new - dirt cheap retirement?

[W2R]

Perfect is in the eye of the beholder, they say. [...] I give this location a 90+ rating (out of 100).

It sounds like a wonderful location! I can absolutely understand why someone might want to pay a bit more in order to stay in a place they love.

 

[bclover]

There is a property tax survey thread active over on Bogleheads. You should go take a look - it will make you even more sure you are right. Plenty of folks in the NE pay much more than pb4uski - double or more.

Got that right. I just moved from southern nj because I refused to pay another year of ridiculously high property taxes.
I had a 2700 sq foot colonial, maybe a 1/8th of an acre of land. My property taxes were 10,500 bucks a year.

I can't imagine me loving any place enough to want to spend almost 1000 bucks a month on property taxes.

That's why I chuckle when folks say that paying off your mortgage will lead to some type of retirement Nirvana. South NJ every year has an glut of houses going on the market from seniors on fixed income who have no mortgage but can't handle the property taxes.

 

[offroad]

Got that right. I just moved from southern nj because I refused to pay another year of ridiculously high property taxes.
I had a 2700 sq foot colonial, maybe a 1/8th of an acre of land. My property taxes were 10,500 bucks a year.

I can't imagine me loving any place enough to want to spend almost 1000 bucks a month on property taxes.

That's why I chuckle when folks say that paying off your mortgage will lead to some type of retirement Nirvana. South NJ every year has an glut of houses going on the market from seniors on fixed income who have no mortgage but can't handle the property taxes.

Just OMG!! That is something to be extremely careful about. Don't buy property in a crazy town that has blasted property taxes up. Is the town counsel locked into some payment scheme for employees, and they need to push property taxes to crazy levels?


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[offroad]

There will always be some way to game the system for low income folk.

One thing that likely IS a sacred cow is the elimination of pre-existing condition exclusion for insurance. If for some reason subsidies were eliminated, a strategy could be formed to go without insurance at all, and then obtain insurance within a short time frame if you encounter a major long term medical problem. If you are not in an open enrollment window, you could simply move the required distance (you are renting, this would not be that hard) to open up enrollment. It is very unlikely a person making $30,000 a year would owe any penalty for not having health insurance, especially if there is no affordable option due to lack of subsidy.

fermion - old note. but thank you for being sensible with comments.