'Dawg at the Crossroads

[AlohaDawg]

Trouble!

The political environment of my current position has resulted in my HQ deciding to redeploy me to Los Angeles. As of this morning (I'm hoping something changes tomorrow) my only option is Los Angeles.

My wife is not about to move to Los Angeles, and after some fairly intense soul searching and prayerful meditation, I am starting to believe that I need to stay here in Hawaii with my family.

Here is the problem: If I stay, I lose my Federal job, there is no hope of paid relocation to the mainland, and I'm guaranteed a pay cut of at least 25%.

There is a small chance that a relocation to Miami or Chicago could happen, either of which I think I would do.

I need some help with this LA thing, though. I need the few of you who live out there to sell me the LA experience - why do I want to move there? Schools? Neighborhoods? Cost of Living? How about kids? The office would be on Grand Ave not far from the Staples Center.  I need to know where I can live/ what I can get for like 65K -68K a year.

Help a brother out here, I am really not wanting to go there but I am also really not wanting to give up 14 years with this organization.

Also, does anyone out there work for a large health insurance provider? I found some jobs here that look interesting but I need a little help with interpreting the duties. Pay starts at half what I'm getting now and up to 87% or so.

[wombat]

Oh wow.

Well, I have never lived in LA, but I have visited a lot, and it is my greatest fantasy to live there, so I can be encouraging, and you can take it with as big a grain of salt as you like.

LA is totally beautiful and totally cool.  It has everything you want in a city (OK, except decent public transit), but it has the beautiful ocean and mountains and perfect weather.  It has all the cultural attractions of a city, and also what surprised me is that it's really a pretty old place, so it has all the pleasures of urban decay that I didn't expect to find in California.  There is interesting history and charming neighborhoods, and, I know no one else cares, all the Japanese food and shopping you could ever want without moving to Japan.

As a New Yorker I can't believe I am saying this, but another cool thing about LA is that is kind of like New York in that it's one of those places that's really central to our culture (even if you feel like you have to put 'culture' in quotes.)  You feel like you are at the center of something and not out in the sticks.  

Oranges grow on trees there, and avocados.  Flowers bloom in the middle of winter.  Everyone is happy there, even the people who work in, like, coffee bars, because they live in LA and they never have to worry about it snowing on them.  And they can go just a little way and look at the ocean and it makes them calm and happy.

Yeah, OK, this is an East Coaster talking... you already have a lot of this in Hawaii, but, if you don't have a job in Hawaii, that's not relevant, right?

I know none of this answers your practical questions.  Just a little waxing rhapsodic about the possibility. It sounds like maybe youall could use a slightly unrealistic glow of positive feelings about the place...

I am so jealous that you have this opportunity that to you seems like a terrible exile... isn't life crazy unfair?

[pmcd9]

Wombat wears rose colored glasses.

~Paul

[wombat]

Wombat wears rose colored glasses.

~Paul

Shhhh!

[jough]

I'm on my way out the door, but for now I will say that obviously you and I both know that you have to put your family first.  It's just hard to know what "putting your family first" means in this situation.  Is it better to be with them in a city where they're unhappy (assuming they'd be unhappy in LA - I know if I lived in Hawaii as a kid and had to move to LA I'd think I was being *punished*) or to stay where you are and make less money with which to provide for them?

If you have to choose, though, between your familial happiness and 87% of your current income, that ain't no decision at all, Dawg.

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN.  YOU CAN BUY A NEW FAMILY LATER.

[Asherdan]

THIS POST IS PURE OPINION AND SHOULD BE LEAVENED WITH OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION!

I need some help with this LA thing, though. I need the few of you who live out there to sell me the LA experience - why do I want to move there? Schools? Neighborhoods? Cost of Living? How about kids? The office would be on Grand Ave not far from the Staples Center. I need to know where I can live/ what I can get for like 65K -68K a year.

Let's pick this off in singles:

Schools: LAUSD has been struggling for years at this point.  Overall indicators of performance are down. This does not mean a quality public education can't be done, but you have to look and choose carefully.  As a new re-lo to an area I'm not sure how you could prepare for this.

Neighborhoods: Limmo? Help the dude out. From pulling the area map I honestly can't identify where I'd go.  From my recollection, it's all pockets of bad/good in the immediate environs to the office, and I'm not sure what's in travel range for you in some of the communities that I think might be acceptable.

