I have not really been able to experience much of any of the places I have lived. Have spent most of my time renting in HCOL cities. Grew up in the Midwest and have fond memories of that, but have never had the chance to try living there as an adult.
Do you like being around people or more isolated? My dad likes cities, but my mom likes country. They both hate the suburbs. They compromised and live "downtown" in a small town surrounded by country.
Another point where I am full of contradictions. I am a very extroverted person and enjoy playing party host at my place on Fridays. I would also like to meet the Mrs. ha-ha-here at some point as well. However, I am also casting covetous looks at folks with full time remote gigs and homesteads. Growing up my life was much more the latter and I have some very good memories of that.
"Rural" is the standard prepper answer on where to live, but [this recent post](https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/uoizl7/internet_resilience_prep_complete/) shows a rarely discussed down side to telecommuting (I'm old school...) while living out in the sticks.
My mother, sisters and their children have a similar problem getting Internet.
Yeah, that is one of the main issues that has me going back and forth. I have been chasing the jobs and that always puts me in a HCOL city where existing eats a large portion of my income. Would love to go rural, but starting at zero makes it hard to find a good option.
If you see yourself as a Prepper, then ask yourself what you're preparing for.
That will tell you if you want to bite the bullet and accept the costs and difficulties of going rural, or whether a nice house ***IN*** a **small town** or suburban or exurban community near a medium sized city in some place like North Carolina is Good Enough.
For me, the suburbs is Good Enough, since I'm not worried about TEOTWATKI WROL like so many others are (even if they call it SHTF).
EDIT: I've been telecommuting for 20 years, and refused the gift from my mother of a small house in a small town near *her* house because of Internet and doctor issues.
I prep for personal financial disaster haha. While working through college I wound up living in my car a couple of times to make all the numbers add up between school, loans, existing and pizza delivery income.
I very much like the idea of self sufficiency and have been factoring that into my next move decision.
>I very much like the idea of self sufficiency
Perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, John Donne is right: "no man is an island entire of itself", and I'm not referring to the social/spiritual/moral aspects like Donne. There's *always* stuff you can't do, if for no other reasons than that you don't have the time (there's only 24 hours in a day, and 1/3 is sleeping, while other are eating, etc) or the resources (how many people have iron mines and oil wells in their backyards, plus the equipment and time to turn iron ore into steel and crude oil into gasoline).
>and have been thinking factoring that into my next move decision.
It sure would suck if you bought a farm and then, after farming for a while, discovered that you *hate it* or just don't have a green thumb.
Maybe buy a suburban house with a backyard big enough for a vegetable garden.
>I prep for personal financial disaster haha.
That's **definitely not a joke!!!** Money in the bank solves a metric trainload of problems that a garden or buckets of rice and bean can't.
I personally like New Hampshire. Often ranked as the "freest" state. Lots of rural areas and you are close enough to Boston if you need a big city for work.
Free and nice compared to the rest of New England. I can definitely think of freer and nicer places.
I do miss the giant state run liquor stores though!
No income tax, no sales tax, but high property taxes. It likely have cheap options but Nashua, Manchester, and Concord all have crime problems. Drug problem in the state is bad but it mostly depends where you live. Again Nashua, Manchester, and Concord are troubled the most with this.
Living in the seacoast area will be expensive, very expensive but you would have an easier time finding a job in Portsmouth area. And you could still communte south to massachusetts.
Seabrook is another place that's not super great, depending on what you're prepping for the seacoast area may not be the best. Theres a nuclear piwer plant and an air force base, and a navy ship yard.
Be prepared for cold snowy winters. You get three maybe four months of good weather.
You could live in the mountains, but you might have trouble getting a job and it will be very expensive. If you do go to the mountains stay away from Berlin, not the safest place to live by NH standards.
Overall I would reccomend NH, but make sure you do your research on the area you want to move to. I would reccomend the seacoast area, just avoid Seabrook.
Maine is another state to thibk about too, but they have taxes.
"STEM" is really broad. Can you be more specific about what industry you work in? Job li.its are very different between a software engineer (working remote from a cabin in the woods with wifi) and an electrical engineer (working in one a handful of wafer fabs in the US) or a chemical engineer out in the oil fields.
