Move here only if you are financially well off.
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1/28/2009
The Springfield/Branson area has some positive points - the fishing/outdoors (spring/summer/fall that is)and relatively low cost of living. The downside of all that is that you'd have to search far and wide to find an area of the US where the average pay is as low as here. I'm talking almost 3rd world levels. People expect you to exist on minimum wage regardless of whether you posses a college degree or not. I spent my college years there and since the economy was bad, a few years after as well. Even people I knew with years of experience and a University degree were being lowballed with $20,000 a year gigs.
The mentality is definitely small town, and thats not always a bad thing except of course when you are asking your employer for a raise or see fit to complain in any manner about the place on our little green planet that they have come to think of as their little Utopia.
The only people I knew that moved here and are happy are the ones who came in with money - retirement or inheritance. The rest spend the productive years of their lives as working poor pursuing that ever elusive dream - which generally amounts to the $10.00 an hour job in Springfield.
Hunter | Laramie, WY