The Best Place to Live

[imoldernu]

The Best....

A place to start looking.

https://www.niche.com/

 

[Ronstar]

All of these lists should be taken with a grain of salt. What’s best for some people is worst for others. Naperville, Illinois wouldn’t make the top 1000 on my list.

 

[imoldernu]

My title for the post was The Best...
Amazingly the rest of it was filed in. the site is much more than just places to live..

Dunno... Magic I guess.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Naperville has >100,000 residents and good statistics on paper. We might have ended up there if we weren’t working in downtown Chicago when we bought our house a billion years ago. I like it well enough. Smaller municipalities in the same county are ranked as better places to live by that same website—we still live in one of them and the commute is much shorter so it works for us. Plus activities don’t fill up so fast so our kids (and us!) were able to do a lot of things that our friends in Naperville got waitlisted for.

I’m still waiting for the website that lists the best college, town, restaurant, etc. for me!

 

[Floridatennisplayer]

Money mag just did theirs too. I’ve been to many of those cities. Lol, I wouldn’t consider hardly any.

College.....uh, no..I graduated in 1987 and not going back to college.

Where to work.......no I’m done with that.

 

[Ronstar]

How much time did you spend on the site?.... did you check places to work or colleges, or any of the rest of the options?...
quick reader...

Spent about 10 minutes on the site. I may have been on the site before because I remember Naperville being #2 on a list months ago. The site makes no sense to me. How can Naperville be #2 best city in the country, but #3 best suburb of Chicago?

But my analysis is not based on the site. I worked in Naperville occasionally for 30 years. I go there every couple of weeks. I have several friends and former coworkers that live there. I am extremely familiar with the city, and I find it extremely difficult to believe that it is the 2nd best city in the country to live regardless of the criteria.

 

[Bamaman]

All of these lists should be taken with a grain of salt. What’s best for some people is worst for others. Naperville, Illinois wouldn’t make the top 1000 on my list.

Napierville is one of those places where the planned community homes are pretty generic. My cousin lived there, and I have a friend that left there 10 years ago.

What got me were the $12,000 per year property taxes on a regular Napierville house. No thank you.

 

[Midpack]

What got me were the $12,000 per year property taxes on a regular Napierville house. No thank you.

One of the guys I used to sail with regularly was paying $12,000/yr in property taxes in Naperville too, and I am sure it was a fairly modest home. I was stunned when he told me. Naperville is a nice area, but I wouldn't afford to live there.

Thanks for the link, OP. They're always interesting, but as others have said, you have to apply your own wants-needs-priorities and develop your own list. The odds that published lists are aligned with your criteria are slim, if even known (some lists don't even share their basis).

 

[Jerry1]

As long as my daughter and grandkids are here, this is the best place for my to live. I’m sure there are better places based on various factors, but this is pretty good and this is where family is. If not for family, I’d prefer warmer weather but then my AZ cousin spends a lot of time indoors getting away from the heat. So whether your getting away from the heat or the cold, you’re likely inside a few months if the year.

 

[imoldernu]

For anyone with children (or gandchildren) of college age, this is generally acknowledged as an excellent starting point for the college/university decision.
The ratings are more generally based on the thousands of reader opinions.. five reasons for their ratings. Everything from food, to social life and anything in between. Best majors, sports, location and more.

In addition, probably the most looked at, is the Scholarship section. Listings of hundreds of scholarships that aren't always claimed. The reason I mention this, is that my DIL researched the site for all three of my grandchildren, and found some very hefty scholarships, including one for my youngest, a Stamp scholarship that is paying all college costs, tuition, room, board and nominal expenses... not just for 4 years, but through graduate school. They estimate a total savings for all three at well over $500K... which allowed son and DIL to retire in their 50's.

Certainly this won't appeal to everyone, but the breadth of information and the personal opinions of thousands of contributors, make this, for me, a place to search just as a matter of interest when folks on ER post about their experiences.

The rest of the site has hundreds of pages on best places to w*rk, K-12 Schools, and a search that lists almost every location in the US, with personal information and opinions from people who live there.

 

[Which Roger]

All of these lists should be taken with a grain of salt. What’s best for some people is worst for others. Naperville, Illinois wouldn’t make the top 1000 on my list.

It's a great place to live for someone with a job and kids, but if you don't have either, a lot of the positives become negatives.

 

[imoldernu]

As to Naperville... while we lived in next-door Lisle, we never could have afforded to live there. Son and DIL who were both lawyers, did live there, and paid $15,000 in taxes on a $500K home. Schools were great, the town is clean and very nice, but more like some of the California expensive living areas.

Frankly I was amazed to see the rating... It would have bee last on my list.
The interesting part is to see the opinions that are listed for the town.

