cheapo places to live

[mama2my3]

Hi everyone, not sure if this belongs here but I am going to give it a try. We currently live in California and are looking to move for several reasons. I am wondering if anyone would like to share where they live, why they live there and how much it costs to live where you do. Things like a gallon of milk, gas or heating oil. Housing prices, taxes and electricty. Everyday living stuff. It is so expensive living here and we are looking to simplify, if we can.

Thanks so much!

[tbs727]

Well, I'll be the first. I live in Northwest Arkansas. If your looking on the internet check out Fayetteville Arkansas. We pay $650 a month for a 3 bed/2 bath house with a large back yard. Electric in the Summer is about $120, and gas is about the same in the winter. It's pretty mild here in the winter. The economy is GREAT! this is the birthplace of Wal-Mart and Tyson foods (I live about 3/4 miles from Tyson world headquarters) so there is a lot of growth in the area. I like it. Good luck finding a place to live.

[ScrapMama]

My dh and I have been pondering this question as well. We live in California also and would like to move to a more inexpensive area.

[ewokgirl]

I've always wondered how Californians can afford to live with the cost of housing there!

I live in a suburb of Dallas, TX. Actually, my town is about halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, which is great, because when my DH was laid off from his Dallas job, he was able to get one in Ft. Worth without it being much of an extra commute. He's back in Dallas now.

Anyway, our suburb was listed in The Dallas Morning News a year or so ago as being one of the 5 most underrated suburbs. That may be the wrong title, but the gist of the article was that housing costs are still fairly low compared with the other suburbs, we have a great school district, lots of amenities, and approximately equal distance from Dallas and Ft. Worth.

We bought our little 4-bedroom home about 7 years ago for only $104,000. According to our property taxes, the value has gone up about $30,000 since then. Our home is a little older (20 years), but it's in a nice little neighborhood with nice neighbors and fully grown trees! (That's important to me; I hate those little stick trees in new developments.) We pay about $3000 annually in property taxes.

Electric varies. Our latest bill was kind of high ($267), but we ran the heater quite a bit since we had several chilly days. Our highest bill in the summer (100+ degrees) is usually around $200-225. We installed a new AC unit and new ductwork last summer, so I'm hoping some of that will go down. Our house isn't as energy efficient as it could be, either. We have ceiling fans in every room (a must in TX), so that helps. Spring and fall, our electric bills are typically around $80 or so. Our house is all electric, so I have no idea what gas or heating oil costs.

Food is decently priced. Of course, it helps to shop at a variety of stores. My DH will only drink milk from a store called Braums, and a gallon there this week was $2.59.

I'm not crazy about the heat in July, August, and September, but I really love where we live. It's not as beautiful as some other parts of the country, but the cost of living is lower than many places, and the people are the friendliest around. I don't know your husband's or your line of work, but there's probably a good chance that Dallas or Ft. Worth has the same or similar industries.

[guest7]

Do NOT come to Massachusetts or southern NH! The prices are outrageous!!

When my 16 yo dd graduates from college (6 more years) We're buying a small home/condo in South Carolina. Pretty cheap there.

Please won't you be.... my neighbor.

[mama2my3]

Wow! Thanks for the responses so far!
LOL ewokgirl! We have never lived anywhere else and so, ignorance is bliss, I guess. We have several friends who have already made the move and several more are getting ready to go.

I love the information that everyone is providing, thank you so much! I can't wait for more!

[Nemeweh]

I live in a suburb of Charlotte, NC.' specifically in Pineville NC. It is about 2 miles (literally) from the SC boarder.

I love it.

When we purchased this 2400 (almost 2500) sq ft. house in 1998 we paid
159k. Its now appraised at 180k. Its 3 bedroom 2 full bath 1 half bath, 2 car garage, fireplace, and 3/4 acre lot. We also have an inground pool.


The area itself, has grown up a great deal as the population is just below 500,000. We have professional football, basketball, and a minor league baseball team, which is planning on building a ballpark in the downtown Charlotte area, to invite professional baseball as well. We're located 3.5 hours from the NC/SC beaches, and 3.5 hours from the mountains. Museums, Theaters... we have it all.

As far as Utilities - We are just in the process of changing all our lightbulbs to Compact flourescents to bring out electric bill down. We average 200+ in the summer months due to running our pool 24/7. We use natural gas for heating and my highest bill this winter was 278$ (ouch!). We keep it 72 degrees in the winter, 74 degrees in the summer (electric). So we could be saving there. Again these include the use of a pool pump 27/7 all year long, and keeping in mind we havent been the frugalist of consumers... its one of the areas were working on. My friends utilities are MUCH lower.

Food prices I think are fairly average. I play the Grocery Game, and have a Costco membership, so for milk I pay 2.50$ a gallon at Costco instead of 3.50 the more expensive (Harris teeter) grocery charges.

Economy - Charlotte is a Banking town, and also the home of Krispy Kreme donuts, and the Family Dollar stores. My husband is in IT and has been fairly able to always find a job that pays well. *knock on wood* hehe.

I just realized I sound like some commercial for the town! lol. Anyways, hope that helps!

