How hard is it to move from a LCOL area to a HCOL area?

[riverwed070707]

You from the QC?

I am. Born and raised.

How are you liking St. Louis? I applied for a job there -- been kind of applying all over but the St. Louis one is one where I think the job would be a great fit but we were not terribly sold on the area. We visited this summer and didn't love it but we were primarily downtown. Does the city have a lot more to offer outside of the downtown area?

[DRILLINDK]

There's been a huge movement from downtown to the burbs. Downtown is slowly coming back, but you'll have to visit the burbs to obtain a better picture of everything.

[Gina23]

Wow, this thread is starting to make the world feel really small. The quad cities are great, I have a lot of old friends up there working for Deere and, like a previous poster mentioned, live in Davenport due to the real estate taxes!

Emanon - I know Washington very well, the Panthers were a high school rival and one of my dear friends is a varsity coach there currently

DRILLINKD - You are right on about the "super city" COL. There are larger-small cities out there that are very manageable without having to be totally shocked by the HCOL.

I have to chime in about STL here. STL was my home for 7 years after I graduated college and I was very lucky to land a good job within a large corporation and really had nothing to complain about. However, it was without a doubt the worst 7 years of my life. In my opinion, STL has all the problems of a large city without any of the convieniences. It is by no means "small" as it took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to drive 6 miles on a sunny dry day. It is very, very hot there, much hotter than Central/Northern IL. I lived in one of the mediocre to upper level suburbs (Kirkwood) and my car was broken into 3 times in a span of 3 years. I owned a cute home on a quiet cul-de-sac and my neighbors did not say hello to me once in the 3 years that I owned there. In fact, because I was a single female in her 20's, they assumed I would not take care of my home/yard and informed me with a note on my door (after living there for 3 days) that since "there wasn't a man around the house, they recommended the following lawn services." It was also bizzare to me that all of the kids went to tuition-charging Catholic schools and shunned the public school system. When I left (2006), the public school system was pretty much non-existant. I never fit in, nor did the folks I worked with from Bloomington, Chicago, Orlando, or Dallas. We have all since moved away. In the defense of STL, I didn't actually live in the city and surely would've had a much different experience had I done so. I couldn't take anymore traffic, however, and was forced into the suburbs along with all of my other co-workers running the rat race with me. Oh, and that "good job" I mentioned above... being on the IT/HR side of things, it was in my face everday that I was hired-in making at least 6k less than my male counterparts with the exact job titles and years of service. My experience is just that, a personal experience, so take it for what it's worth. I'm not at all saying that STL isn't great for some people, there has to be something keeping folks there... I'm just throwing this out there to prepare you for a bit of culture shock that you may not be expecting.

Good Luck

[anhtuvp]

We did a Midwest-to-HCOL jump a few years back (small town to the DC-ish area) and the biggest shock wasn’t groceries, it was the stuff tied to people’s time: childcare, any kind of home service, eating out, even kids activities. Housing was obvious, but what caught me off guard was how fast “little” monthly bills stacked up once everything costs more. It was worth it for us mainly because the job market was deeper and we had more options if something went sideways, but we definitely had to reset expectations on space and commuting, and we rented longer than we planned just to learn neighborhoods/schools.

If the pay is basically the same, I’d run the numbers with real rents in the exact school zones you’d actually pick, plus childcare if you need it, and assume you’ll spend more on convenience at first because you won’t know your way around. Also, don’t sleep on “in-between” metros where you get diversity and opportunities without the full sticker shock.

For the actual move logistics, I learned the hard way that long-distance quotes vary wildly depending on who’s truly coordinating the whole thing versus brokering it out. If you want a place to sanity-check door-to-door options and coverage, I ended up starting my search on

[bjl584]

15 year old thread, but an interesting question.

I've never lived in a HCOL area, so hard to say from personal experience.
I do enjoy the lower taxes and costs where I'm at though

[Fishindude77]

My buddies son just bought a new to him place in San Diego. Nice ranch home with maybe a 1/4 acre yard, in ground pool, decent yard and a basketball court, so great for his kids.
Purchase price was around $1.4 mil and annual taxes run $38,000.

He comes from a small town in Indiana where you could by the same home and property for $300,000 and taxes might run $3,000 annually.

Moving to someplace like that is pretty much un-doable unless you are going there for a very high income job or have a sh#tload of cash saved up.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

My buddies son just bought a new to him place in San Diego. Nice ranch home with maybe a 1/4 acre yard, in ground pool, decent yard and a basketball court, so great for his kids.
Purchase price was around $1.4 mil and annual taxes run $38,000.

He comes from a small town in Indiana where you could by the same home and property for $300,000 and taxes might run $3,000 annually.

Moving to someplace like that is pretty much un-doable unless you are going there for a very high income job or have a sh#tload of cash saved up.

Or you have only lived HCOLA your whole life so you have no idea what life is like cheaper. You just make lifestyle choices and sacrifices that people live in LCOLA never made. Many times it's living in a condo for an extended period to build up equity to leap into something bigger. Many people also live in a cono with their kids a long time.

The son has gotta be outside of san diego proper. That's a ridiculously cheap house with a pool and yard for $1.4m. That is more like outer san diego.