Cost of Living: Welcome to 8.25% sales tax, High fuel/electrical costs, smoking housing costs, high insurance rates (home & vehicle), etc. It is not cheap to live here, in fact, it's not even moderate to live here. Also, you'd be stepping into a state in which state level program funding is going to decline, or taxation to fund programs will rise and run down local business further and stagnate the economy.  50 cents or half a dollar on that one.

How about kids?: See what I wrote about education, that's my main hitch.

On a more positive note, much of what Wombat covered in her post is true  positives for the area, and there is a lot of good to be found.

But in the last two weeks this unemployeed dude has deliberately priced himself out of two slots located ~15 miles south of your prospect.

[side_show]

All I can tell you is that both my SO and I grew up in low income families (where the type of salary you are talking about would have been equivilent to wining the lottery) but that it was our family environment that determined that his childhood was extremely happy and mine, not so much so.

A mentor of mine always told me "Money really doesn't buy happiness, but it does by options."  I always keep this in mind when I'm making financial decisions.  It sounds like, from your post, that your heart is really in the home you've made for yourself where you are now.  And lots of your previous posts seem to link a part of your identity to the Alhoa state - which is not to say you can't plant roots elsewhere, but are you and LA guy or is your home really your family, wherever they may be?

I don't have any of the facts you seek, just encouragement - you're passionate about being a good partner and father, we've all seen that in your posts.  Keep your family first, as you always have, and keep us posted!

[slink]

Have to say, if it's possible for you to make enough to live where you are, I'd do that. I despise money, and am with Smells on this one... Better to be happy, as long as you get by, than to be raking it in. I too grew up in relative poverty, (comfortable enough but everyone around me had more and flaunted it) and I wouldn't trade that childhood in for one in a richer family.

Plus, well, I'm now pretty much of the mind that I want to avoid the US, and LA is one of the last parts of the US I'd be willing to go to, let alone to live in.
Even so, and I've said this before, 8.something% tax? That's nothing!

[CortJstr]

Even so, and I've said this before, 8.something% tax? That's nothing!

Shit, I was pissed when we went up to 5%. At least my state isn't trying to tax hybrid cars for not using enough gas.

As for the actual problem, this is way beyond my maturity level, plus I've never been to LA. The DC metro area is nice. And we have federal jobs oozing out of our various major orifices.

[wombat]

More of my two cents:

I think LA would be a totally cool place for a kid to grow up.  (Someone else can worry about schools.  I am in charge of the poetry of the situation, here.)  Also, I remembered that that thing I said about Japanese shopping, etc., isn't irrelevant after all - didn't you once say that your daughter tried to take her shoes off before going in the house in a raging snowstorm?

On the other hand... Although I am the Move To LA Cheerleader, I have to admit that I know a lot of people who seem miserable but say they can't make any changes because of what they'd lose by giving up their Federal job.  It can be really awful to let yourself be trapped by those considerations.

[side_show]

Even so, and I've said this before, 8.something% tax? That's nothing!

Shit, I was pissed when we went up to 5%.

Here in Manitoba: Government Sales Tax 7% and Provencial Sales Tax 7%!  That's right folks, a total of 14% tax on all purchases!  But hey, I don't ever have to pay to see a doctor, and with the amount of medical stuff I've been through, the government is practically paying me.

[Asherdan]

My last post on the subject until someone else who's actually been on the ground in the area under discussion can ring in:

When I used to cover the area your work would be located for my work ~10 years ago, I carried this with me. Doing so turned out to be necessary on two separate occaisions. Perhaps things have changed.

ALSO: You communist boogers quit bleating about the tax issue. 'Dawg ain't about to re-lo to one of your heathen pinko lands. I was just pointing out that sales tax and gas and electricity would cost him a lot annually here in SoCal, too.

I'm just bitter 'cause the Canuck booze tax made me weep. It helped that I paid with this funny stuff that didn't look like real money though.

[side_show]

this

do, Do, DOoo!

[wombat]

Oh!  How could I forget!  Idyllic photographs of my little stuffed Japanese friend visiting California:

http://www.rebsig.com/kogepan/index.html

How could you not want to go?  Right now!

[Limmo]

Holy fuck*ng shit.  

Alright, I need a moment to get my response together.  And I may just send it straight to Jason rather than posting it here.

Wombat: when were you in Venice?  Or is this one of those traveling-garden-gnome type of dealies?