at the number of people who don't know about food/ don't tell their kids. we certainly do)

[Ima saver]

We moved to rural Georgia in the mountains 21 years ago and love it. We bought our lot on the Toccoa river for $13,000 and built a log house ourself. Taxes and other things were so cheap. Now land has gone sky high, but only a few miles from us in North Carolina, land is much cheaper. My husband has plenty of work building homes and building spec houses.

[cercis]

Princess - did you go to college? I'm not asking to be mean or snarky, I'm being serious. See, I wanted to go to college, I wanted to go to Ivy League. I had the brains to get there, but I didn't have the technical know-how or the money after HS.

Now, I could go to grad school there. My GRE scores (now expired) were more than good enough to get scholarships for the Ivy Leagues. But, kids, etc conspire to keep me out of school (part of that "etc" is that the Ivy League schools are so darn cold).

My parents couldn't homeschool. They didn't have the education or the time (both had to work because salaries in rural areas are VERY low). Or the patience. Definitely not the patience. If we moved to a rural area we'd be in the same boat. We'd both have to work - unless you know the right people, you're lucky to find a job paying $8/hr, and then, even if you do know the right people it's a matter of waiting until someone dies or retires to get a good job.

Like I said, though, once the kids are grown, I'd love to live in a rural area. I hope by then the internet will have grown and we can do more and more jobs via the internet, or conversely, that we have managed to save enough money that we can live on an $8/hr job.

[34saving]

High speed internet has come to many rural areas. Satellite is available in many many places and DSL is certainly making progress.

Also, around here lots of kids in rural areas go to the suburban schools -- they just have reallly long bus rides!

As far as the survey goes . . . I vote suburbs.

[Ima saver]

I live rural, nearest mall is about 100 miles away. Lots of construction going on and my husband pays $18 an hour. Most of the locals grew up growing and hunting their own food and they still do. Me, I prefer to go out and eat!! (we can brown bag it, so we can eat out cheaply)

[cercis]

34Saving - we're still waiting for internet in the boonies of OK. They can get local dial up, finally (just within the last 2 years), but nothing else. They barely even get cellphone coverage.

I'm not saying rural wouldn't be possible - I guess in New England where the states are tiny and nothing is that far away, rural isn't really "rural". But in OK, TX (less so in TX these days), WY, MT, KS, etc - those states, rural is RURAL. And *I* wouldn't do it while my kids were school age.

[34saving]

Yes, I suppose a lot does depend on your definition of rural I do think OK should be able to get satellite internet though. (At least if I remember my geography . . . OK is pretty flat, right? I guess if you can "see the southern sky" you can get high speed satellite internet. . . .not that I know from personal experience . . )

[cercis]

Western OK is flat. Eastern OK - not so much. Foothills of the Ozarks. Most people there try to build with a Southern exposure (for winter) but plant lots of trees. They can get satellite tv (sometimes) but the cost is probably prohibitive for internet (I haven't looked into it, but I'm guessing). When you top out at $30k/year, there isn't a lot of wiggle room in your budget. Maybe when people start being able to actually find and work at jobs over the internet, it will be viable.

To me "rural" means you drive more than an hour to get to a mall. Wal-mart is more than 20-30 minutes away. You might be able to access a post office within a 5 minute drive, a gas station and a church, maybe even a general store (but those are rarer than hen's teeth these days), but not much else. When I say I grew up "semi-rural", I mean I grew up in a town with water and cable, a school, a movie theater (sometimes), 2 restaurants, a Sonic, 2 gas stations, a clothing store, a grocery store and an ace store. A mall was 1.5 hours away, the hospital was 30 minutes away. Walmart was 30 minutes away (and when it went to 24 hours it was a HUGE deal).

Of course, internet didn't exist when I was in HS. There were chat rooms (not in my town) and compuserv was active. DGs existed. But the world wide web was not there and I do see this through the filter of my upbringing.

[PrincessPerky]

I did go to college part time, but it wasn't my interest, I like to teach, and I prefer to teach the willing. I dispised the classes telling me 4 year olds cant read, having taught several willing 4 year olds I didn't want to memorize their false information for the test. I tried to convince myself it was a neccessity for life in the US, but I failed, so I am just a lowly hardly ny formal education Mom. And if you promise to forgive me I'll brag, with a 3.5 year old who can read on a first grade level, and a 2 year old who is almost ready to learn to read, I think I do just fine with out the college education. (and for all those assuming I am pushing them to far, all learning is voluntary, I might 'con' them with a new game, but I do not force.)

