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+--- Thread: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. (/showthread.php?tid=18205)
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - pbmaise - 03-27-2017
Let's compare
Food = $200 month...$90pp
Electric = $50 month...$10 (batteries)
Gasoline = $75 ...$5 bicycle
Natural Gas = $39..$10 propane
House Insr. = $69..$80 mooring
Prop. Tax = $38..$2 USCG
Water Bill = $10..$2
Sewer/Trash = $50..$0
Land line Phone = $22..$9 cell
Internet = $25..$0 included cell
Bus rides to downtown..$3
TOTAL BILLS = $578....$211
Sample costs
Dinner favorite cafe $1
Includes Pork, Jack fruit in coconut milk, mountain dew, and dessert
Movie at mall $3.50 (rare)
Coffee $0.26 Served in cafe
Mt. Dew $0.30
Fresh green beans $0.85 per kilo
Banana $0.90 per kilo
Worker $1.10 per hour if college degree
Worker $0.75 per hour skilled
Downside...must live off savings on have retirement or internet income.
Have to clean bottom of boat weekly
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - lquade - 03-28-2017
whoa, oregon property tax is very HIGH.. and they love bonds. and the state is totally yuppy new agers now. it was very hard to leave but every time i go back to visit family i keep saying "what happened to my beautiful state?" i left in the late 70s to hawaii and for the issues we have here now, the mainland has more. i know many folks who move here, move back a few years later and say whoa, everything has changed. yep, just like hawaii is changing it is everywhere. oregon is always looking for a way to get you. i had a light on a tree by my back gate for many years, built a shed when the tree died and moved the same light to the back of the shed. 100 dollar fine, permit fee doubled for not having a permit. now mind you, this was just a extension cord plugged into my house... this is what many places have become... be careful what you wish for....
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - Durian Fiend - 03-28-2017
My bias is with college towns in coastal states. They're usually pretty groovy, kid friendly places that allow the option of a higher education without leaving home.
Impressive places I've been that may be worth considering are: Palo Alto, CA Corvallis, OR, Moscow, ID, Bellingham, WA, Hanover, NH, Portland, ME, Boone, NC, Juneau, AK.
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - DTisme - 03-28-2017
Born and bred in Maryland suburbs of DC. I can tell you that summers there are like summers here - VERY humid and miserable, but you will have AC and you won't be paying an arm and a leg for it. Sales tax is only 5%, yet somehow everything gets taken care of including excellent schools (maybe the best in the country), libraries, and infrastructure. They also have property tax discounts as you age. If not for the winters, I would consider moving back. Other cons: housing is expensive. But there are little towns north of DC that are quite nice and a lot cheaper, including Fredericksberg and surrounds. Believe it or not, there are DRY counties up that way, so something to consider. Eastern Shore of Maryland -- Oxford, etc -- is quite nice, coastal, and a lot cheaper than DC 'burbs, but of course doesn't have big city amenities like Metro, etc. Also lived in Hartford, CT, and it was dark and dangerous and unfriendly. But no state income tax. We used to say our "tax" went to the oil company to heat the house in winter.
Pennsylvania - not for me. For some reason run into far too many bigots from Pennsylvania. Go figure. Maybe by now it's changed.
Also lived 26 years in the Bay Area. If you want a house in Palo Alto, as suggested above, you will pay over a million for 1500 sq ft. Sales tax is 9% and property taxes are astronomical. But you have great infrastructure including rail.
Yes you can get a house in Alabama or Georgia for under $200K, but you'd be in Alabama or Georgia. Every corner is either a church or a Waffle House. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There's a reason expensive towns are expensive. Just sayin'.
If I were to move back to the mainland, I'd probably go to L.A. as busy and expensive as it is, to be around family.
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - Johnd - 03-28-2017
Gipsy,
The mainland is a wasteland. What is real education? Both of our kids were home schooled and both went to graduate school. Our daughter was about to start her PhD in California and a 63 year old sob who found it inconvenient to take his daily meds rear ended her car at 98mph killing her within minutes, he was not even charged.
A good life is relative to perception, there are many lessons to be learned here, people are MOSTLY kinder that the rest of the world. Take it from us who lived in three continents and 10 US states, there is nothing like Hawaii if you leave, it will be less of it left. Teach your kids to grow things, to read books and ditch the phone, to look up the stars, to smile big smiles just like only Hawaiian keikis can....don't go.
jdo
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - glassnumbers - 03-28-2017
John has a point. I can name any number of beautiful things I've seen on the mainland, but when the day is done, you have to go back to your house, you have to deal with the mainland weather. When I visited Hawai'i, the place I lived was in K'au. So it's not like when I was done doing touristy things, I would go home to a condo on a beach.
