Sweet Spot, Living Where Low Taxes

[Teacher Terry]

MW, lived in Wichita 1974, 1993-1997, and visited because my son lived there last 4 years. Nice people but nothing to do.

 

[watchman3135]

Think you have high property taxes? Come to Illinois. It will certainly put "high" into perspective.

 

[Winemaker]

Forget about PA for taxes. Income taxes may be low but we have some of the highest property taxes in the country. The main reason is education budgets are paid by the local community rather then the state unlike most states in the union. So for example my first home was a row home outside of Philadelphia. We paid $3,200 per year in property taxes on a home valued at 80k. The home we live in now has a value of $325,000 and we pay close to $8,000 a year in property taxes. Add to this a sales tax of 6% (8% in big cities like Philadelphia) 1% Chester county tax on ALL ASSET GAINS and high insurance rates Auto 2K plus a year, suddenly that 3% income tax is not a great savings.

I would personally prefer a 5-6% income tax with 1/3rd the property tax then what we have now here. You can't stop the local property school taxes from going up and in my town they do EVERY year, 5% this year alone!

So its like they say, the government gets it one way or the other...

John

But, if you live in an area where there is Marcellus/Utica work going on, your property taxes are reduced by the user fees, charged to the drillers.

 

[TwoByFour]

Thanks for the tips. That is a very nice area - we've enjoyed it before.

Do you use VBRO?

I use both VRBO and AirBnB.

 

[TwoByFour]

Seems to be living by friends and family is more important than the taxes. Anyone agree?

When we retired, we packed up and left the city we lived in for 30 years. We wanted an adventure, something new and different. To me, retirement is when you can do all the wild things you couldn't do when you were working. It was hard leaving friends but we now have new friends in our new area plus an incentive to go visit our old friends.

We moved from a tiny city house on a tiny lot to a 2 acre chunk of land we have been turning into a small orchard. We sell fresh fruit to local stores. It is a lot of work but tons of fun for us. Totally different than our pre-retirement lives.

 

[watchman3135]

We are about 40 miles south of Chicago and payed $7300 in property taxes this year on a 2800 sg. ft. home we built in 2005. Between my counties inaccurate home measurements which I painfully got them to correct a few years back (they basically globed the same model home assuming everyone did the same bump out options) and steady annual $450 increases, I can see paying $10,000 really soon. Like many people in this state, it's a huge factor for why we are looking to move especially when considering an early retirement. We are looking at either Wyoming or Colorado however one thing we immediately noticed when cross shopping homes in theses states is you do get less home for your money when compared to Illinois which full basements are common however going from what we are paying now vs say Wyoming's rate which is around $1500 for a $325,000 4 bed. one level ranch home, it's a small sacrifice we are willing to make besides with the kids out, we really have to much home now.

 

[bbbob57]

property taxes are a bigger concern in my opinion

True example I was looking at:

California versus Texas: $600,000 house in Texas vs $1.5 million house with ocean views in California. Income of $165,000. Taxes in Texas were $2000 greater than in California. The basis on the house in California is locked in at purchase with minimal increases, while Texas is at market.

So yes, look at all taxes and do not rely on web information about
"low tax" states.

 

[capjak]

If you were in the Midwest outside of Illinois, you missed at least 99% of the experience! In fact, you really need to be in NE Illinois to be able to say you've been run through "Da Machine!"

+1

 

[Bamaman]

Think you have high property taxes? Come to Illinois. It will certainly put "high" into perspective.

My MegaCorp was headquartered in Racine, WI. My co-workers just about all lived in Northern Illinois to get away from property taxes that were beyond expensive. Wisconsin taxes have to be so expensive to support Rolls Royce public schools and country club prisons.

Thankfully I never had to be transferred to Wisconsin. My main residence is 5,200 square feet, and we have no property taxes since my wife is disabled. My lake house is assessed at $359K, and my property taxes there are $1,147.

 

[FreeBear]

We also live in a huge, relatively expensive metro area in northern flyover country. A good part of the inner city is plagued by the usual social troubles and violence. I used to live there and know about it first hand. Now we have escaped to the suburbs like many folks, in part to be closer to the old j*b.

We love living in the 'burbs. We're not really city people anyway, but need enough of a metro area to have interesting ethic restaurants and some mix of cultural, political, and religious diversity. It's easy to get to the stuff we need weekly, mainly food and home stuff, as well as recreational shopping for DW and eating out for me. We rarely go "downtown" into the city proper.


I agree that the cost of living is high, especially for flyover country, and the weather is cold, wet crap for 6 months of the year. I've been looking at major metro areas in the SW, but there the weather is hot crap for the other 6 months of the year. I was also surprised to learn that the cost of homes is comparable or higher than my current residence. As for taxes, perhaps we'd save $ 2-3K yearly, but this is not a show stopper in our budget. Sure, I'm concerned about the financial problems of the state, but I'm also concerned about the water probems of the SW and the regions population boom.

I think the only way we can reduce our COL is to move to a low COL place out in the "sticks" far from major metro area, regardless of the region. This just doesn't appeal of either one of us at this point. Still, I keep looking and dreaming about better weather and at least tolerable (no worse) COL...

 

[golfnut]

We have lived in Naperville since 1991. It's a great place to raise a family but re taxes are ridiculous.



Before that we were born and raised in south side of Chicago and lived in Wrigleyville in my party days. I learned alot living in Chicago and would not trade for any other place. Now that we are in our 60s though, don't need the cold weather nor the taxes or the politics.


Sometimes I wonder what our son would have been like if he was raised in Chicago instead of Naperville. Naperville is like living in a safe bubble. When I was his age I was driving a yellow cab (complete with bullet proof glass) at 18/19 age and later for the cta (conductor on EL train - grave yard shift). Looking back, can't believe my parents were ok with this as were some of my best friends parents. Some exciting (and dangerous ) times.

 

[Dtail]

We also live in a huge, relatively expensive metro area in northern flyover country. A good part of the inner city is plagued by the usual social troubles and violence. I used to live there and know about it first hand. Now we have escaped to the suburbs like many folks, in part to be closer to the old j*b.

We love living in the 'burbs. We're not really city people anyway, but need enough of a metro area to have interesting ethic restaurants and some mix of cultural, political, and religious diversity. It's easy to get to the stuff we need weekly, mainly food and home stuff, as well as recreational shopping for DW and eating out for me. We rarely go "downtown" into the city proper.


I agree that the cost of living is high, especially for flyover country, and the weather is cold, wet crap for 6 months of the year. I've been looking at major metro areas in the SW, but there the weather is hot crap for the other 6 months of the year. I was also surprised to learn that the cost of homes is comparable or higher than my current residence. As for taxes, perhaps we'd save $ 2-3K yearly, but this is not a show stopper in our budget. Sure, I'm concerned about the financial problems of the state, but I'm also concerned about the water probems of the SW and the regions population boom.

I think the only way we can reduce our COL is to move to a low COL place out in the "sticks" far from major metro area, regardless of the region. This just doesn't appeal of either one of us at this point. Still, I keep looking and dreaming about better weather and at least tolerable (no worse) COL...

Sometimes it comes down to whether the severe cold or hot bothers one more. FLA works for us, as we love the hot weather.
The housing in FLA is a very large range, but if you are not on the water, it can be cheaper and still come with some diversity.