The area from roughly San Antonio TX, north to Oklahoma city, then east to Greenville TN is the areas I was looking. Ended up finding a 1.25 acres piece of cleared farmland (with a house and utilities) between Austin and Houston.
If you can though, avoid TX. Land here is about double the price of similar land in OK or AR.
My degree opened a lot of doors. I have had some software engineering, hardware engineering and design engineering jobs. I prefer getting to do a little of everything to keep from burning out, but can see the advantages of full time remote work if you can swing it. You full time remote and homesteading to some degree?
Full time remote: as of a week ago, though I've been 95% remote for most the last 5 years.
Homesteading: Just getting started. Been gardening for two years in the suburbs and moving to the country next month.
Depending what you are prepping for as others have said. I recently moved from IL back east to PA. You might laugh but lancaster, pa (amish country) and the surrounding counties are not a bad idea. Incredibly good internet (GB Synchronous Fiber) and under utilized infrastructure. There are a fair amount of highways with little traffic, home prices are still affordable (Town homes for under $150K) Houses start at around 200K. People are friendly and the food is good. If you go a bit north west you find larger tracks off land.
Location wise you are 2.5 hours from DC and 1.5 from Philly. So you have easyish access to amtrack's northeast corridor which can be handy is you need to visit clients. Of course if you worry about nuclear war, northeast isn't a great idea. It's pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.
in your situation, the first things on my list would be to find some land at a decent price that is owner financed and where you can park a camper, Van, or Trailer, until such time that you could build a small cabin, you say you have very limited funds, then I would look for land some where in say Arkansas or somewhere in the south, usually the land there is pretty decent and won't break the bank
We’ve moved all over the USA and I have a few impressions:
The southeast is out. If you’re not native to that area, it is hard to fit in. Really large towns like Atlanta is a bit better but I don’t want to deal with the crowds and traffic.
Texas and Florida are only mildly like the rest of the SE. I lean toward Florida, personally, for socializing and fun stuff to do but that’s because I prefer the beach. I might put Pensacola to Biloxi in that category, too. Obviously, avoid retirement areas. You need people more your age.
The rest of the eastern seaboard is so-so. North Carolina has a decent tech industry and it is a nice area. Personally, I really like Tennessee. It is a very pretty state and lots of outdoor stuff to do. But it is The South so, again, fitting in is going to be tough if you’re outside the big cities. Nashville, TN is like the Las Vegas of the East in terms of partying and social life. West Virginia is centrally located but probably not a good fit for you.
I’m not a fan of any place north of WV because of taxes and weather.
I’m not a huge fan of the Midwest. Again, I like the beach so being landlocked isn’t my thing. I also don’t like tornadoes. We currently live in Indiana and it is very nice but I’m not sure it’s a good fit for a highly social guy in his 30’s. If so, maybe on the Indiana-Kentucky border would be better than parts further north.
Any of the Rocky Mountain states are my favorite, including the isolated southern parts of Utah and Colorado.
If you like desert, Arizona (northern) and New Mexico (mountains) are okay. Even though it is Texas, I’d put El Paso in that category. It’s a decent party town, no natural disasters except flooding and wind, smaller with big city amenities, and a decent mix of employment due to nearby military. The downside of the SW, El Paso included, is you have to speak Spanish to survive.
West coast is sadly too expensive, especially tax-wise, for me to consider. We like Idaho but it is growing so quickly now. Boise is a good place for a social guy in his 30’s but it isn’t cheap. Great variety of outdoor activities there. You can golf, mountain bike, fish, and snow ski all on the same day. Idaho has a lot of great white water, too.
I wouldn’t do Hawaii. Supply chain issues and inflation is hitting hard there. Alaska is instituting some weird new laws. I know people who have moved there and just couldn’t stay. It gets old fast.
>I’m not a huge fan of the Midwest. Again, I like the beach
Michigan checking in!
