madamekelly

After living most of my life in Washington, when it came to buying a house, I bought in Oregon. I live in west central Oregon, in the Willamette valley and love everything about it. As long as you pick up after yourself, Oregonians are much friendlier and has way less “Old boy network” issues. Taxes are lower and services are better. I will die an Oregonian, but if you have problems with SAD (seasonal affective disorder), then the West side of the state may be too dark and dreary. I love the rain, and never use an umbrella. Umbrellas are for tourists. Lol.

quilt9226

I forgot something in my previous post. Our governor was voted the 3rd worst governor in the fifty states. Also, in my area, quilt shops are becoming scarce. There is only one close to where I live and several north which I do not go to unless I am traveling up to Lynden (Whatcom County). Lynden has three. There is an active guild, Quilters Anonymous in the Seattle metropolitan area. There is a new guild in Everett and and another guild in Snohomish. I do not belong to a guild anymore.

Chasing Hawk

We live in Central Oregon and love it here. The Cascade Mountain range is practically in our backyard.

As for housing.......rentals are hard to come by. For example our sons share a house the rent is 2200 a month for a 4 bedroom 2 bath. Buying a home is just as bad, it is a sellers market so the owner can basically wait it out until a high bid rolls around.

Insurance and razes....Auto insurance for us is around $1200 a year for 3 trucks, $150 a year for my husband's Harley. Homeowners insurance runs us around $750 a year and property tax is $1500 a year on a 2 acre lot w/ a 1638sq ft home and 720 sq. ft shop. Our current personal income tax rate with the state is at 9%, they tax my income because it comes from out of state (it's complicated).

Weather.....Winters here are hit and miss snow wise. This past winter we had about 12" total fall in our part of the forest. The winter before it was 6-8 feet! Spring is rather mild and lovely except for the yellow pollen from the pine trees. Summer, we get about 2 weeks of 90+ degree days usually in August. Fall is perfect not cold enough to turn on the central heat.

As for big cities......On the eastern side of the Cascades, where we live. There are three decent sized cities, Bend (pop. 80,000), Redmond (pop. 40,000) and Klamath Falls (pop. 30,000) and our town of La Pine has about 5,000 give or take a few hundred. We don't have all the shopping places most huge cities have but we get by. What we can't get we can get via online shopping. In Bend there is Penny's, Kohls, Wal Mart, Target, Shopko and Macy's. Next is the grocery stores Safeway, Alberstons, Fred Meyer's (like a fancy version of Super Wal Mart w/o the strange people....lol) Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.

DMV.....An 8 year driver's license is $60 renewals run $40. Vehicle registration is $97 for title transfer, $121 for a two year sticker + license plate. Four year tags are for new vehicles only. And they just started a new tax.....new vehicles are taxed .5% at the time of purchase.


Hope this helps..........Oh almost forgot we have Quilt Shops here too.

lalaland

I live in Eastern WA. We moved here from Southern CA 5 years ago after I retired. My husband was raised in the Yakima Valley. Me, I was born and raised in Southern CA but had no desire to stay after I retired. I'm fond of saying that Western WA (Seattle, which is where I met my husband) is the swamp, Eastern WA (Yakima, Spokane) is the dust bowl. It is agricultural here, air quality is excellent, winters are cold, summers are hot, humidity is low. There's lots to like, and lots to not like, just like anyplace else. My husband and I both have pensions and WA has no state income tax so our pensions are not taxed, but we still have to pay federal taxes. We have no tax on food in Yakima. Our populations is around 100,000. Traffic here is negligible compared to Seattle. There are a lot of small towns on both sides of the mountains that would merit consideration if you are looking for that small town feel.

JoyjoyMarie

Having grown up in the Willamette Valley, this has been a fun read for me. I absolutely miss the NW - married a mining engineer and then was surprised we had to live where the mines were (Duh!!! how naive can one be!! that said, I have lived in 8 states, "from sea to shining sea" so to speak, and gotten quite an education) I love that you can grow things there, that the people are warm and helpful, my school system was such great quality (however, that was SOME TIME AGO). What I have learned in my life is that you must find what you like about a place, (or time of life, for that matter), and focus on the good and enjoy what you can, and add your two bits to the positivity of the place, whatever it is and wherever it is. Good luck to you!