My city of Peru, IL, is ranked 117th of all the cities in Illinois, but somewhere in the 300's based on some of the rating categories. I, like most of you am quite happy living just where we are.

 

[Bamaman]

My ex-Megacorp was headquartered in southern Wisconsin. The vast majority of employees lived over the state line in Northern Illinois and the north end of Chicago because of ridiculous Wisconsin property taxes. I was so fortunate to have "been retired" rather than be transferred to "Home Office" to what I consider is an ultra HCOL area.

We were able to spend our adult lives raising our daughter in two 4400 square foot homes with payments no more than $800 per month. The homes in the Chicago and southern Wisconsin are built like tanks, but really would be a much lower quality of life than Williamson County, TN and Lawrenceville, GA. We're very satisfied to continue living well on the Tennessee River in NW Alabama.

 

[Hermit]

I moved across the country to where I currently live a couple days after I retired. Its still the best place for me.

 

[unclemick]

Kansas City. I'v lived in greater Portland OR, Seattle, Denver, Huntsville AL, Baltimore, Long Island, and New Orleans.

Suburbs that is.

Kansas City beats them all hands down.

heh heh heh - Why you say? Because that's where I'm at. Where you are at is where you are at - especially if you figure out what the long time locals are doing.

P.S. I forgot St Jo MO.

 

[MRG]

Kansas City. I'v lived in greater Portland OR, Seattle, Denver, Huntsville AL, Baltimore, Long Island, and New Orleans.

Suburbs that is.

Kansas City beats them all hands down.

heh heh heh - Why you say? Because that's where I'm at. Where you are at is where you are at - especially if you figure out what the long time locals are doing.

P.S. I forgot St Jo MO.

Don't forget about the 1% tax for living or working in city limits.

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

Lists, lists, lists, there are so many lists, and they all disagree.

The 'best' place for you will be different for everyone else.

I like rural. I have a large house on 150 acres of forested land, my property taxes are around $800/year.

I love it here.

 

[Gumby]

The best place for me to live is where I live right now. It may not be right for you, but it suits me just fine.

 

[youbet]

The best place for me to live is where I live right now. It may not be right for you, but it suits me just fine.

Oh come on, you can do better than that Gumby! The whole purpose of this thread is to pound your chest that you're so smart and have chosen the best place to live for not only yourself but everyone else too!

 

[youbet]

Frankly I was amazed to see the rating... It would have bee last on my list.

Seriously? You think Naperville is at the very bottom of places to live? Have you spent any time in Calumet City, North Chicago or East St Louis? Naperville might not be first on my list but I can think of dozens of other places I'd rank below it in terms of where I'd hang my hat.

 

[aja8888]

One word.....Texas!

 

[Bamaman]

One word.....Texas!

Nothing wrong with Texas. I'm just waiting for a new city in the Hill Country to be named "New California."

Texas introduced great things to the U.S. culture--Chicken Fried Steak and Tex-Mex cuisine. It's a place where oil billionaires in Midland drive pickup trucks with Earl Tubb CD's playing on the sound system.

Texas is proof that a state large enough to be 4 states can get by with a state legislature that only meets every other year.

But seriously, blood is thicker than water, and many people live where they can be close to their children and grandchildren. Home is home, even if it's in a less than desirable place.

I'm just thankful that my relatives relocated from Rutherford, NJ to Central KY and moved south about the time the Indians left in 1800. And I'm thankful my two home states have had a "hands off" approach to governing and very low taxation.

 

[aja8888]

Nothing wrong with Texas. I'm just waiting for a new city in the Hill Country to be named "New California."

Texas introduced great things to the U.S. culture--Chicken Fried Steak and Tex-Mex cuisine. It's a place where oil billionaires in Midland drive pickup trucks with Earl Tubb CD's playing on the sound system.

Texas is proof that a state large enough to be 4 states can get by with a state legislature that only meets every other year.

But seriously, blood is thicker than water, and many people live where they can be close to their children and grandchildren. Home is home, even if it's in a less than desirable place.

I'm just thankful that my relatives relocated from Rutherford, NJ to Central KY and moved south about the time the Indians left in 1800. And I'm thankful my two home states have had a "hands off" approach to governing and very low taxation.

I hear you and we are originally from Connecticut (40 years there). Texas is now home but we still visit the Northeast periodically.

 

[REWahoo]

I'm just waiting for a new city in the Hill Country to be named "New California."

That's the unofficial name for Sun City in Georgetown.

 

[beowulf]

Live in Southern Washington across the river from Portland - no income tax in one, no sales tax in the other. Or, if you like snow, just move to NH. OTOH, we are not about to leave where we live - we are on the east coast, kids in AZ and OR. We get to visit a lot. Too many friend here and no grandkids.