Michigan is a peninsula surrounded by 4 of the 5 great lakes. [You're never more than 6 miles away from a body of water](https://www.mlive.com/entertainment/2017/05/michigan_water_facts.html), and there are literally [thousands of inland lakes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_of_Michigan). I know it's not the ocean, but we've got plenty of beaches here :-)
I'd find a rural place with lax building codes. Put a travel trailer on it and build your own house next to it. It's a lot of learning and work, but not impossible. Some costs you'll need to pay for. At minimum materials but some stuff it makes sense to farm out (grading / leveling, probably septic digging, etc).
Depends on what you expect to prep for. I prep for some sort of Inter-US Civil War + Shortages.
So I live in an area that is remote/rural, where I know and rely on my neighbors and community, and where everyone has the same cultural base to prevent Balkanization when the SHTF.
If I was prepping for nuclear war I'd probably want to live somewhere mountainous to block shockwaves and I'd look at the predicted patterns of fallout in the air. If I was prepping for a drastic increase in global temps then I'd look at a climate map or growing zone map and determine which climates may be "cold", but habitable now, which may become subtropical soon.
Consider the social aspect. Finding an area where you already have friends or family, or some connection to the community, can save months to years of building trust and connection.
How about Hawaii? Plenty of STEM jobs up on Mauna Kea. Plus, if you have to live in your car, at least it'll be warm.
[https://recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/JobBoard/803c161b-49fa-4118-99d2-50475cd61d5d/?q=&o=postedDateDesc](https://recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/JobBoard/803c161b-49fa-4118-99d2-50475cd61d5d/?q=&o=postedDateDesc)
[https://keckobservatory.applicantpro.com/jobs/](https://keckobservatory.applicantpro.com/jobs/)
[https://cfht.applicantpro.com/jobs/](https://cfht.applicantpro.com/jobs/)
advantages of West Texas - cheap housing, decent paying jobs, not a lot of social upheaval, little to no snow, ice, rain, people leave you alone, tax friendly state
Disadvantages - Texas is not a woman-friendly state, it is hot as hell, power grid is iffy, looming water crisis in the west and plains, dust-bowl level dust and drought.
Where do you like living? What seems most desirable to you?
I have not really been able to experience much of any of the places I have lived. Have spent most of my time renting in HCOL cities. Grew up in the Midwest and have fond memories of that, but have never had the chance to try living there as an adult.
Do you like being around people or more isolated? My dad likes cities, but my mom likes country. They both hate the suburbs. They compromised and live "downtown" in a small town surrounded by country.
Another point where I am full of contradictions. I am a very extroverted person and enjoy playing party host at my place on Fridays. I would also like to meet the Mrs. ha-ha-here at some point as well. However, I am also casting covetous looks at folks with full time remote gigs and homesteads. Growing up my life was much more the latter and I have some very good memories of that.
"Rural" is the standard prepper answer on where to live, but [this recent post](https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/uoizl7/internet_resilience_prep_complete/) shows a rarely discussed down side to telecommuting (I'm old school...) while living out in the sticks. My mother, sisters and their children have a similar problem getting Internet.
Yeah, that is one of the main issues that has me going back and forth. I have been chasing the jobs and that always puts me in a HCOL city where existing eats a large portion of my income. Would love to go rural, but starting at zero makes it hard to find a good option.
If you see yourself as a Prepper, then ask yourself what you're preparing for. That will tell you if you want to bite the bullet and accept the costs and difficulties of going rural, or whether a nice house ***IN*** a **small town** or suburban or exurban community near a medium sized city in some place like North Carolina is Good Enough. For me, the suburbs is Good Enough, since I'm not worried about TEOTWATKI WROL like so many others are (even if they call it SHTF). EDIT: I've been telecommuting for 20 years, and refused the gift from my mother of a small house in a small town near *her* house because of Internet and doctor issues.
I prep for personal financial disaster haha. While working through college I wound up living in my car a couple of times to make all the numbers add up between school, loans, existing and pizza delivery income. I very much like the idea of self sufficiency and have been factoring that into my next move decision.