[ironmaiden]

We're in Massachusetts. One of the most expensive states in the union to live. But we also tend to make more money. My inlaws are from Kansas and housing and the cost of services (going out to eat, getting haircuts etc.) are soo much cheaper than here. But things like products (cost of a car, food) cost more here, but not significantly more when compared to how much higher our salaries are. We are not spending a year's salary to buy a new car. Our house value has more than doubled since we bought it in 1994 - good for us, horrible for anyone trying to buy in.

And Massachusetts people have one of the lowest divorce rates in the country. Also, we are one of the best at paying credit cards each month - very little defaults and late payments. We also tend to keep to ourselves, which others see as "cold". As for church, some people go, some people don't, but people don't talk about it. When you are at work, you have no idea who goes to church or which church. Religion is something kept private.

We also have tons and tons of great colleges - some well known -MIT, Harvard, some lesser known, Boston University, Boston College, others not really known but still excellent - Northeastern University, Stonehill College, Babson, Bentley. So college attendance is pretty high.

Massachusetts is actually losing population. Too expensive to start out here.

[frugalfarmwife]

I'm in the heart of Ohio just outside a town of 25,000. Our economy isn't as good as it should be due to a lot of business's closing down/moving out, we were the home of Rubbermaid until it was bought out and moved.

However, we're also only an hour from Cleveland and 1 1/2 hours from Columbus, major league football/baseball/basketball (GO CAV's) The commute is not a bad one and a lot of airline pilots and execs live here. Good schools, great parks, low crime, beautiful land.

Home prices here do range from 60,000 to 500,000 (we had a rash of Mc Mansions built north of town that we still can't figure out who built them, lol)

My moms property taxes in town on a 4 b/2ba very nice older brick house are around 1,600 a year.

There are a LOT of positives also, lots of local produce/beef/products, a great liberal arts college, all the major retail stores just north of town.

I've watched this town grow in leaps and bounds in my 40 years here and love it, loved growing up here and settling down here. (In my wild single years I moved to the big city, it was small enough here that if I'd done anything bad mom WOULD find out)

kj

[joyb]

I live in East TN and the prices around here are pretty good compared to what I've heard elsewhere. My aunt sold a pretty nice home(she had had it remodeled) for something like $60,000. I know my MIL's house(2 BR 2BATH) went for under 60. We have grocery stores here, if you take the time to look, that has good prices on food. My DD's ex-boyfriend's parents moved here from NJ because they couldn't afford to retire up there. HTH

[pkellyc]

I live in CT not cheap at all. Why am I here.? Third generation and still here.

[littlemotherhaywood]

We live right on the edge of Cleveland. Until reading this post, I thought it was pretty expensive to live here. Honestly though, we're paying less than most people for a lot of things mentioned here. The average home in our neighborhood (which is nice and well kept) is about 110K. We paid 92K for ours two years ago as our home is older and needed some work. The yards are too small. If you want land, you'll have to pay for it. I think Pittsburgh, as a major city, is not all that expensive compared to other cities with the same amenities. My family is from Hubbard Ohio and the area there is rather cheap as well as the bordering towns. Nice houses with land (a couple of acres) go for anywhere from 100K to 200K (and that's a lot of land). Homes with average size lots are around 60K - 70K. That area is about equal distance between Cleveland and Pittsburgh and there's lots of job growth down that way. Up here, I think the economy is depressed. There are tons of jobs, but just as many people looking for them. What used to have a starting salary of 50K is down to 30K because people are desperate and will take whatever they can get. On that note, don't move to Cleveland, lol. But I would consider Pittsburgh and some of the surrounding communities with an hour or two.

[SewCrafty]

While NY state is gorgeous, the taxes will kill you. Been here all my life and can't wait to leave.

In my area, about 30 miles north of the PA border (Broome county) good jobs are scarce. We used to be known as a manufacturing area, but lots of big businesses have left the area. So what is left are minimum wage jobs like fast food places and sales clerks.

You could find a fixer-upper home for about 30K all the way up to a mansion in the 200K-300K range here. I would say you could get a nice 3BR home for around 100K here. My brother and his wife just built a new home (3BR, 2Bath) about 2 yrs ago and I think it ran them about 150K. Also know that my sil has very expensive tastes when it came to amenities.

Utilities will vary, we are in the country and have a 4 br 200 yr + farm house, about 2700 sq ft. We pay $2,220 a yr for fuel oil, and that is for heat only, Propane is $888 a yr and that covers hot water, dryer and stove, Electric is $768 a yr. Off hand I don't know exactly what the taxes are but I think they are about $2,500 a yr for property (.6 of an acre) and school combined.

Very few homes have central air in this area as we just don't have the long hot months. Where I am in the country, though we do have 2 window a/c units, you really can get away with just fans and open windows for a breeze. Other than snow storms we have had 1 tornado warning in the 18 yrs. we have been out here. It did touch down about 10 miles from us.

Our NY state tax on everything that isn't a food item is 8 1/4 %.

[Hollyhandi]

Come up to Onedia county
sales tax is 9 1/4 .
NY is the pits and can't wait to leave it either. 2 1/2 years when'ds graduates.. Someplace south or southwest

[mama2my3]

This is AWESOME! You guys are doing such a wonderful job of educating me! I am loving all of these repsonses. The only time I have been outside of California is to go and play in Las Vegas! It's fun to "hear" about the rest of our country. Keep 'em coming!

Thanks everyone!!!!!!!!!