Potentially moving out of state

I finally got my wife on board to move away to more desirable ( to me at least) places.

Ive always craved trees and mountains etc.

Ideally Id love to move to the PNW...but now we are eyeing up places like New Hampshire.

After this year there is really nothong holding us here in Maryland, her kids are grown and our little one is too young to know anything yet and I want to be away from the madness.

So...wheres the idiots guide to moving to another state?

We also have West Virginia to consider as well but I am looking for a bit of a lower average summer temperature 

Money, both earning and spending is generally an important part of a move. Thoughts on how you two will deal with that? 

More tracks in NE than in PNW, though in NE they threaten to close them for sound frequently. Eastern Canadaland has some great stage rallies and there is ice racing around the finger lakes. 

Somewhere between Watertown, NY and Burlington, VT is your sweetspot. 

This thread is relevant to my interests.

New Hampshire has caught my eye as a potential retirement location.  We're definitely trying to get away from summer humidity and heat.  Being retired, staying home when the winter is crappy won't be such an issue.  Plus my wife is an avid knitter so lots of woolens won't be an issue.

East Tennessee. Beautiful countryside, decent summer temps, mild winters. Depending on the town, reasonable cost of living. 

I could probably see myself living in the PNW for a bit but not WV, NH, and def not east TN lmao! 

I hear you on wanting to live somewhere with less heat and humidity in the summertime. I have that same thought for about half of the year. However, I am not real interested in a serious winter, so New England is out for me. I am considering moving into the mountains of NC. Still have 4 seasons, but winters are not as long or as cold as they are up north and the summers are not too bad at the higher elevations (for the south).

If you are looking at relocating, availability of work usually plays a big part unless you are retiring. Other things to look at before going to a new area is healthcare and schools.

Do either of you have specific climate desires?  NH and PNW are vastly different.  NH has pretty brutal winters and still relatively warm summers.  PNW is like 12 months of spring and fall.  It has to do with the predominant ocean currents.  Since the Pacific currents flow N-S, they bring cooler, more steady air helping to shrink the distance between winter and summer temps.  The Atlantic flows S-N bringing wildly varying temperatures and moisture levels.  On the east coast, you still tend to get all four seasons, it's just that in NH you get 10 degrees in the winter and 80 degrees in the summer compared to GA where you get 40s in the winter and 100 in the summer.  On the west coast you tend to get much smaller deltas in heat energy from the oceans, so in San Diego you have 70 in the winter and 100 in the summer.  Seattle you get 50 in the winter and 70 in the summer.  (random numbers for demonstration.)

... except San Francisco.  It doesn't seem to matter when you're there, it feels like 58.  I think it was RW Emerson who said "the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in SF."

Another thing about PNW (depending on how far inland you go), you don't get a ton of time to appreciate the mountains and trees.  The mountains are breathtaking, but you only get to see them on the rare few days that the dewpoint pushes the clouds above the elevation.

Many people LOVE Asheville NC.  I was personally not a big fan.  The town is great, but it felt isolated and surrounded by nothingness.  I felt like it was a slightly more liberal Branson MO.

WV is such a beautiful state.  The economy is meh, the schools are terrible, and unemployment is still one of the highest in the nation, but if you find good work, it's great.  The people are friendly.  Depending on the town, you might find the infrastructure to be crumbling giving it a quasi-detroit-ish feeling, but the nice people make up for it.  My family has a property just west of Clarksburg, so I'm there a good bit.  A bit south in Beckley is somewhere I would love to spend more time.

If you like winter, and really love the mountains and trees, what about MT?  Kalispell is quite possibly one of the most beautiful towns I've ever experienced.  Not necessarily the town itself, but c'mon... it's 20 miles from Glacier NP.  There is a bit of "outsider fear" in MT, but three towns buck that trend: Kalispell, Cooke City, and Livingston.

If you prefer, what about mountains of AZ/NM.  Santa Fe? Albuquerque?  Flagstaff?

There are also some insanely beautiful (if not expensive) places toward the inland side of central CA are just breathtaking.  Sequoia/Kings Canyon/Sierra/Yosemite are friggin lovely, and the whole Rt 99 corridor is close by.  Fresno, Visalia, Merced.  I'd love to live up around Truckee and Tahoe some day.

well, any place is less humid than MD. The Bay does a very good job of putting water into the air. Something to watch out for.. I do not know if Maryland does it, but NJ has an "exit tax" that kicks in if you sell your home and immediately move out of state. Only way around it is to sell a year early and rent a place. Otherwise they tax the profits on your home sale on an "estimated" value instead of actual.

In reply to malibuguy :

What do you do for a living? 

I've spent a fair bit of time in Portsmouth, NH. 10 months in 2016 and I've currently been here since Aug 2018.  

One of the big issues it has as a retirement location is property taxes, which tend to be higher than other areas - but if you're currently in the DC region of MD, it may not seem that bad.  No income tax and no sales tax, so they have to get income from somewhere.

Property within commuting distance from Boston (say, less than 2 hrs away) can be high, but again - if you're used to DC area housing prices, it may seem cheap.

The car community up here seem pretty good. The moto community as well.  Since the winters are long, cold and dark up here, when folks can get out, they take advantage of it.  

Part of me wants to buy something up here, but I just don't trust my work situation here enough to take that plunge.  

I have friends who recently relocated from Silver Spring, MD to Montana. He's retired and she works remotely for the patent office. They love to ski (he's been working to get certified for ski patrol), so the winters out there are a bonus to them. MT just got hammered with an early snow storm. 