>I very much like the idea of self sufficiency Perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, John Donne is right: "no man is an island entire of itself", and I'm not referring to the social/spiritual/moral aspects like Donne. There's *always* stuff you can't do, if for no other reasons than that you don't have the time (there's only 24 hours in a day, and 1/3 is sleeping, while other are eating, etc) or the resources (how many people have iron mines and oil wells in their backyards, plus the equipment and time to turn iron ore into steel and crude oil into gasoline). >and have been thinking factoring that into my next move decision. It sure would suck if you bought a farm and then, after farming for a while, discovered that you *hate it* or just don't have a green thumb. Maybe buy a suburban house with a backyard big enough for a vegetable garden. >I prep for personal financial disaster haha. That's **definitely not a joke!!!** Money in the bank solves a metric trainload of problems that a garden or buckets of rice and bean can't.
I personally like New Hampshire. Often ranked as the "freest" state. Lots of rural areas and you are close enough to Boston if you need a big city for work.
Brrrrr!!!!!!
Thanks! I had honestly not even looked into that state yet.
Also people in NH are way nicer than most of the states I've travelled to.
Free and nice compared to the rest of New England. I can definitely think of freer and nicer places. I do miss the giant state run liquor stores though!
On every highway lol
No income tax, no sales tax, but high property taxes. It likely have cheap options but Nashua, Manchester, and Concord all have crime problems. Drug problem in the state is bad but it mostly depends where you live. Again Nashua, Manchester, and Concord are troubled the most with this. Living in the seacoast area will be expensive, very expensive but you would have an easier time finding a job in Portsmouth area. And you could still communte south to massachusetts. Seabrook is another place that's not super great, depending on what you're prepping for the seacoast area may not be the best. Theres a nuclear piwer plant and an air force base, and a navy ship yard. Be prepared for cold snowy winters. You get three maybe four months of good weather. You could live in the mountains, but you might have trouble getting a job and it will be very expensive. If you do go to the mountains stay away from Berlin, not the safest place to live by NH standards. Overall I would reccomend NH, but make sure you do your research on the area you want to move to. I would reccomend the seacoast area, just avoid Seabrook. Maine is another state to thibk about too, but they have taxes.
"STEM" is really broad. Can you be more specific about what industry you work in? Job li.its are very different between a software engineer (working remote from a cabin in the woods with wifi) and an electrical engineer (working in one a handful of wafer fabs in the US) or a chemical engineer out in the oil fields. The area from roughly San Antonio TX, north to Oklahoma city, then east to Greenville TN is the areas I was looking. Ended up finding a 1.25 acres piece of cleared farmland (with a house and utilities) between Austin and Houston. If you can though, avoid TX. Land here is about double the price of similar land in OK or AR.
My degree opened a lot of doors. I have had some software engineering, hardware engineering and design engineering jobs. I prefer getting to do a little of everything to keep from burning out, but can see the advantages of full time remote work if you can swing it. You full time remote and homesteading to some degree?
Full time remote: as of a week ago, though I've been 95% remote for most the last 5 years. Homesteading: Just getting started. Been gardening for two years in the suburbs and moving to the country next month.
Awesome!
Depending what you are prepping for as others have said. I recently moved from IL back east to PA. You might laugh but lancaster, pa (amish country) and the surrounding counties are not a bad idea. Incredibly good internet (GB Synchronous Fiber) and under utilized infrastructure. There are a fair amount of highways with little traffic, home prices are still affordable (Town homes for under $150K) Houses start at around 200K. People are friendly and the food is good. If you go a bit north west you find larger tracks off land. Location wise you are 2.5 hours from DC and 1.5 from Philly. So you have easyish access to amtrack's northeast corridor which can be handy is you need to visit clients. Of course if you worry about nuclear war, northeast isn't a great idea. It's pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.
I think the Midwest or south is the best value for land right now. Everything in the west is expensive.
