California
Related: About this forumDo you like living in California?
what are the pros? Cons? Housing costs are high. I would be on SSDI. My partner gets a pension and Social Security. Interested in everyone's opinion. TIA!
jimfields33
(15,793 posts)And its over 80K. What about Nevada? Average income is 63K plus its blue and has nice weather like Cali at least in the southern part. Just a thought.
XanaDUer2
(10,663 posts)I'm open to suggestions
BigmanPigman
(51,590 posts)The weather is great but it is VERY expensive to live here. If I were you I'd do a lot of homework crunching real numbers. I am on a limited/fixed income and I have watched every penny my whole life so I am used to going without. Car regis. and insurance, prop tax, sales tax, electricity, etc are very high. Even groceries are high compared to other states.
Juneboarder
(1,732 posts)I mean, don't get me wrong. I love to hear that, but my experience is that we're mostly red. I remember some duck head (auto-corrected on purpose) in Carlsbad Village nearly ran me off the road because of my Obama magnet on my truck years back. And now I'm in Vista, and the repub's have a large presence here as well. Don't even get me started with East County...
BigmanPigman
(51,590 posts)San Diego County, CA is Leaning liberal. In San Diego County, CA 56.3% of the people voted Democrat in the last presidential election, 36.6% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 7.1% voted Independent.
San Diego county voted Democratic in the last three Presidential elections, after voting Republican in 2000 and 2004.
In the last Presidential election, San Diego county remained strongly Democratic, 56.3% to 36.6%
https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/california/san_diego
*There are definitely pockets of GOP but the number IS decreasing.
Juneboarder
(1,732 posts)Maybe I'll stick around a little bit longer, lol. I'm just here for the equity until I can retire, sell my home and move somewhere where I can buy a home with the proceeds and still have extra cash.
Mr.Bill
(24,284 posts)I have lived here since I was eight years old, in 1961. I grew up in what is now Silicon Valley. I left there in '91 because it was just too crowded, horrific traffic 24/7/365. And yes, it got very expensive there. I now live in a small town in Lake County, the north end of the wine country. You can still buy a nice house here for 200K. I retired and downsized about five years ago and I live in a Senior mobile home park. You can buy a mobile home in my park for well under 50K and our space rent is around $500 a month. We are comfortable here on a small pension and two SS checks.
We are one mile from the quaint downtown on the shore of the largest natural lake in California. I wouldn't recommend this area for a young person starting a career, unless it's in the medical field. Those or govt. jobs are about the only good paying jobs here. Our politics are marginally blue, the people are nice. We are about two hours from the ocean. The down side is we don't have that fantastic weather the rest of the state has. It can go over 100 sometimes in the summer, and the low 30s in the winter nights. Yes, we have had fires here, and that's been a little scary. We've been evacuated twice, but out current place is pretty safe. If you have any questions, PM me.
we would have to live in a cheaper area. A 55 plus mobile home park type of situation. Looked at Riverside, too. Thank you for your response. I'll pm you if I have questions
dhill926
(16,337 posts)my big issue, is the ocean is freaking cold!
Auggie
(31,169 posts)This is a large state. Decide what and how you want to live -- culture, weather, urban or country. Do homework and prepare that compromise might be the order.
Look for federally subsidized senior housing too. It might work for you.
DonaldsRump
(7,715 posts)Choose carefully, and you should be fine. Just beautiful country and oceans here. Folks are often quite laidback (except when driving!).
Other than the cost, I find it perfect. I do think in the last 4 years, trump targeted states like California, and the place has suffered as a result (taxes, fires, etc). I think with VP Harris from here, we will see marked improvement as to how we are treated by the federal government.
And it's not at all blue. Once you get out of the metro areas, it can become red quite quickly. But because of places like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, San Diego, Sacramento etc, Ds tend to dominate. Put it this way, we're also the home of Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes.
leighbythesea2
(1,200 posts)Cost of living is high, but do you want to live in a city? If not, maybe it's possible. I looked at rents, and I feel like they went up over 50% in almost 8 years since I was there?
I dont want to over romanticize it, but of everywhere I've lived, liked it the best. Lifestyle, it is truly a love. My take on LA, optimistic, entrepreneurial, every type of nature to experience, tolerant, progressive, and weird in the best ways. SF was a love also, especially Berkley.
Commuting isnt fun, but if you can avoid it, that's great.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)beach, the zoos and the restaurants. Left in 1995 and have lived here and there since. Been
here in New Mexico since 2005 and love it here.
NNadir
(33,516 posts)...the cost of living was absurdly high then, is worse now, and after a few years, the weather gets boring, things catch fire too easily, water is always a problem and occasional Earthquakes, though the most powerful I ever experienced was the Landers quake, are unnerving. The crowding and the traffic in the cities is unbearable. Returning to water, often one felt guilty for flushing the toilet after peeing, or taking an extra two minutes in the shower. The air in many parts of the State is dangerous to breathe.
