No Complaints, Really

Yesterday’s post wasn’t meant to be complaining about LA and trying to justify moving away. To the contrary, I love LA. A lot. Even with acts of violence and weird noises that awaken me at 4 am, if I wanted peace and quiet I wouldn’t have chosen to live in Downtown LA. There is only one simple reason I’m leaving here: house prices. If I could afford a house for $300k, I’d stay. But that doesn’t exist, so I need to go elsewhere to find it.

Which brings me to where I’m going to live. I still don’t know. I visited Louisiana late last month and left there ambivalent. While the houses were certainly affordable, the thought of dealing with humidity, storm damage and flooding isn’t really my cup of tea.

I started to relook at Montana, and saw that Billings is still a bit affordable and does have a bit of the beauty as Western Montana. It’s not Western Montana, of course, but there is a little bit of it to experience there. But even that housing market is starting to get ridiculous. So maybe it’s Wyoming? Wyoming is nice because there is less people, the houses are very affordable, the sales tax is low in the state and there is no state income tax. That is something to look at.

So I’m going to be headed to Billings and Wyoming come Christmas time. Let’s just hope there are no winter storms so I’m not rolling all over the interstates. I’m going to see if I can handle the winter and scope out places to live.

The plan is to pick a place soon since my lease is up on this apartment in February. I’ll rent an apartment out there for a year while house shopping seriously. So the sooner I’m not paying $2300 a month and instead paying $800 a month on shelter will help things a lot. Shit is getting real.