In reply to Curtis :

Reasonable  humidity is my primary climatic requirement.  I don't really want super dry, as in desert, and I definitely don't want 100+ dF summers, even if "but it's a dry heat".  But living in the eastern MD / DE area all my life, the summers are terrible around here.  85-100 dF with relative humidity to match.  80dF summers with RH in the 50-60% range would be fine, even at the cost of 10dF winters.  We get those here, too, and as I said, staying home isn't so bad when you don't have to go to work every day.

Oh... and the 4 season in New England apply up here. 

Early Winter; Winter; Late Winter; Road Construction.

...it me took over 9 hrs to drive from Philly to Portsmouth last night... 

In reply to Ian F :

Property taxes here in DE are not bad - I pay about $3500 / year on a 3000 sq ft 1967 house on a quarter-acre suburban lot.  It's assessed at $102,000 and probably has a current sale value of $275-295,000.  Delaware has no sales tax on anything (except cars) but does have income taxes, excluding SS.  Our state income tax as a couple is maybe $6500 while we're working, so call that $10k / year going to the state.

Ok i do production welding for a tooling company for most of my week then I run my own custom fab shop on my off days (turbo fab etc).  

My wife can do a little bit of everything but ideally Id like to be able to have her stay at home with our daughter.

I love fall type weather and snow.  I dont necessary want -40 temps but ill take a more real winter over our typical summer any day.

PNW is definitely preferred due to more realistic temps, I love the fog and everything.  That whole corner is appealing to me...Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho and NW Montana.

Our current home is worth about 200-220k...id like to find something over there when the time comes in the 150-190k range to have a bit of overlap for cross country moving.

Dusterbd13-michael said:

East Tennessee. Beautiful countryside, decent summer temps, mild winters. Depending on the town, reasonable cost of living. 

Took the family to Knoxville area for the 2017 eclipse (Alcoa, actually) and was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness of the folks we ran into.  If I wanted to venture a bit further inland, and Roanoke, VA wasn't ticking all my boxes, I'd certainly consider Eastern Tennessee!

Lincoln NE is pretty laid back...

If you have any specific questions about the PNW, feel free to ask.

There's always places looking for welders around here it seems, between the shipping and fishing ports, the windfarms, the farming communities, etc.

It is getting more expensive to live in the populated areas though, so plan on making more money or living further "off the grid" in the smaller communities (which there are more than a few).

Curtis said:

Many people LOVE Asheville NC.  I was personally not a big fan.  The town is great, but it felt isolated and surrounded by nothingness.  I felt like it was a slightly more liberal Branson MO.

Asheville, NC and surrounding area is a great place to live.  I moved here from New Hampshire back in 1990.  Love it here.  As Curtis said, Asheville is very liberal.  However the outlying areas, not so much.  We are about 20 minutes south of Asheville near the Asheville Airport.  You get the 4 seasons, hurricanes will peter out when they hit the mountains, snow doesn't stick around to long, temperatures are cooler than the piedmont too.  Not to far to several race tracks and an active autocross club in town.

If you like craft beer, there are now about 60 craft brewers in the area and more moving here or starting here every week it seems. 

Housing costs are reasonable, healthcare is plentiful, taxes not too bad, car insurance is cheap.

Come join us!

malibuguy said:

Ok i do production welding for a tooling company for most of my week then I run my own custom fab shop on my off days (turbo fab etc).  

Oh... fabrication, eh?

Then buy this house.  The fact that it's a block away from me has no bearing on my petition. 

In reply to Duke :

So you want Colorado. You just perfectly described the front range. Avoid denver and it's really a nice place to live especially if you like 4 seasons with none of them being all that bad. 

Curtis said:

malibuguy said:

Ok i do production welding for a tooling company for most of my week then I run my own custom fab shop on my off days (turbo fab etc).  

Oh... fabrication, eh?

Then buy this house.  The fact that it's a block away from me has no bearing on my petition. 

Not particularly interested in PA...and i need a minimal 1acre and a 2 car garage.  I have 6 cars she has 1 and then 3 dogs.  Most likely Ill sell off 2 cars before the move.  But still need the 2car for the 2 forever projects

In reply to malibuguy :

In that case you want a 4-car garage in NH.  While it's been sporadic, when they get snow up here, they really get snow and it tends to hang around (2016 was a heavy snow year and we had piles of snow in parking lots into July).  I see a lot of houses with attached garages and then separate shop buildings.

Personally, I like living in PA.  Which is one reason I'm not keen on moving to NH. 

It's easier (and cheaper) to own a lot of land on the east coast while not having a horribly long commute. 

In the west, if you want land you need to be an hour away from the nearest metro area, which usually means not near anything. With land/property out here it's a case of "Cheap, Big, Close to Employment" - pick two. 

In the east, you can live in a small town on 2 acres, drive a few miles down the road to a bigger town with a grocery story, or a few miles more into a city. 

In the west, you can live on a 10,000sqft that cost $200,000 and you're friends will say "you live WAY out there." 

Unless we're talking less than desirable area. Albuquerque for example, has some cheaper land prices in some areas of the city and surrounding areas because its just not as high-demand of a city. That's just it, in the west, if you find a city to which you say "that's a nice city" or "that's a nice town" more than likely everyone else thinks the same as housing prices are stupid. 

Also interested even though I think we've decided we are going to stay in OKC or the area at least. I could make a lot more money in Austin, for example, but the house I have 20 minutes from an NBA game in OKC, would be around $400k instead of $156k. That takes care of the extra salary. 

We are going to start looking for land soon, or an existing home on land. For $300-350k here, we should  be able to get a pretty nice place on 10-15 acres. 

If I was willing to have a longer commute. We just a saw a nice house, outside of Perry, OK, on 40 acres for around $200k IIRC. 

Spending and earning constitute a major part of the move. The thing is how you deal with it.