LM: Moving to the West Coast

z31maniac said:

In reply to Curtis :

I'm having a hard time understanding how you couldn't afford to stay in LA making $168,000 per year. "$1500 per weekend behind the bar, $2000/wk at the shop,"

Because my mortgage was $1900 on a one bedroom tiny house in a terrible neighborhood, student loans, home insurance, $5.69 a gallon for diesel, taxes, food prices, lazy wife to feed and clothe...

And of course, those were good numbers.  Some weeks at the shop were $1500, some weekends at the bar were $200. My W2s never broke 6 figures anyway.

Housing prices have basically plateaued here in Portland, which is nice. I don't know if that extends to Hillsboro though. Either way, the suburbs are much cheaper for housing. Hillsboro does have Top Golf and an indoor kart track (K1 Speed).

I personally like Portland way better than LA. I lived near-ish LA through college and never really enjoyed visiting the city. I'm not a big city kind of guy. Portland manages to have all the amenities of a big city but still feel small. It is only like 650k people, but it's the biggest city in Oregon. A lot of the complaints about cost of living here stem from the fact that wages haven't risen in conjunction with housing costs. Average income in the city is somewhere in the low $30k/year range and a one bedroom apartment will be close to $1000/month. You can see how sucky that math works out. 

Feel free to reach out with any specific questions. I don't live in Hillsboro but lots of my coworkers do so I can talk to them if I don't have an answer for you.  

Curtis said:

z31maniac said:

In reply to Curtis :

I'm having a hard time understanding how you couldn't afford to stay in LA making $168,000 per year. "$1500 per weekend behind the bar, $2000/wk at the shop,"

Because my mortgage was $1900 on a one bedroom tiny house in a terrible neighborhood, student loans, home insurance, $5.69 a gallon for diesel, taxes, food prices, lazy wife to feed and clothe...

And of course, those were good numbers.  Some weeks at the shop were $1500, some weekends at the bar were $200. My W2s never broke 6 figures anyway.

 

This is why it's helpful to use actual numbers. You presented those as just what you made, not what you COULD make. 

I just looked up an OKC to LA cost-of-living comparison, and no, I wouldn't want to live out there on what I make here. Nor would I want to pay $550k for the house I have now instead of the $150k I paid for it.

Corvailis Or. seems to be a popular place  for people from this area.

Seattle-Tacoma area has been decided for me. It's a temp move for the time but I'm excited and looking forward to it. Time to start the search for a dwelling.