When I lived in San Diego - it may be different now - there were an awful lot of racists around there.
When I ran on the beaches, I often had to remove oil from my feet with cooking oil, which we jokingly called "natural seepage remover."
Compensations: Beautiful scenery, Big Sur, no random snow, exercise outdoors in the winter months, and...and...well there must be something else, but I can't think of it now.
When I was in my 20's - when California was still affordable - I could sing along with the Beach Boys "California Girls," but in truth, I imported my "California Girl" from New York, and although I think she enjoyed some of our time there, she'd never, ever, even remotely consider returning to California from New Jersey.
XanaDUer2
(10,663 posts)HeartachesNhangovers
(814 posts)I have to disagree. I worked in CA air quality regulation for 26 years, and this has probably never been true in CA, although the air quality in LA and areas to the east of there - the "Inland Empire" - as well as the south end of the San Francisco Bay Area (San Jose, Gilroy) have historically had poor air quality, although it is much better than it was 25 years ago.
Better air quality - not including wildfire smoke which I discuss below - is one of the very few ways that CA has improved over the last 25 years.
NNadir
(33,516 posts)...distribution.
Specifically, NO2 is brown in color, and you could see it, pretty much every damn day except when it rained.
I lived in LA for more than 5 months before I realized that mountains surrounded the basin, because one could never see them. Now, it is probably true that some of that was natural haze, but my understanding at the time was that it was largely PM2.5 and sulfates.
I wouldn't say that the 15 years I lived in the state was never. Air that one can see is not good for you.
The air was brown along the coast pretty much from Malibu to San Diego in the years I lived there.
A recent publication puts air pollution deaths in California as of 2012 somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000: Mortality burdens in California due to air pollution attributable to local and nonlocal emissions (Zhu et al. Environment International 133 (2019) 1052322)
This may be better than it was when I left California in 1993, but I wouldn't call it "harmless."
In any case, the failure to address climate change - and I personally regard California's approach to climate change as absurd, although it is consistent with popular fantasies about the subject - mean that the state will continue to burn, with very real air pollution consequences.
I would never want to live in California again, which I would suggest is a good thing for Californians, since it's not like they need more people.
quaint
(2,563 posts)Living nicely on my Social Security but only because I bought my home in 1974.
XanaDUer2
(10,663 posts)we're looking at mobile homes in 55 plus communities. We love California
Mr.Bill
(24,284 posts)Before I bought my mobile home I did a little research. Mine was priced at 15.5K. It did need some work, which we were prepared to spend some money on. There was one just like it in Quincy, which is a small town in Northern California near the Nevada border. Slightly more extreme weather than here. It was priced at 12K. One just like it in San Diego was 87K. The good weather costs money. There is actually a mobile home park in Malibu with ocean views. 40 year old single wides can cost 1.5 million there. Of course space rent will also be priced accordingly.
General advice about mobile homes. Get a professional inspector to check it all out before you purchase. Our inspector found some amateur electrical work that was a downright fire hazard. Also check for aluminum wiring in anything over 45 years old. You don't want that. Again, a fire hazard.
quaint
(2,563 posts)I wanted to downsize, but couldn't afford to. This site gives sample space rents.
Shocking to me was discovering some parks charged rent and HOA, up to $1200 month!
I'm still where I've lived for 46 years.
This site has San Diego area 55+ parks with a good information graph toward the bottom.
Good luck!
nwliberalkiwi
(367 posts)If you're looking for mobile home living try Bishop, Big Pine and Lone Pine. Area is away from the ocean. Small towns, with Bishop the largest at about 3,600. 200 miles to Reno, 250 to Los Angeles and the same to Las Vegas. Good hospital in Bishop (Northern Inyo Hospital). Lot's of hiking, fishing and photography.
HeartachesNhangovers
(814 posts)Pros:
1) Great weather if you're on or near the coast. I grew up in LA, but prefer the cooler weather farther up the coast. The weather is nice all the way up to Oregon.
2) If you like having a lot of people around, the people density is very high on or near the coast until you get up past San Francisco.
Cons:
1) Homelessness that is out of control, with no prospect of improvement. Back in 1996 when I lived in San Francisco, Mayor Willie Brown famously said that homelessness in SF was unsolvable. He was heavily criticized, but almost 25 years later he's still right, and the problem has spread and worsened all over the state and basically up the entire west coast to Seattle.
2) A wildfire season that is longer and worse every year. Any part of the state that isn't completely urbanized is susceptible to burning, and many places that ARE completely urbanized experience weeks of continuous heavy smoke every year.
Response to XanaDUer2 (Original post)
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ailsagirl
(22,896 posts)and honestly I cant imagine living anywhere else. I hate the summers, though!! At least its a dry heat, so were lucky (I suppose).
Oh, and were mostly Dems.
Hope this was a tiny bit helpful