Posted by Nords on 6/27/2005, 4:26 am, in reply to "Relocating to Mainland ... Tips?" I know a guy in each town who posts to this discussion board-- http://early-retirement.org/forums/index.php. You could ask "Laurence" in SD or "Ronin" in the LA area for more details. Let's start with the important stuff-- are you familiar with surfer's ear? http://www.surfline.com/surfaz/surfers_ear.cfm I haven't been to SD since 1999 and to LA since our 2001 Disney trip, but I wonder how much of that pay raise would be chewed up by living expenses. Gas in SD may still be cheaper by the gallon but we drove a heckuva lot more (and in more traffic jams) so our total fuel expenses were actually higher than Hawaii. Our car maintenance & repairs were a lot more because we were driving 10K-15K miles a year. Traffic in both towns, especially SD's I-8/I-15 area, makes Hawaii's H-1/H-2 merge look pretty speedy. Home utility costs have gone through the roof and $200/month electric bills aren't hard to do. Water is getting expensive and LA is facing shortages & resentment over draining the rest of CA to support their lifestyle. El Nino droughts have been severe enough to limit yard sprinklers & car washing. Tijuana had such bad sewage spills that the U.S. was actually paying to build a sewage plant there to treat their effluent and keep it off San Diego's southern beaches. Mainland food is cheaper but the shipping costs on Zippy's chili will be a lot more expensive. Papaya & mango are hard to come by. And your kids might have a little trouble finding good li hing mui snacks. I grew up in Pittsburgh (no expat clubs for that town!) and I'm way too familiar with winter, but when we moved from Oahu to SD it was just plain darn COLD. Your body's thermal resistance takes a couple years to adapt, and those Jan/Feb nights in the 40s are no fun. I was not amused by having to wear jeans, socks, shoes, & sweatshirts for most of the year. SD is much drier than Hawaii, too, so you'll feel it in your skin and your breathing. The pollen count in our neighborhood was through the roof and people used to sweep the pinetree pollen off their cars in the morning-- it looked like a fine coat of yellow dust. There must be a reason that the SD & LA jobs are paying so much more. Can you tell if you'd have as much time for family & surfing among the demands of the new job, the new boss, and the time-consuming new commute? Having said all that, we enjoyed living in Kensington (because we couldn't live in Hawaii). Normal Heights is also a good area. Both had decent elementary schools and many magnet/charter school options. Both areas have seen explosive growth in real estate values but I don't know if the rents have been correspondingly crazy. Most landlords have found that rents aren't rising as fast as the prices, so they've been selling and putting their profits into higher-yielding investments like CDs or bonds. You may do OK on rent but home ownership seems even more difficult there than it would be to buy in Mililani today. While SD life had its advantages (walking to the library & playground with a small kid, SeaWorld, the WorldFamousSanDiegoZoo) we missed Hawwaii very badly and we got our butts back here as quickly as we could. When I looked out the airplane window at the Ko'olau it felt more like home than any place I've ever lived. When you're living on the Mainland, songs like "Honolulu City Lights" and just about anything by Na Leo Pilimehana can really hit you hard. I guess your decision will depend on whether or not the extra money can really buy the equivalent quality of life that you have here. If we tried to move to our SD neighborhood today our kid would mutiny and move in with Grandma & Grandpa.
I think that the best way to appreciate Hawaii is to try to build the same quality of life somewhere else. (There's gotta be a reason for all those expat clubs.) We lived in SD in the mid-90s and if I couldn't live in Hawaii then I'd live in San Diego too, but it's a pretty significant change.
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