What I'm saying is, that the land of Hawai'i, even if you don't take into account the waterfalls or mountains or beaches or ocean, even the inland parts of Hawai'i are better than the best mainland parts. On the mainland when you visit someplace pretty, in the end, you go home. In Hawai'i, your home is always right there in the beauty, you don't have to go somewhere to see it.
I lived in La Jolla for years at Archstone apts. It cost, back then, 2100 when I left, because they bumped the rent from 2000 to 2100, La Jolla is a really nice place. Yet, that super expensive apartment complex which had a pool and a jacuuzi and a excercise room with tv's? None of that holds a candle to waking up in the morning on the island and watching that sunrise and breathing in that warm, amazing air. The air just smells better in Hawai'i, like it's sweeter, somehow.
I've visited Washington D.C and Oregon, Maryland and Tijuania, Texas and many states in between. They all have super cool things, like, have you ever seen fireflies? Man, I wish Hawai'i had fireflies. They are the neatest little bugs. In the end though, the overwhelming beauty of the ocean and the sunrise/sunset, the air and the land, it forms a constant package that, geographically, when compared to any other location that a person could realistically live at without being a millionaire, it's paradise.
I realize that Hawai'i has its problems, it's not like there are angels with harps. What I am saying is, the land in and of itself, the beaches, where you get to live? That is paradise. There's a reason I'm moving there, the tropical environment speaks to me. The things that are Hawai'ian just look cooler, your trees look cooler than mainland trees, your lizards are geckos.
Our cali lizards are a dull brown, really boring. Hawai'ian geckos are super beautiful. You have cool little twisty fern things and all sorts of amazing trees and plants, you can go swimming in the ocean at any time of the day and see a menagerie of fish of all different colors. There's the lava, waterfalls, the tropical temperature. I have an inkling of the challenges of living away from everything, I used to live in a trailer park deep in the woods, and I loved it despite those difficulties. It was one of the best times of my life. I spent all my free time exploring the woods and the cool little streams and mysterious concrete slabs that were out there for some reason. Pretty much all of Hawai'i invokes that same feeling for me, the desire to commune with nature and explore.
Literally just waking up and seeing that sunrise, and breathing the air, is enough for me to say that Hawai'i is a better place to live. On the mainland I often have difficulty talking or breathing because of a condition I have due to a surgery. In Hawai'i the air is so humid that it's like being a young kid again, I could breathe so much easier.
Aloha
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - Johnd - 03-28-2017
There is more than geography or pretty sights that makes these islands a haven, it is the people...another culture that values family, generosity of heart and sense of community.
I concur that things have changed, new folks moving in do not appreciate nor understand our rythm, they miss what they left behind...a long life of living on the wrong side of the road and they want us all to change to their whims. Their life is full of " should bes ", they are used to stress and competition, they feel miserabl e in a way and try to modify " the environment" to feel happier, sadly they miss the point.
We have a home in Arizona, just because the wife wanted " culture", is on the market within a year of being bought, she can't stand the traffic, the noise, the capitalist "culture" , the trashy food, the same old same old same darned corporate retail in each corner. Cocky frogs are sorely missed. We have all the designer touches in a big house in a really sparking community...where everyone is telling on each other if they grow the wrong cactus on the yard, where everyone wants all the land fenced off so coyotes will not eat their annoying barking chihuahua pets, where the only sounds you hear is the garage doors going up and do, we live together but no one wants to know each other.
The wife can't wait to come home to Hawaii after the season is over. I am just so glad that is her not me that insisted to put the house for sale. We are both British Citizens and we decided that we have no business in the mainland any longer, when we go to our other "home in Europe" if at all possible we will try a non stop flight from Heathrow to Hawaii.Mainlanders can keep their "cheap" glorious homes and way of life all onto themselves, we want no part of that desperate lonely existence.
,
I disliked being called a haole here all of my life , until someone said I was as no haole any longer but another local...the best compliment I ever got in my life.
jdo
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - DoryGray - 03-29-2017
Interesting site: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-worst-place-raise-family-city-states-cities-live-2017-2
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - PaulW - 03-29-2017
"Hawai'ian geckos are super beautiful"
Side note: these are one of the invasive species that we can well do without.
RE: The big Island has been changing quickly lately. - DTisme - 03-29-2017
DoryGray- very interesting animated map!