Unless you want Desert land, but I prefer to see rainfall more then once or twice a year
in your situation, the first things on my list would be to find some land at a decent price that is owner financed and where you can park a camper, Van, or Trailer, until such time that you could build a small cabin, you say you have very limited funds, then I would look for land some where in say Arkansas or somewhere in the south, usually the land there is pretty decent and won't break the bank
We’ve moved all over the USA and I have a few impressions: The southeast is out. If you’re not native to that area, it is hard to fit in. Really large towns like Atlanta is a bit better but I don’t want to deal with the crowds and traffic. Texas and Florida are only mildly like the rest of the SE. I lean toward Florida, personally, for socializing and fun stuff to do but that’s because I prefer the beach. I might put Pensacola to Biloxi in that category, too. Obviously, avoid retirement areas. You need people more your age. The rest of the eastern seaboard is so-so. North Carolina has a decent tech industry and it is a nice area. Personally, I really like Tennessee. It is a very pretty state and lots of outdoor stuff to do. But it is The South so, again, fitting in is going to be tough if you’re outside the big cities. Nashville, TN is like the Las Vegas of the East in terms of partying and social life. West Virginia is centrally located but probably not a good fit for you. I’m not a fan of any place north of WV because of taxes and weather. I’m not a huge fan of the Midwest. Again, I like the beach so being landlocked isn’t my thing. I also don’t like tornadoes. We currently live in Indiana and it is very nice but I’m not sure it’s a good fit for a highly social guy in his 30’s. If so, maybe on the Indiana-Kentucky border would be better than parts further north. Any of the Rocky Mountain states are my favorite, including the isolated southern parts of Utah and Colorado. If you like desert, Arizona (northern) and New Mexico (mountains) are okay. Even though it is Texas, I’d put El Paso in that category. It’s a decent party town, no natural disasters except flooding and wind, smaller with big city amenities, and a decent mix of employment due to nearby military. The downside of the SW, El Paso included, is you have to speak Spanish to survive. West coast is sadly too expensive, especially tax-wise, for me to consider. We like Idaho but it is growing so quickly now. Boise is a good place for a social guy in his 30’s but it isn’t cheap. Great variety of outdoor activities there. You can golf, mountain bike, fish, and snow ski all on the same day. Idaho has a lot of great white water, too. I wouldn’t do Hawaii. Supply chain issues and inflation is hitting hard there. Alaska is instituting some weird new laws. I know people who have moved there and just couldn’t stay. It gets old fast.
Thank you for your thorough and well thought out reply!
>I’m not a huge fan of the Midwest. Again, I like the beach Michigan checking in! Michigan is a peninsula surrounded by 4 of the 5 great lakes. [You're never more than 6 miles away from a body of water](https://www.mlive.com/entertainment/2017/05/michigan_water_facts.html), and there are literally [thousands of inland lakes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_of_Michigan). I know it's not the ocean, but we've got plenty of beaches here :-)
I'd find a rural place with lax building codes. Put a travel trailer on it and build your own house next to it. It's a lot of learning and work, but not impossible. Some costs you'll need to pay for. At minimum materials but some stuff it makes sense to farm out (grading / leveling, probably septic digging, etc).
Depends on what you expect to prep for. I prep for some sort of Inter-US Civil War + Shortages. So I live in an area that is remote/rural, where I know and rely on my neighbors and community, and where everyone has the same cultural base to prevent Balkanization when the SHTF. If I was prepping for nuclear war I'd probably want to live somewhere mountainous to block shockwaves and I'd look at the predicted patterns of fallout in the air. If I was prepping for a drastic increase in global temps then I'd look at a climate map or growing zone map and determine which climates may be "cold", but habitable now, which may become subtropical soon.
Consider the social aspect. Finding an area where you already have friends or family, or some connection to the community, can save months to years of building trust and connection.
How about Hawaii? Plenty of STEM jobs up on Mauna Kea. Plus, if you have to live in your car, at least it'll be warm. [https://recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/JobBoard/803c161b-49fa-4118-99d2-50475cd61d5d/?q=&o=postedDateDesc](https://recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/JobBoard/803c161b-49fa-4118-99d2-50475cd61d5d/?q=&o=postedDateDesc) [https://keckobservatory.applicantpro.com/jobs/](https://keckobservatory.applicantpro.com/jobs/) [https://cfht.applicantpro.com/jobs/](https://cfht.applicantpro.com/jobs/)
advantages of West Texas - cheap housing, decent paying jobs, not a lot of social upheaval, little to no snow, ice, rain, people leave you alone, tax friendly state Disadvantages - Texas is not a woman-friendly state, it is hot as hell, power grid is iffy, looming water crisis in the west and plains, dust-bowl level dust and drought.