California is quite expensive

packleader

packleader

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Location
Southern California
How bad is inflation for California? We're already paying a more than 35% premium to live here (yahoo.com)
OR
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-stubborn-inflation-especially-painful-235610608.html

How bad is inflation for California? We're already paying a more than 35% premium to live here​


Apart from Hawaii, many studies rank California as first or second among the states with the highest cost of living, between 35% and 45% above the national average.

What that means as a practical matter is that a household in Los Angeles with $100,000 income could maintain the same standard of living while earning $69,000 in Dallas and $65,000 in Las Vegas, according to Bankrate.com.

As of Thursday, regular gas cost $3.08 a gallon nationally but $4.62 in California.

According to Zillow, the median rent for housing of all kinds in California was $2,750, about 38% more than for the nation. The median sale price for an existing single-family house in the U.S. in November was $392,100, according to the National Assn. of Realtors. For California: $822,000.

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As long as we can afford living in Southern California, we will stay here. I cannot imagine any more wonderful and interesting place on earth than the place we are living now. For example: 1 hour to the beach, the mountains, high desert, low desert, and Los Angeles. 2 hours to San Diego and Mexico. 2 1/2 hours to Santa Barbara (California's Gold Coast.) 4 hours to Las Vegas, etc. And all the museums and interesting places. There is always something to do. In the morning you can go snow skiing, and in the afternoon water skiing. In our area, luckily, not much air pollution and crime. SoCal is almost like a little bit of a paradise where we are living.
 

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Perhaps you might want to consider what the avg individuals net worth or income is btwn different regions to determine whether it's been worth living in CA or not.

I came from a high tax area and it was certainly worth it for us since we actually had to show up at a job (my wife had a 3hr round trip daily commute to Wall St) or my business for which we were highly compensated as well as provide a superior standard of living and an outstanding public education for our child.

We did move after retirement to avoid paying astronomical property taxes and many other non-economic reasons. I understand CA has somehow dealt w the property tax for long time homeowners, but I'm not certain of that. The state income tax is basically the same rate in NY and ID, however.

Don't feel singled out inflation has been bad everywhere.
 
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I think it often boils down to the things you place the most value on. If saving money is the top priority, then California is probably not going to be your top pick. There are many states cheaper to live in, but will you be happy there. That is an important factor. Now if you don't have a choice (Money wise), then moving may be the only option.

That being said, you can buy many homes in California for $392,000, but not in highly populated, or the most desirable areas, but still pretty good areas. There are many in the area I live in. I have examined many states for living, and I find there are trade-offs that you have to be OK with. It may be weather, humidity, politics, landscape and scenery, or taxes, but it's something you will have to accept. JMO
 

Average figures don't reasonably indicate costs due to significant differences between those high and low that is more correctly understood with Bell curves. That is much more the case in this era of a huge wealth gap and inflation than decades ago.

Generally, California coastal urban areas have become ridiculously expensive and that is by design by Wall Street real estate and banking corporations, endless growth and development advocates, university Ivory Tower elites, building and construction corporations, globalists, and their puppet politicians, especially those following trickle down economic ideas that allow open borders for the sake of making the above wealthy at the expense of lower working classes.
 
National retailers don't scale their prices to local economies. That toilet brush on Amazon costs the Californian a fraction in real money of what it costs somebody working and living in a state with an economic basis far lower.

The family from Forgottenville, Flyover is at a significant disadvantage and suffers far more from poor national economic and trade policy. They worry far less about not being able to afford that second Ferrari or keeping up with the latest iPhone for Fido Fluffy, who doesn't even have one diamond encrusted collar!

Somehow I find that when it comes to California even my tiny violin doesn't want to play any more.
 
officerripley said:
Another thing about deciding to move out of California is that in a lot of places, newcomers (especially Californians) are not welcome. I've seen responses like that right here on SF and read a lot of articles about it.
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Part of that is the way they barge in loudly, clump together in a clan, and start on a mission to make everything over in the image of the mess they fled in the first place.

I can't believe some of the construction eyesores we're living with now. From walled McMansion farms to bizarre commercial buildings of two and even three stories crowding the frontage sidewalks nearly into the street plopped amid traditional village architecture. "California Gauche" has become a blight around here.
 
officerripley said:
Another thing about deciding to move out of California is that in a lot of places, newcomers (especially Californians) are not welcome. I've seen responses like that right here on SF and read a lot of articles about it.
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Yeah, it merely demonstrates a lack of reasoning ability in thinking that everyone who lives in a particular state feels the same, thinks the same, votes the same, and wants to live the same. They wouldn't believe that about the state they live in, so why categorize those from another state.
 
bobcat said:
Yeah, it merely demonstrates a lack of reasoning ability in thinking that everyone who lives in a particular state feels the same, thinks the same, votes the same, and wants to live the same. They wouldn't believe that about the state they live in, so why categorize those from another state.
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It is a fact that when enough newcomers arrive, housing prices almost always go up and it seems to locals as if crime rates have also gone up. (Sometimes the crime rate really has gone up; sometimes it hasn't.)
 
officerripley said:
It is a fact that when enough newcomers arrive, housing prices almost always go up and it seems to locals as if crime rates have also gone up. (Sometimes the crime rate really has gone up; sometimes it hasn't.)
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I haven't seen a crime rise, but property revaluations are driving up taxes along with demands for more public services and amenities. It's like a bad guest overstaying and inviting even more relatives over to squat and make demands.
 
officerripley said:
It is a fact that when enough newcomers arrive, housing prices almost always go up and it seems to locals as if crime rates have also gone up. (Sometimes the crime rate really has gone up; sometimes it hasn't.)
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Well housing prices have been going up ever since they started building houses. My first house was a 3 bdrm, 2 ba in a nice neighborhood, and I bought it for just under $24,000. Inflation, building costs, labor, and supply and demand are the drivers of that. People come to California from other states as well, but I wouldn't hold them responsible for our escalating housing costs. People are free to live wherever they want in America if they so desire and can afford it.

As for crime rates, that can be caused by many things too. Relaxing court sentences, not enough police force, bad parenting, illegal aliens, gangs, etc.... Correlation doesn't equal causation. One would have to know that Californians are, in fact, the ones creating the crime increase. Just my views.
 
Cali's has high taxes and cost of living because it's population supports dozens of social aid & assistance programs.

Some of those multi-million dollar programs are redundant because there are many duplicate programs, and others are completely unnecessary. Free tablet, anyone?

But state officials and legislators either lack the intelligence to consolidate or eliminate those programs, or, far more likely, they benefit from them. Each social program is basically a bank account, and only the state can access its funds and track its expenditures and balances.
 
officerripley said:
Another thing about deciding to move out of California is that in a lot of places, newcomers (especially Californians) are not welcome. I've seen responses like that right here on SF and read a lot of articles about it.
Click to expand...

I'd expect most of those supposed "Californians" are not at all natives, but rather latecomers that after the Viet Nam War moved to the state from elsewhere, both other states and internationally, during the suburban real estate explosions and tech job boom years. In the 1970's California became a Mecca for young people due to media including numbers that brought with them criminal and unethical habits. Also many wealth seekers with money expecting to become richer by buying up and selling real estate, and those attracted by media to all the Hollywood glamour and its new era lifestyle morals.

Note, this person in 1948 was born in downtown Los Angeles. In 1950 there were about 11 million residents but by 2000 there were 3 times that, by far most of them from elsewhere.
 
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