I dream of moving back to California one day, nice weather, more relaxed lifestyle, and just a very different mindset. You’d have to live in both places to understand but it’s different. And the midwest has it’s own flavor, having lived for a year in the midwest, I have to say I prefer it to the East Coast.
Anyway, it looks like DH and I are getting quickly priced out of CA. Here an article in the WSJ tells us that CA will be passing a bill to increase the state income tax from 10.3% to 12%. Yikes, this on top of maybe a 25-33% federal income tax bracket. Living in CA means we’d be paying about 45-50% of our salaries in taxes alone. Yep we’re getting priced of out CA fast.
But can we afford to stay where we are either? It’s not necessarily a better situation. There are higher utilites and older homes. So each place has it’s pros and cons. But for now I’ll be watching wheter CA raises it’s state income taxes. As I write this Seattle is becoming much more appealing with every word I write.
6 responses so far ↓
1 tom // Aug 20, 2008 at 9:46 am
Haha… everyone from Cali is moving to Seattle. I just moved away from Seattle after living there for 2.5 years. I loved it there, the problem is/and maybe was (and it’s not the rain) that all of these CA transplants were driving up the housing costs. I had a friend who bought a house in the Seattle suburbs with cash, upgraded everything, bought a car and still had some $$ leftover from the sale of his CA home. Bottom line though is if I had the money to buy I would move back (as long as my wife agreed
).
2 dogatemyfinances // Aug 20, 2008 at 9:52 am
I would love to move to California. But not for those kind of taxes! You could always retire there.
And you could consider Florida. I don’t really consider Florida East Cost. And there’s no income taxes, laid-back mindset, real estate at a bargain right now.
3 chris // Aug 20, 2008 at 10:47 am
I was reading an article from USA Today this morning. I believe it was from Monday’s paper. They are doing a get out of debt series. One of the feature couples moved from California to Texas to escape the high cost of living in California. To their surprise, they are finding living costs to be frightfully close to those in California. Just in different categories. Such as land taxes and utility bills.
I think I would consider the midwest or maybe even the mid South. The Carolina’s, Tennessee and so forth. Moderate temps for the most part, laid back lifestyles, lower cost of living overall and low tases
Here’s a link to the story http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/basics/2008-08-17-frugal-families_N.htm
4 LivingAlmostLarge // Aug 20, 2008 at 10:57 am
Great article Chris, but it’s not even close. Look at cost of living Calculators like on Money and see how much more expensive CA is. Why?
Because imagine paying $10k in state taxes on a $100k salary in CA, not an unreasonable income and your taxes are 10%. Make $100k in Tx and you are going to pay Zero.
In Texas they paid $8k for their property taxes on maybe a $300k home, but they even said cost more than $900k. So in CA, rebuying an equivalent home will make property taxes about 1.5% = $13.5k. You have to compare apples to apples. Same home costs probably 3x as much. So they just saved a huge chunk in home value and property taxes.
Their $3k/year property taxes I am guessing was on a home about $250k in CA, and because of proposition 13, it never goes up.
But this family honestly in Texas is driving cars and buying homes I bet they can’t afford. They were deeply in debt in CA and still have a mortgage in Texas though they made enough to pay off their debts and put down a DP. They likely doubled or tripled their home value in CA during their years of ownership.
Yowsa.
5 LivingAlmostLarge // Aug 20, 2008 at 11:01 am
http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html?step=result¤t_salary=100000&fromStateMenu=CA&from_city=Los+Angeles-Long+Beach+CA&toStateMenu=TX&to_city=Dallas+TX&x=62&y=8
40% less salary to have a comparable standard of living from Los Angeles, CA to Dallas, TX. I have a feeling the family instead of curbing their spending bought a bigger, better home above and beyond their real means.
Utilities in Texas cost 2.2% more, Groceries 9.6% less in Texas, Housing 71% less in Texas, Transportation 9.3% less (remember CA has the highest gas prices it hit about $4.80/gallon for them earlier this summer), and 5.5% less healthcare.
That couple has no excuse really.
6 frugal zeitgeist // Aug 20, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Seattle is fantastic. I often think about rocketing back to the PNW.
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