Just curious, as an engineer finding myself thinking along similar lines, where did you end up moving?
It can be such a rat race down there, it is refreshing to remember that it doesn't have to be that way. Life exists outside of The Valley, and it happens to be a pretty darn good one (and affordable!) :)
I never ventured outside of the metro area and no one was ever overtly racist but boy if you are not a white Mormon you will stick out, you will be judged and questioned. Most Utah Mormons are conditioned to be nice so on the surface they appear so but they do judge and single out people who don’t belong.
I visited SF over a weekend and was instantly surprised about how accepting everyone was. It just seemed like I fit in and belonged. I’d tolerate much worse conditions than “low income in SF” than be “rich” in Utah.
Metro-SLC is pretty liberal and tolerant. The further out you go, the more ignorance you'll encounter.
My bigger issue is the beer. 2.5% whatttttt?
One counter-point: not sure if this is still the case, but a few years ago Provo, Utah (just south of SLC) used to have the highest per capita usage of anti-depressants. Interpret that how you will :P
> Utah is becoming quite diverse
Was curious about this, as it didn't seem to fit my limited observation from my last few trips to Utah (which is again, a lovely place). The Census bureau government says Utah is >91% "white only":
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/49
Which is likely more diverse than Utah was in the past, but could not be fairly compared to California as "quite diverse" given the same number for California is 73%:
With one kid or wife per bedroom and 1000sqft for kitchen/dining/whatever, you have room for 28. (4 wives, 6 kids each) Making the non-bedroom part of the house more luxurious and adding a bathroom to each bedroom, you have room for about 16. You can hit that even without polygamy.
He may be counting a large garage. That could be 1000sqft by itself, so knock off 3 or 4 bedrooms.
Fundamentalist Mormons are still Mormon, and yes, 10,000 to 30,000 of them are in plural marriages.
Also, note that I didn't mean it as an insult, and I quite like large families. Even the mainstream Mormons tend to have large families.
I have considered doing the same but seems like you almost have to buy a house that big or live in a non-desirable area.
I grew up in a fairly large house (I don't recall the size, but two floors, 6 bedrooms, kitchen, formal dining room, living room, family room, 3 bathrooms, basement filled with junk; so, fairly large -- semi-rural Maryland, where space was cheap in the 80s/90s). My parents weren't hoarders, though they did accumulate stuff. After my sister and I moved out and my mom passed away, my dad lived in a giant house by himself, couldn't maintain it, and also felt like he couldn't move because the house wasn't in good enough shape to sell.
I just don't get this need for more and more space. It just encourages you to buy more stuff that you don't need, and takes more time/effort/money to maintain. I hesitate to "tell people how to live", but this keeping up with the Joneses attitude is a component of what causes cost of living to rise and is ultimately a zero-sum game.
Space is wonderful for doing things like dancing, hosting guests, exercise, communal/family cooking (sprouting many kilograms of chickpeas, fermenting 40+qt of kimchi).
Also, as the commenter below mentioned, we do enjoy hosting people for parties and family get-togethers. We spend a good amount of energy and time and money on these activities that are for the enjoyment of other people.
Wealthy people often build massive palaces to honor their own greatness and inflate their egos, I can assure you this is not one of those homes :).
It's a pattern I found recurring as we were looking at houses: unless you wanted a 100 year-old house (which could be a good or bad idea), there was simply nothing under 3,000 sq ft on the lot sizes we were looking at.
Edit: duh, it's really 800 sqm.
When the kids have moved out, you can downsize to that retirement place in Spain... except that may not work as well after the UK leaves the EU.
Does that make Luton, St Albans etc. the 'suburbs' of London?
A good rule of thumb is (or was): Does it have black cabs?
How much carbon is emitted cooling and heating an 8k sq ft home in Utah? How far do you have to drive to do things?
Overall, the valley we live in has pretty much everything we could want, from a retail perspective.
A nice small-town grocery store about 3 mins away, and larger national chains further down the road.
Not sure if it will be helpful to you but I hope so. :)
So long as you and your partner are both making 6 figures you should be able to afford any of the following cities:
- Seattle
- Portland
- Austin
- Denver
In SF/SV, the high housing prices extend far enough out from SF to cover almost everything that is in reasonable commute distance. Same for Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and San Jose.
In Seattle, prices are high or getting there in Seattle, Redmond, and Bellevue, but there is still reasonable housing between Seattle and Tacoma, and across the Sound over in Kitsap county. If you can get a work schedule that lets you miss the heavy commute hours it should be reasonably possible to get affordable housing without too bad a commute.
That's a pretty high bar for cost of living. Here in Charlotte, NC, I make half of that, and could support two people without any difficulty.
I wouldn't consider legal marijuana worth $100k a year, personally.
Rents in Portland are skyrocketing (I had friends whose landlords were pulling out 30% rent increases). I went from Portland to Oakland and my rent isn't that much more.
Not impressed.
I lived in Portland for six years and never once heard this expression and yet I know exactly what you mean.
10 years ago = 82nd is bad
Now = 122nd is bad
I count myself lucky to live West of 82nd.
If anyone's up here visiting, I'll happily buy you a beer - or whatever you prefer, but... there's lots of beer here.