I hear all the time, 'I couldn't teach I don't know enough' but I often wonder why we assume the same school that failed the parents will be so much more successful with our kids? Many assume it was the particular school that failed and moving is the cure, while there are degrees of failure in schools they all carry the same limitations, homeschooling offers the chance toi learn from anyone and everyone anytime just ask look seek and find.

I also hear 'I don't have the patience' as the person with the least patience I know I find it funny , but undrstandable, thats why I wont teach in a school, no patence, children are programed to learn, by the time they hit public school most are so programed to check for a test, they lose the joy of learning, and school teachers must have the patience of a saiunt to get them to remember the junk on the test. (and if it wasn't junk why do most all forget it after the test?)

anyway, you asked. , hope you don't mind my long winded answer.

[abowers]

I don't have many places to compare this to but --

I grew up in western NY - the Rochester area (Webster to be specific). The schools are great-- Webster has a great music program, has done well in sports (especially football recently), science olympiad, drama, math league, and offers something like 24 advanced placement courses (I took 8 of them between 11th and 12th grades). I went to a nearby private college, but of my 560-some classmates I graduated with, most went on to some kind of college, 10 went to Cornell (off the top of my head), many more I know went to other Ivy League schools.

Houses are pretty affordable, I'd say-- I think my parents 2000sq foot house is worth 135k, with 1/2 acre, in a nice neighborhood. My boyfriend's parents just moved and sold their house for about 150k, with a little more sq footage, and a little more yard.

This seems incredible reasonable to me now, because in Princeton, we couldn't find a 2br townhouse in this area for less than $220k (unless we wanted to live in Trenton, which we don't).

There are a lot of good suburban schools in the Rochester area, there's Lake Ontario, there's TONS of town/county parks, there are many colleges in the area as well (Univ. of Rochester, Rochester Inst. of Technology, St. John Fisher, Nazareth College, SUNY Brockport, SUNY Geneseo). Big employers include Xerox, Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and the University of Rochester/Strong Memorial Hospital. Crime is very low in the suburbs. Traffic isn't bad if you commute from the suburbs to the city for work.

[Ima saver]

I could not imagine living near or in a large town. Florida was getting too crowded and too dangerous so we moved to a rural area back in 1984. I have never regretted it. It takes 2 hours to get to a mall and I really don't care and I don't go.

[Fern]

check out www.findyourspot.com

there's a fun questionnaire that after you take a survey gives you you the best places to live, based on youranswers regarding city/small town/near a hospital and a myriad of choices like that.

[Fern]

T. and i have discussed where to retire, and right now we're thinking Asheville, NC area, which i think is in western part of the state near the smoky mountains.

i now live in the quintessential New England town (pop. 30,000) with a historic main street (all residential except for the town hall, library and a general store and 2 churches, large flagpole in middle of road at an intersection which often causes car accidents but no traffic light has been installed cus it would ruin our charm.

i like CT but real estate and property taxes are very high. Plus we're tired of new england winters.

[Ima saver]

Asheville is a very nice area, not too far from where I live now.

[cercis]

For me, my dream spot will always be somewhere were snow is rare, ice storms even rarer, and winter temps hang out in the 60-80 range.

I love it here. Right now it's pretty affordable, you can buy decent size homes for $80-150k (depending on what area you want). All the schools seem to be pretty good, so that will be nice.

I plan to supplement our kids' education with stuff we're interested in, but depend on the school for the other stuff.

[Lemony]

Norway.

[Snoopy2645]

I live in IA & I believe its good living you can buy a nice house cheap our house was 60k & between dh & I we are now making around 60k a year we were making about 40k between us when we bought the house 7yrs ago. My BIL just bought a house for 160k in NM & makes the same as my dh I know in our situation we couldnt afford that kinda payment & his house is like ours just average.

We do live in a city too not a farm or rural area. We have also looked at moving to a much bigger city in nebraska but the houses are soo expensive unless we got way better jobs I cant see how we could afford it.