Recommend me a low COL PRETTY place to live?

[mommy111]

If you own a house in California and like it, it’s hard to beat. Unless you want to move to hawaii

[NCGrandma]

If you own a house in California and like it, it’s hard to beat. Unless you want to move to hawaii

Would Hawaii really meet the Low COL criterion? (Maybe my former HI resident friends just lived in pricey places...)


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[California]

Eugene, OR still has homes at a lower cost than SoCal, and is very family friendly and pretty. Flagstaff, AZ is beautiful too. Both would have a lot more rain, but they aren’t humid like the south.

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is diversity. If you are used to SoCal’s diversity of ethnicities, culture, religion, and political views, and attitudes towards people who are POC or LGBTQ+, it may be something you miss in many smaller, lower cost of living towns. A few of my friends and family have experienced that culture shock. They’ve all adjusted. One of my cousins moved to a beautiful small Oregon town ten years ago, and now his kids are experiencing the opposite adjustment as they head to college.

Speaking of colleges- if you are hoping for a UC or state university for your kiddos, in-state tuition rates are a big perk for a big family!

[Gracemom]

I recommended Boise to you before. You can watch Boise Boys on HGTV to see how pretty it is. And it will give you an idea about home prices. Way better than CA!

[AnnieW625]

Despite the hot summers I would say either Sacramento or Riverside. I grew up in the Sacramento area and as far as I know housing prices are still somewhat MCOL. It is a quick 1 hour flight from Sacramento to Burbank if your Dh has to travel back to his home office for a meeting. Even if you budget $500 a month for meeting transportation you would probably be able to get way more of a house in that area than you could in your current market.

Downsides would be it is a 3 hour drive to the warmest ocean (Santa Cruz), but it is two hours to Tahoe, two hours to Yosemite, and 3-4 hours to the southern Sierras (including Mammoth). There is plenty of outdoor activity there. There is a relatively large Mormon population as well.

Now I have lived in Riverside for the last five months I have to say I really like it here. The pace is slower than where we used to live (and I don’t know if it due to a covid slow down or just the norm), but it just feels like home and I am honestly surprised at how quick it felt like home. Our house here (2100 sq. feet, 4 beds., 2 baths, 1/2 acre lot with pool) would range from $900,000 to about $1.4 million in the Long Beach area where we used to live; we never could’ve afforded that. We paid $638k for the current house, and sold our 1100sq. ft. 3 bed., 1 bath house on a small 5,500 sq. ft. lot for $645k. You can find 3/2s on a smaller lot for less as well in decent areas, but we were up against a deadline and again the market was thin this past summer, but the house has everything we could’ve wanted. Dh wanted to feel like we had truly stepped up house wise vs. just paying a little less for what we had already had. There isn’t a lot of inventory here so I wouldn’t suggest looking now, maybe next year or in the fall, but it could be an option for you even crazy commute wise because there is a Metrolink train out here so for occasional meetings a two hour train ride or so each way wouldn’t be too bad. It is an hour max to the mountains, an hour to the desert, and 90 minutes to the beach. The Ontario airport is a breeze to fly out of if you ever need to travel. It is definitely not the hustle and bustle of the LA basin and I am okay with that.


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[bisous]

Thank you so much you guys. This is a fun way to look at different parts of the country.

Lots of pretty places to think about. I'm trying to figure out what factors are important to me. Weather? Schools? Diversity?

Of course this comes on the tail of the most incredible weekend here in Southern California. It rained this weekend (rare for us) so picked up in n out (free hot chocolate for kids on rainy days) and drove to the beach to watch the ocean and eat in the car (trying to get out and all that!). When we got there it was brilliantly clear and the beach was deserted so we parked and made our way out onto the sand. We saw pilot whales and dolphins. It was pretty amazing. It makes me want to stay here forever. Maybe I'll just be a poor Californian for the rest of my life? I guess I need to figure out if it will be worth it after all. It sure is appealing to think of having more disposable income but more crucially I want to make sure that DH and I are set up to be healthy and financially secure in our old age. Not very sexy to think about but a very real concern nevertheless. Leaving here would be really hard!

[SnuggleBuggles]

Move way up the coast. Beach will be chilly but northern CA prices will be less. Would be quite a change in lots of ways.
Maybe make a list of potential places and rent a house for a few weeks to try them on. Don’t go as a tourist. Go to the grocery store, library, playground, drive around the schools...see what day to day life would be like.


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[flashy09]

If you like the ocean, a really fun area is Delray Beach, FL. Atlantic Avenue is busy and full of entertainment all year long. It's pretty green for Florida (not just palms) and lots of nature reserves nearby. It's in Palm Beach County, but not priced like Palm Beach.

Lexington, KY is very unique and pretty if you like lush green and horses. You can get SO much house and acreage for your money. #2 elementary school in the U.S and great restaurants. Every "spoke" of road that is an exit from the ring road around the city leads to unbelievable horse farms. It's convenient to many bigger cites and has a regional airport with direct flights to NYC, FL, TX, etc (so not just "local" big cities...but there are also multiple flights to easy drives like Chicago and Atlanta). If you want even cheaper look at neighboring towns like Versailles and Midway (incredibly charming!!).

Virginia is also really beautiful and you have a bigger city for a capitol and easy access to very big cities. Richmond itself is very pretty - most of my family is on River Rd and it's just gorgeous!

I have lived and visited a lot of beautiful places that are not considered low cost of living, but maybe compared to S. Cal they are? Boulder, CO is gorgeous! Charleston, SC. The water front towns in Connecticut. Asheville, NC. Amelia Island, Fl.

The Berkshires in MA are also very charming! Also the Cape Cod area.

[niccig]

Thank you so much you guys. This is a fun way to look at different parts of the country.

Lots of pretty places to think about. I'm trying to figure out what factors are important to me. Weather? Schools? Diversity?

Of course this comes on the tail of the most incredible weekend here in Southern California. It rained this weekend (rare for us) so picked up in n out (free hot chocolate for kids on rainy days) and drove to the beach to watch the ocean and eat in the car (trying to get out and all that!). When we got there it was brilliantly clear and the beach was deserted so we parked and made our way out onto the sand. We saw pilot whales and dolphins. It was pretty amazing. It makes me want to stay here forever. Maybe I'll just be a poor Californian for the rest of my life? I guess I need to figure out if it will be worth it after all. It sure is appealing to think of having more disposable income but more crucially I want to make sure that DH and I are set up to be healthy and financially secure in our old age. Not very sexy to think about but a very real concern nevertheless. Leaving here would be really hard!

Part of our retirement plan will be leaving SoCal. It’s too expensive if you’re not earning income. Older friends have moved once they retire. We’re doing the same as you, thinking where could we live. I don’t do well in the cold and DH hates humidity. I grew up in similar climate to Florida, so I could be ok with it. I told DH if we lie to where it snows, we’re getting someone to shovel the driveway!! His parents now live in community where HOA does the garden and the snow shoveling. I think I could handle snow if we did the snowbird thing some part of the winter


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[AnnieW625]

Move way up the coast. Beach will be chilly but northern CA prices will be less. Would be quite a change in lots of ways.
Maybe make a list of potential places and rent a house for a few weeks to try them on. Don’t go as a tourist. Go to the grocery store, library, playground, drive around the schools...see what day to day life would be like.


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Eureka is still cheap, but the rest of the coast is not. Eureka is not close to anything though; it is 3-4 hours from the next biggest metropolitan cities (Redding, and Santa Rosa); neither of which have decent sized airports (Sacramento or maybe Oakland would be the closest....Oakland is the closest to Santa Rosa, and Sacramento is 5 hours from Eureka). I would move to Oregon though if I wanted the coast and be close to nowhere. There is no sales tax there. Also Eureka is closer by 3 hours to Seattle than it is to San Diego. People I do know who live in Eureka or used to live there did love it.


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